What Is Known About a Startup Called LoopUp?

I interviewed LoopUp co-CEO Michael Hughes for the article, Surviving Near-Death Experiences and Going Public in London: Michael Hughes, co-CEO of LoopUp | Sramana Mitra, on my blog:An entrepreneuru2019s journey is often about survival and getting to profitability so that near-death situations do not threaten his ventureu2019s existence. Michael talks about his teamu2019s long, often treacherous, path through troubled waters.Sramana Mitra: Letu2019s start at the very beginning of your personal journey.

Where are you from? Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of background?Michael Hughes: I grew up in Wales, United Kingdom in a town of 170,000 people.

I was there for the first 18 years of my life.Sramana Mitra: What did you do for your education?Michael Hughes: To be very honest with you, I actually was a dyslexic kid and was doing relatively poorly in education until about 12 or so when I was luckily discovered by a random IQ test to be not quite as dumb as people thought.

That allowed me to get a bit of help and support, which got me a scholarship to get out of the public schooling system and into private education with the help of my parents.I ended up going down the typical pre-engineering route with a lot of mathematics, chemistry, and physics. I followed that path.

When I decided to go to university, I took the opportunity to do, what they call, a six-sandwich course where you get some hands-on practical experience working for a company before you go off to university. I chose to study Aeronautical Engineering at Imperial College. I got sponsored through that experience by what was then known as Westland Helicopters, Britainu2019s only helicopter manufacturer.

I spent a year working in various departments of Westland Helicopters. Every summer, I went back to Westland for a bit of experience. While at Imperial, I got interested in doing some stuff that was a little bit more computational.

I ended up doing my thesis work for my Engineering Masteru2019s in Barcelona. Sramana Mitra: What years are we talking?Michael Hughes: That is u201986, I went to Westland and I graduated from Imperial in 1992.

Sramana Mitra: What happens after this?Michael Hughes: From the experience of actually working in an engineering company, I discovered that engineering was actually quite hard. Westland was laying off a whole bunch of people when I was there.

I ended up writing a memo to the Managing Director. I marched into his office to suggest that theyu2019re missing a trick with all the capabilities they had with all these interns running around.As a result of that odd conversation, I ended up working for the Deputy Managing Director as a sort of a special projects sidekick.

That was my first exposure to business outside of my normal day-to-day engineering experiences. When I came to graduate from the Engineering Masteru2019s program, I thought Iu2019d quite like to do something a little bit more on the business side. I applied to a bunch of Strategic Management consulting firms, and ended up working with a group called Monitor, which at that time, was a small UK-based group of professors out of Harvard Business School u2013 the most notable of which is Michael Porter.

Sramana Mitra: I remember Monitor. Michael Hughes: Before their untimely demise, I worked with them out of the London office but spent almost no time in London at all. I ended up working in Spain for quite a bit.

Then I spent just over a year working in Portugal with the Portuguese government on this broad-ranging, national competitiveness project, which was inspired by a book that Michael Porter called The Competitive Advantage of Nations. I was doing, essentially, public policy work for 14 months. I did that for a bit.

I did a similar thing in the Middle East working in Abu Dhabi trying to help them use the offset money that they had from buying all the weaponry from the Americans to actually build something that would be a little bit more long-standing. Then I worked in Northern Ireland on the precursor of the Peace Accords trying to build economic activity between northern and southern Ireland. After that, I went to Stanford Business School.

Thatu2019s where I met Steve Flavell, whou2019s my business partner to this day and Andy Scott who ended up being our financial sugar daddy through the experience of LoopUp.Nextu00bbu00bb

· Related Questions

Do you reincarnate as a human again in the next life? What are the chances?

Human body is a gate since he is bestowed with intelligence either he can appreciate and start sadhana towards self realization by following spirituality or he can use human body only for enjoying the material word and glide down to lower forms of creation or one can do pious acts and elevate oneself to higher planets. But who decides this? only that person?

How - based on oneu2019s KARMA. Lord Krishna beautifully explained in Bhagavad Gita how a soul acquires different type of bodies. Entire universe is running under dualities, cause and effect of Karma and material modes.

We can take what Lord Krishna beautifully explained in Bhagavad Gita.BG14.4 The soul acquires that kind of body based upon ones conscious at the time of death.

If person dies with satva guna, he will be elevated to higher planetary systems and will fall down onto earth once his merits are exhausted.BG14.15 if a person has conscious of Rajasik, he will take birth among men on earth who has both merits as well as de-merits to enjoy in the form of fruits.

But one dies in the mode of ignorance, he will fall down to lower creations of like animals, birds etcu2026. People who donu2019t care about spirituality/God /Dharma etc and use human body as if they are born only for eating, fending,mating and sleeping, and like cats & dogs, which is nothing but mode of Ignorance will glide down to lower form of creation.Enemies of mind which drag one into ignorance and forces person to go on the path of wrong doings (Adharma path).

Lord Krishna saysBG17.6 u201cThose who are envious and mischievous, who are the lowest among men, I perpetually cast into ocean of material existence into various demoniac species of lifeu201dBG16. 20 u201cAttaining repeated births among the species of demoniac life, O son of Kunti, such persons can never approach Me.

Gradually they sink down to the most abominable type of existence.When emperor Bharata even after renouncing family and kingdom could not avoid attraction to a dear and hence while dying his conscious was on dear & hence he acquired a dear body in next birth. But as Lord Krishna says spirituality one practises will never go waste and mercifully he makes one to continue spirituality from where one stopped in oneu2019s previous birth irrespective of the body one receives.

So even though Bharata though got a dear body, he was having full history of his previous emperor life and why he had fallen down. Same thing happens to Gajendra in Gajendra Moksham. Even though he was elephant he could recollect prayer by mercy of Lord.

So spirituality is like real honey whose taste will never vanish unlike physical honey and will make one self nearer to God with every step of practice.Current life is already destined. We have taken birth with what is to be experienced , how, where and when, what are sufferings & enjoyments - pre-determined & these are very difficult to change unless one surrenders to Guru & serve him with undivided attention.

For all practical purposes, it cant be changed. Our life is like a train already started from station. Everything scheduled.

Nothing can be changed. Only thing what we have in our hand is how we can respond to destiny based on which future karma will accumulate. But when a person is bestowed with all good things in life, some people come under illusion & think that u2014 they are dons, no God & nothing, everything happening because of me.

With these thoughts, under pride and false prestige, they will follow wrong path , do impious actions which throw them again either to lower births or miserable births. When one get miserable birth, they will focus on God etc due to difficulties and gain merits. Again some times because of these merits, they will get good birth.

Once they get good birth again under illusion & false prestige, repeat wrong doings and again will get casted into lower births & some times miserable births. This becomes a repeated cycle. This is how soul gets struggling.

Lord Krishna saysBG9.34 Engage your mind always thinking of Me, become My devotee, offer obeisances to Me and worship Me. Being completely absorbed in Me,s urely you will come to Me.

If one surrenders to Lord krishna , one can reach to abode of krishna Goloka / Vaikunta Loka etc & need not take birth again so that all miseries involved with material world will vanish at once. Hence, human body has all options and human alone will decide what will be his fate in next birth based on ones KARMA. HARE KRISHNA HARE KRISHNA RADHE KRISHNA RADHE KRISHNABHAJA GOVINDAM BHAJA GOVINDAM GOVINDAM BHAJARef; Images / excerpts from google/quora / ISKCON for explanatory purpose with credits / appreciation to respective owners