Got an idea or building a business? Join Neil Kimberley and Actiph founder Jamie Douglas-Hamilton for founder insights and practical advice.

Entrepreneurship is frequently presented through the story of the linear breakthrough idea. In reality, ideas are just the beginning…

Neil Kimberley took his degree in American Studies at UEA and built expertise in one of the hotbeds of start-ups - US beverages. He has spent a career on the inside of multiple businesses (both winning ideas and ones he tries to forget about), learning at just how difficult it is to build the winning ideas that redefined one of the most dynamic CPG markets in the world.

He will be joined by Jamie Douglas-Hamilton, founder of Actiph Water, whose entrepreneurial story provides a current insight.

Actiph Water emerged from Jamie's 5,000-mile record-breaking row from Australia to Africa and his subsequent search for better hydration solutions. Neil will interview Jamie about his journey from the original inspiration to actually creating and developing the Actiph business.

This will be an interactive session exploring what happens after the idea: identifying a real opportunity, making difficult choices, finding customers, raising and deploying capital, responding to failure, building a brand and knowing when to persist - or change direction.

Rather than presenting entrepreneurship as a formula for success, the session will examine the decisions, mistakes, changes of direction and moments of conviction that determine whether an idea has the potential to become a sustainable enterprise.

The final part of the session turns the focus from the speakers to the UEA's entrepreneurs cohort. You are invited to bring the real problems you are currently facing - product, customer, funding, positioning, route to market, growth or simply “What should I do next?” - and work through them with Neil, Jamie and the group.

The format

12:00–12:40 - The Idea Is the Easy Part

Neil's practical presentation on the realities of building a business.

12:40–13:00 - From Idea to Actiph

Neil interviews Jamie Douglas-Hamilton. Not a founder story, but a conversation about what building a business is: the insight, assumptions that proved wrong, funding, customers, setbacks, pivots, difficult decisions, and lessons learned.

WHO? → WHAT? → HOW? → WHAT'S STOPPING YOU?

13:00–13:50 - The Founder Workshop: Your Business, Your Opportunities - (and Problems)

UEA entrepreneurs bring a current challenge. Neil and Jamie work through selected cases with the students using a simple framework:

13:50–14:00 - So, what Will You Do tomorrow?

Each participant identifies one decision, experiment, or action they will take next.

What attendees will leave with

Not a checklist for becoming the next billion-pound brand. Instead, a clearer way of thinking about the choices behind building a business: how to distinguish an interesting idea from a genuine opportunity; how to make choices with incomplete information; how to listen without losing conviction; how to use scarce resources; and how to turn uncertainty into the next action…The kind of questions we will be discussing:

What did you believe when you started that turned out to be completely wrong?

When did you first realize someone other than your friends would actually buy it?

What was the closest you came to running out of money?

What's the decision you would reverse?

What has taken three times longer than you expected?

When did persistence help and when did it hurt?

What does the business need from you today that it didn't need five years ago?

And one particularly good question from you:

“If you walked into UEA Student Enterprise today with the original Actiph idea and £5,000, what would you do in the next 90 days?”

Description supplied by the event organiser.