Let’s be honest, there was nothing shy and retiring about our launch.  Featured on BBC Breakfast.  Front page of the Daily Telegraph.   The Prime Minister, Chancellor and Business Secretary were all guests at our first event.

To recap, StartUp Britain is all about business people helping other business people to start up and grow.  It’s a private sector campaign, started by eight private individuals (Emma Jones, Lara Morgan, Michael Hayman, Duncan Cheatle, Jamie Murray Wells, Rajeeb Dey, Richard O’Connor and me).  It is independent, non-party-political and is funded by sponsors from the private sector, rather than by public money.    

So what’s the link with Government?  I think it’s fair to say that StartUp Britain was inspired by a series of meetings with Number 10, at the beginning of this year.  A group of us had met with Lord Young (at our request), following his resignation last year.  We wanted to chat with him, to pick his brains about enterprise.  We’d hoped that we’d be seeing more of him in his role as adviser to the PM.  His resignation made that less likely.  So we wrote to him, and arranged a coffee. 

As we introduced ourselves, he saw a potential link and wanted to put us in touch with Downing Street, which happened the next week.  With hindsight, it’s hardly surprising that Lord Young saw the connection.  He is a serial entrepreneur who now invests in technology firms.  On top of that, he has chaired major companies (including Cable and Wireless) and, unusually, been a Cabinet minister for both trade and industry and employment.  In our group’s first meeting with Number 10, we discussed the work of StartUp America (which had just launched and we had all seen).  We were offered the chance to launch something, on a platform with the Prime Minister, in less than a month’s time.  Some would have turned that opportunity down.  We didn’t.

Our decision was pretty straightforward.  We wanted StartUp Britain to be (and it is) independent of Government, driven by business, for business.  Something useful, which could help anyone wanting to start a business, whilst also inspiring current business owners to grow their business. 

So what has happened in those six months?

Here are a few numbers:

Immediately following the launch, Experian reported a 25% rise (or, more correctly, spike) in people searching for the term ’start up’ online.  It certainly got people talking!   

From the initial buzz, things soon got practical.  We were approached by the brilliant Marketing Agencies Assocation with a great plan to run a week of events for start-ups around the theme of marketing and advertising.  Marketing 4 StartUp Britain was the result, reaching an estimated 3,000 people who attended events and watched live.

Through organisations like the Supper Club, we’ve matched mentors with mentees.  To date, over 1,500 hours of mentoring have been received and there is a clue here about how StartUp Britain might have a bigger role to play as matchmaker in future.

One of the things available on the website at launch was a StartUp Guide, sponsored by Blackberry.  Over 4,000 were downloaded.

We have been approached by over 190 Local Champions, keen to work with us on a local level around the UK.  Four of these  already trialling something we’re going to be calling StartUp Local.

Our Twitter account has been a great way to engage with people, and has over 8,000 followers and counting.

Over 6,500 people now receive our regular newsletter.

We created a StartUp Britain Bus Tour which travelled 1236 miles, visiting 15 cities (including Cardiff, Liverpool, Manchester and Bristol) and attracting 72 experts onboard to meet local startups.  The youngest visitor was 4 and the oldest was 81!  The tour saw traffic to the website doubling when it was on the road.

Since launch,  the StartUp Britain website has had over 129,000 unique visitors.

Try as I may, I cannot claim credit for any of this.  We have a brilliant CEO in the form of Emma Jones, and a terrific team in Jamie Williams, Lorna Bladen and Becky Jones.  Our sponsors make our activity possible – they are Axa, Microsoft, Barclays, Dell, Mitie, Intuit, Paypal and Intel.  Without the hundreds of business owners who have volunteered their time face-to-face, words would not have turned into actions.

We’re six months in, and StartUp Britain is a laurel-free zone (no resting, sadly, for the team!).  We know that we have only just started and we’re still in start-up mode ourselves.  We’re starting out, both in terms of our journey, and in terms of fulfilling our potential.  Have we got everything right?  No way.  Was it confusing to have the PM’s face adorning our site on day one, making people think that were were a political campaign?  You bet.  Was it insensitive to extol the virtues of an overseas crowd-sourcing site as one of our top tips?  Yes.  Do we appreciate the people who gave us a second chance and continue to offer their ideas and help?  More than ever. 

So what next? 

1) A second version of the website, which is already being built.  Without giving away too much, it will allow people to upload things which they have found helpful, and have far more local resources.

2) Inspired by the feedback from Marketing 4 StartUp Britain, we’ll be running a Tech 4 StartUp Britain week in October.

3) StartUp Britain will be hitting the road again, with a particular focus on university start-ups.

 The biggest lesson I have learned is that the best things happen when someone with real energy approaches us, asking if we could do something together.  Something which involves them playing a key role in delivery.  I predict that our biggest future successes will come from significant players joining us to create projects together, bearing in mind that our own resources are limited.  If you think that might be you, or if you know someone that might be keen, we would hugely appreciate that approach. 

We’re looking forward to the next six months – we’ve only just got started!

(c) olibarrett.com

Well done to Oli and the team.  Let’s hope the next wave of BIT businesses are supported by the efforts of Start-Up Britain.

Sir Richard Branson talks about: An enterprising education

CAN entrepreneurship be taught? Can an aspiring business leader learn to choose the right plan, take the right risks, select the right team and then navigate all the turbulence that follows?

It is a plausible biography—given the necessary addition of animal spirits—but an imaginary one. Britain has no digital equivalent of the 18th-century industrial innovators who turned technology into commercial leadership. Its more recent prowess in pharmaceuticals and biotechnology has not been emulated in the digital sphere. David Cameron’s government should ponder this failure and address the reasons for it. Luck is one of them, but so are national and European regulations and a tepid climate for entrepreneurs.

Britain has one of the biggest online economies. Its researchers invented both the web and the computer. It has the English language—which helps to link it with California’s Silicon Valley and Indian high-tech—and great universities. There are thriving tech clusters in Bristol, London and elsewhere (see article). More so than other European countries, Britain should be competing with America as a tech leader.

Yet it has nurtured relatively few big tech companies and no huge ones. In particular, Britain has vanishingly few “platform” firms—ie, the sort that, like Microsoft, Google or Facebook, have built and marketed a service or piece of software on which other businesses and applications rely. That is where the real money is: platforms tend to yield lots of jobs in spin-offs and ancillary enterprises. Britain has Autonomy, which makes specialised search software, and ARM, which designs the microchips for Apple’s iPhones. Both are leaders in their fields, but neither is a giant. More damningly, they are the only two innovative tech outfits in the FTSE index of leading shares.

There should surely be more. Individual ideas and people are the key, obviously, but there are three problems with Britain’s tech ecology that its government could ameliorate. One is the absence of a market as big and homogeneous as American tech firms enjoy. Another is a relative shortage of capital for start-ups and growing firms. The third is the lack of entrepreneurs who combine technological expertise, business acumen and the sort of balls that, in 2006, reputedly let Mark Zuckerberg turn down Yahoo!’s offer of $1 billion for Facebook.

Begin with the market. You might think that distance and geography would be marginal considerations for tech firms. You would be wrong. For American firms, a domestic market of 300m interconnected English-speaking consumers is a big advantage. Easy transatlantic communications should help British firms conquer that market; but they also encourage American firms to snap up promising British companies. Europe is fragmented not only by multiple languages but also by the lack of a properly common market in services, including digital ones, so tech firms must still overcome assorted legal and bureaucratic barriers to trade across the EU. Digital firms should be able to benefit from the single market just as mobile-phone companies such as Nokia and Vodafone have. Proper implementation across the union of the directive on liberalising the services market, passed in 2006, would be a start.

When it comes to finance, Britain lags not only Silicon Valley, where many entrepreneurs see investing in the next generation as a sort of moral responsibility. In 2010 high-tech firms in Israel attracted $1.3 billion in venture capital, nearly twice as much as in Britain, whose economy is ten times as big. George Osborne, the chancellor of the exchequer, made some progress in his most recent budget by increasing the tax relief available for investors in start-ups. He should now look at the capital-gains tax regime: investors who make speculative bets and hit the jackpot should be able to keep and reinvest more of their winnings. Designing a system that rewards such risks but does not allow people to shelter their income from tax is tricky, but not impossible. It would help British businesspeople to think bigger, too: the absence of funding for growth is one reason some sell up at a relatively early stage. The 50% top income-tax rate creates further problems, by making it harder for entrepreneurs to recruit and retain the best people.

The gripe about Britain being poor at gestating bold entrepreneurs is an old one: the stereotype is of boffins who are good at generating ideas, but lose out to thrusting Americans when it comes to monetising them. There would be less truth in that caricature if British graduates in disciplines such as science and engineering gained some familiarity with business as part of their studies (it is noteworthy that the best British universities discourage students from earning money while they learn, while at American ones most are obliged to).

How do you know who will be the entrepreneurs?

The government should be more relaxed about bolstering the supply of indigenous entrepreneurs with foreigners, as well as about admitting more workers with technical and commercial skills that are in short supply. Beneath its wrongheaded, headline goal to slash net immigration, the government has sensibly made sure that a route remains open for entrepreneurs. The trouble is, it is not always obvious which would-be newcomer will end up striking gold: when a six-year-old Sergey Brin emigrated from Russia to America with his family, it was not yet clear that he would one day co-found Google. By cutting the numbers of foreign students it allows in, current immigration policy is shrinking the commercial pool as well as the academic one. London is a magnet for creative types everywhere; capitalise on that—and let more of them in.

Mr Cameron is keen on the tech industry, seeing it as a source of growth in lean times, and a way of weaning the economy off its dependence on flighty finance. Should our imaginary tech superstar materialise, it would be a shame if Britain’s Bill Gates were turned away at the border, or left Britain of his own accord for another country where his talents would be more generously nurtured and rewarded.

(c) The Economist 2011

Bright Ideas Trust provides a package of business support to young people looking to start their own business. Right now, we are looking to invest in the top ideas from young people in Hackney.

We’re offering:

• Business Readiness – advice, guidance and training on turning their Bright Idea into a realistic, viable and investable commercial business with a strong business proposition and robust financial forecast;
• Mentoring – a dedicated entrepreneurial Mentor who has successfully built their own business and who has committed to nurturing the investee. Bright Ideas Trust Mentors have a strong desire to pass on their real world entrepreneurial experience to the next generation and can also introduce investees to their networks and contacts as potential customers. They give their time on a voluntary basis;
• Expert Business Support – a pool of specialist business Advisors in areas such as accountancy, law and marketing;
• Funding – initial capital of up to £25,000.

So, if you think you have a Bright Business Idea, and the commitment and enthusiasm to see it through to success, we want to hear from you. Don’t let your Bright Idea pass you by, and apply today!

For information about support and advice available for businesses in Hackney click here.

After supporting ten’s of businesses and working with many more people to think through their ideas Tim and Paul have written a book which addresses the most frequently asked questions about what needs to be done to take an idea through to business start up.

The book is available from major retailers including WH Smith and Amazon. We hope it inspires more people to follow the replicable steps that are detailed in the book. Good luck!

Pink Crust

Pink Crust is a beauty salon in Hackney, 228 Graham Road, E8 1BP, who offers everything from waxing, tinting (yeh I don’t know what that is but still), pedicures, manicures, facials and make-up services. The shop is now OPEN! Hurray! And frankly, it’s looking delicious. Tim’s visited a few times ‘to check on the progress’ but I’ve noticed his nails have been looking particularly pretty…

Too Many PJs

Erin Wilson, master pyjama designer, is now being featured in a Pop-Up Show SPOT at 8 Egberton Garden Mews, SW3 2EH. Her designs will be there between 10th Aug and 3rd Sept. I know I’ve said it a lot on Twitter and Facebook, and the people in the office are getting kind of sick of it too, but I really think everyone needs one of these to sleep in.

For more information and to see her designs, go to her Facebook page.

Raw MG and Shoobs

Symbiotic, lovely. RawMG, the online magazine for creatives, is hosting an event, ‘Unsigned Melody’. Shoobs, the online ticketing service for entertainment events, is selling the tickets exclusively for this event. It will be on August 30th, at the famous Barfly in Camden, with doors opening at 7pm. Advanced tickets for £7. The event will be used to showcase some of the best up and coming talent and promises to be a delight.

For more information on the event, and to buy tickets, go to Shoobs.
To see the magazine, go to RawMG.