About
We’re a team of passionate folk who work with tech startups to turn their vision into a reality, enabling tech innovation and customer-centred thinking into everything you do.
We are an integral part of the startup team
Being a tech startup isn’t always bear hugs, high fives, pizzas and table football. Crafting an idea from an intuitive hunch into an innovative tech product requires extraordinary effort and insight, and it’s vital that entrepreneurs have the right support to hand.
With experienced entrepreneurs having their own medals and scars, an impressive agile tech team and a lean approach to growing startups, tsf.tech is your partner to help unpack and accelerate your idea to market.
The team
We’re a team of passionate folk who work with tech startups to turn their vision into a reality, enabling tech innovation and customer-centred thinking into everything you do. More grit than glamour, we roll our sleeves up, get dirt under our nails and get stuck in. Meet the team that makes it happen.
Our partners
What is the help and advice you need? We’ve got it covered with partners operating in each key support area to enable growth:
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HR
Building your team means understanding the basic requirements of employment – from a legal compliance perspective, having the necessary policies and processes, and the practicalities of employment contracts.
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Finance
Before going to market, you need to understand your financial model, work out your pricing strategy and then – above all – determine what your cashflow projections and profile looks like.
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Marketing
Before stepping out of the building with your product, you need to develop your brand, create a web site and get connected using social media to create awareness, engagement and connectivity with your target market.
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Sales
You may have great domain knowledge but have no prior experience of sales. Do you know how to develop and execute a sales strategy and plan to find, win and keep your customers? Do you know which CRM tools to use?
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Legal Advice
The essential legal foundations of setting up a company often go overlooked. You need advice and guidance on company set up, shareholder agreements and possibly IP agreements to give you the protections needed.
Five Pillars
When setting out, we looked to other entrepreneurs for a steer as to what makes for a happy and healthy business. We found this quote from Jeff Bezos: Find the things that are important to you and invest heavily in those things. So we created the Five Pillars to stay focused on the things that will always be important to us.
Vision & Values
- Our business is about people capital, not venture capital
- Reach beyond your expectations, every day
- First names are important, job titles are not
- Trusting each other is the platform for everything we do
- Everyone practices humility and self awareness, but also self-esteem
- We know the mentality to be successful and we have it in abundance
Culture
- No office hours, but minds always open
- 40 hours a week maximum; 32 summer hours (4 day weeks) July & August
- Weekend starts 1pm Friday
- Team breakfast once a week
- Working from home and flexible working at our core
- Team social last Thursday of every month
Knowledge
- Everyone has a personal R&D project
- Host Lunch & Learns third Thursday in the month
- Run four hackathons a year
- Friday afternoon is your personal learning time
- Everyone goes to one event a month; everyone has a monthly book allowance
- Performance of the business is transparent to everyone
Social Impact
- Actively seek investment opportunities with founders using tech for a positive
societal impact - Supporting initiatives for first-time entrants into tech roles
- Be generous with our time to help entrepreneurs wherever we can, without a
benefit to us - Mentor a social enterprise
- Provide paid internship opportunities
- Active contributor to Manchester Tech Trust
Success
- We will keep our company small and intimate, with reasonable expectations
- Our place of work is a welcoming oasis, not a chaotic kitchen
- Anxiety is not a pre-requisite for progress
- We are calm by choice and practice
- Everything is about having a reasonable day, going home, and living your life
- Success is looking at a visible horizon, and getting there in the long run
Careers
We’re building an amazing company. Be part of our incredible journey, talented people like you will make tsf.tech a great place to be. Come and join us and help shape our future.
We are now also an integral part of the EHE Group.
The EHE Group, which was borne out of the incredible work we have done at TSF over the past six years, in order to further support tech founders on their journey to fast growth.
In the words of Guy Remond, non-exec director of TSF and one of the founders of EHE: When it comes to building fast growing companies, securing investment and helping entrepreneurs to do the same we’ve got decades of experience. Plus years of blood sweat and tears! It’s not easy being an entrepreneur but we’re here to change that. So we created EHE, where Entrepreneurs Help Entrepreneurs.
And as a further development to the EHE Group, EHE Ventures has been launched to provide better access to this advice and support. This is being further enhanced by the launch of an AI-focused, EIS qualified fund for UK based, early stage & fast-growth companies. Register here now for more information and early access to the fund
We’re ready to talk...
Wherever you are on your startup journey, get in touch and let’s unpack your thinking together and see where we can help turn your idea into a reality.