Author

Ruzbeh Bacha

Why I Have Invested 20% Of My Portfolio In UK Start-ups

I’m a typical London professional. I have a small portfolio in stocks, mutual funds and start-ups, not unlike many other London professionals. After launching my own fintech start-up…

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4 Reasons Start-ups Get Acquired – It Goes Beyond Revenue and User Traction

Acquiring start-ups is risky business. No matter how good an idea sounds, or how simple a solution a start-up offers, the acquisition may never pay off…

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Stock Market Investing by Immersion – How The Average Worker Could Have Leg up on Wall Street

  Already ready to get started, head straight to CityFALCON for Newbies. If you’re going to start a hobby, you’re going to bring background knowledge you’ve learned throughout your life to that hobby. If you want to learn how to play… Continue Reading →

What the Film ‘The Big Short’ Teaches Us about Value Investing

Spoiler Alert – Read this article after watching the movie. It’s reasonable to wonder what a movie about the housing crisis and ensuing financial meltdown could teach regular people…

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Why Most Start-ups Worth Investing Are Worth At Least £1m Using ONE Fundamental Financial Concept

An idea is worthless until someone is willing to invest in it. When someone puts money…

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How Stock Market Investing Has Changed in the World of Tech Disruptions

Today, a startup with a camera and a clever idea can create a viral video that can eat into the market share of major companies, possibly even bringing large companies down. In tandem to this trend, many big industry players…

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5 Key MACRO Takeaways from Warren Buffett’s Letter to Berkshire Hathaway Shareholders  

Every year Warren Buffett writes a letter to the shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway. It looks like this year he enjoyed writing the letter especially…

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How will Brexit affect UK startups?

For those of you who may not be aware, the UK will hold a referendum on 23 June to decide whether or not UK should remain in the European Union. As a (fintech) startup, we are really worried…

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Life Of A “Highly Skilled” Immigrant In The UK  – The Unheard Side Of The Story

Let me start with saying that I don’t mince words and I was never taught diplomacy…

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Inspirational Quotes for Stock Market Investing

Sometimes it’s good to go back to basics and re-evaluate your investing strategies. Here are some inspirational quotes from some wise investors that could help. “Investing should be more like…

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Stocks With Enterprise Value Less Than 0

Disclaimer & Disclosures Please do your own analysis before investing in any of these stocks. While we have taken care in collating the data, some errors may occur. Some of the listed companies may have …

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Popular Stocks At 52 Weeks Low

The start to the stock markets in 2016 has been unprecedented. There have been some structural issues in some markets such as China but some of the carnage may not be warranted…

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5 Unique Challenges Startups in the UK Face, and How to Work Around Them

If you’re looking for quick and simple solutions to the many challenges entrepreneurs face…

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Why we entrepreneurs are responsible for the risk aversion of investors in the UK and Europe

I wear two hats: a fintech entrepreneur and an angel investor…

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Reality vs Hype in UK Fintech Startups

“There are three categories where you will get funding very easily”: “if you are a Rockstar product manager or serial entrepreneur” “If you have worked in the City for a long time and can…

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Best Finance Videos, Articles and Books for Investors for Amateurs and Experts

As a value investor most of your time is spent reading about companies…

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Top 30 Financial Stories of 2015 On CityFALCON

Stock market volatility caused by geopolitical tensions, uncertainty over interest rates and structural issues in developing markets…

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15 Things I Learned as a First Time Entrepreneur in the UK

In 2014, I launched CityFALCON from my bedroom, raised £200K in seed funding, hired a few people, and started to build a scalable product…

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How to compare Spread Betting and Contract for Differences accounts – You are probably doing it wrong!

What is Spread Betting? Spread betting is betting whether the price of an asset will rise or fall. It’s that simple, and that wonderfully…

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Twitter is the stock to own for 2016 for me

Summary Twitter still provides unique offerings over other social networks. While the MAU and revenue growth have been declining, 300m+ MAUs is already a strong base, and 30-40% revenue growth is respectable. Twitter has declined 40% over the last year…

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The 55 Best Finance Blogs of 2016

We’re only a few days into 2016, and there is so much to look forward to. But the passing calendar year also gives a chance to reflect. If you’re like us here at CityFALCON, one thing you might have spent…

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The Ultimate Guide To Understanding The Stock Market

Introduction The stock market is one of the most valuable components of the market economy. It can create a lot of opportunity, but it can be difficult to understand. There’s so much jargon and expertise involved, just thinking about can… Continue Reading →

5 Reasons Why I And Most People Have Lost Money In The Stock Markets

I’m not an expert on the markets, nor do I have a PhD or some quantitative research to support my arguments. But here are some of my experiences from investing in the stock markets for the last 15 years. There…

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Petition to UK Parliament – Improve entrepreneurial schemes and their implementation

Please sign the petition here if you agree with the points highlighted below. This petition is based on my experience as an entrepreneur for last 2 years running CityFALCON and also based on discussions with other entrepreneurs. We hope that…

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How A $25 Investment Converted Our Developers Into Marketers

In a start-up with limited resources, detailed specs for your developers are a luxury. At the same time, without proper specs, developers may not build what’s actually useful for our customers. To solve this problem, we decided to try something out,… Continue Reading →

Reflections On The Startup And FinTech Ecosystems In Ontario From CityFALCON

We can’t overstate how proud we are that CityFALCON won the Next Big Idea in FinTech competition. For the honour, we got to travel to Ontario to get acquainted with the FinTech ecosystem there and learn more about startup culture… Continue Reading →

Why I would think twice before building a PRODUCT startup again in the UK

Unfortunately many people in the start-up space do not understand the difference between PRODUCT and SERVICE start-ups. User/revenue traction, i.e. “how many users do you have or how much revenue…

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Man vs. Machine in Trading and Investing

During the London Fintech Week last week, I had the opportunity to discuss this topic on a panel along with UCL professor Donald Lawrence and John Booth of Midpoint. Also, I have had long discussions on this subject with Niall… Continue Reading →

UK unicorns – how much did they raise in their seed rounds?

For service businesses where you can target customers from month 1 and even start making revenue, funding can be less important. But for ‘product’ businesses where-in you have to build for 2, 3, 6 months before you can start making… Continue Reading →

Twitter Hatch – Preparation, Script, Story of two minutes pitch

12 August 2015 – the date I and my team can never forget.  In the midst of the painful fundraising process, we realised that we had an opportunity to differentiate, get validation for what we are doing and strengthen relationship… Continue Reading →

UK funding gap is killing start-ups and also creating a bubble

If you as an entrepreneur are running a service business or you belong to any of the categories mentioned in “Abundance of start-up funding in the UK but not necessarily for YOU”, you probably have not faced any serious issues with… Continue Reading →

How even YOU can start investing in stock markets

Disclaimer: We provide information for investors and traders, but this should not be constituted as investment advice. Also, losses can exceed deposits when dealing with leveraged products. Please consult an investment advisor before making any decisions. Investing for long term… Continue Reading →

Abundance of start-up funding in the UK but not necessarily for YOU

Before I ventured out to launch my start-up, every morning when reading about start-ups raising 1, 2 or 10 million pounds, I was positive that there was abundance of liquidity in the market. Further, with equity, bonds, property markets at… Continue Reading →

Lessons from outsourcing software development and hiring 20+ people remotely

At CityFALCON, we believe in hiring the best people irrespective of their location. Over the last 18 months, we have used eLance to work with several freelancers including developers, designers, business analysts and copywriters. We currently have people in Ukraine,… Continue Reading →

Who starts a startup investment pitch with a dance!? you must be crazy!

We entrepreneurs are risk takers. We leave the comfort of our corporate jobs and take a leap of faith to start our own businesses. But some aspects of running a start-up have not changed, and at times, investors, service providers… Continue Reading →

An entrepreneur’s wishlist for HMRC

HMRC (HM Revenue and Customs) and the UK government have provided much better incentives for start-ups than in most other countries – SEIS, EIS, R&D Credit, Entrepreneur’s relief, etc. We at CityFALCON have taken advantage of most of these benefits, and… Continue Reading →

Microsoft Ventures Accelerator Worth Every Penny…Oh Wait, It’s Free!

One of our advisors at CityFALCON called me and asked me why I’m not looking to join Microsoft Ventures accelerator. I didn’t know much about the program, but my first reaction was that it may be a distraction. I was… Continue Reading →

The Mystery of UK Start-up Valuation

I had highlighted the benefits of starting a business in the UK in an earlier article – 11 UK start-up benefits that may make you wonder why you are still in a corporate job. A couple of the aspects of… Continue Reading →

Yandex Could Double In Value In 2 Years

Summary Due to the crisis in the Ukraine and subsequent devaluation of the Russian Ruble, Yandex is quoting at $18, less than half of its all time-high of $44 in 2014. The company’s position in Russia remains strong with a… Continue Reading →

How learning to code helped on my entrepreneurial journey

Learning to code, as I did in three months before setting up CityFALCON, can be an extremely daunting prospect. But I fully believe that the effort that I have put into it has been entirely worthwhile, and that there have… Continue Reading →

2.4 million reasons investors can’t ignore Twitter

Elon Musk tweets about a new product line, and Tesla’s shares jump 4%, adding $1.3 billion to Tesla’s market cap.  A trader profits from a tweet which indicates a potential acquisition by Intel. April Fools day’s tweet by Tesla with… Continue Reading →

An appeal to all investors – Focus on the value of your shareholding instead of your % stake in a start-up

While raising funds, I was asked these questions countless times: 1) Will you raise more money and dilute my stake in the company? 2) You said you wanted to raise £150k and now have raised £200k. You have already diluted… Continue Reading →

11 UK start-up benefits that may make you wonder why you are still in a corporate job

Governments around the world have realised that start-ups are critical to socio-economic progress. The UK Government is no exception to this rule. Thus, there are a wealth of start-up benefits provided by UK Government and other organisations which will collectively… Continue Reading →

Definition of “success” for me, an entrepreneur

“It’s impossible to fail when your goal is to try and make an effort to improve the World“ – Eric McAfee The concept of success can be extremely diverse. Some entrepreneurs end up as billionaires, while others are just happy… Continue Reading →

How we stayed lean, and will save £350K just in the first year

One of the first lessons that we learned at CityFALCON was that it is essential to stay as lean as possible during the fundraising stage. This enables you to keep fundraising to a bare minimum, and ensure that you will… Continue Reading →

Unexpected questions from potential investors and my responses during our seed round

During CityFALCON’s first year of trading, we were fortunate enough to secure £200K worth of funding from a series of high profile angel investors. Every one of these people have our undying gratitude, as without them, we could not have… Continue Reading →

Can one learn to code in only 3 months? The answer is in the objective

Coding may seem like a daunting prospect for the uninitiated. Most people would doubtless think it is impossible to learn to code competently in only three months. While I can understand this conclusion, I know for a fact that it… Continue Reading →

Why we would love to but may NOT hire many full-time people in the UK

Let me be clear – the purpose of this post is not to criticise anyone but to be honest and transparent, and to give some food for thought to stakeholders. I’m lucky to have some great people that work with… Continue Reading →

Why did we launch Finance for Founders?

Founding a start-up is a big undertaking, and one that also necessitates a lot of risk. Unfortunately, in the competitive world in which we live, and particularly in the sometimes perilous economic state of the world at the moment, many… Continue Reading →

What’s common between the supermarket & leverage trading (spread betting, CFD, and FX) industries?

Most retail outlets, especially supermarkets, offer popular items such as milk, bread, etc. at extremely low prices and make higher margins through the long tail – branded biscuits, toiletries, etc. These are often referred to as ‘loss leaders’. Other businesses… Continue Reading →

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