entrepreneurs 13
Open for business – Pitmans KickStart
It is widely publicised that London and the South East are the entrepreneurial powerhouses of Britain, providing a significant proportion of the 581,000 start-up businesses launched in 2014. The rapid rise in the number of start-up businesses in recent years demonstrates the opportunities open to all of us in converting a dream into reality, taking a concept to market and launching a brand of tomorrow
UK entrepreneurs created a record number of new businesses in 2014 (StartUp Britain January 2015).
Pitmans fosters an entrepreneurial spirit and has long collaborated with clients to enable their growth and success. Its teams and services are constantly evolving to recognise the challenges faced by tomorrow’s business leaders.
Following the success of 2014’s IDEAFEST – a competition designed for University of Reading students and co-founded by Pitmans and Henley Centre for Entrepreneurship (HCfE) – Pitmans recognised the demand from tomorrow’s business leaders to design a simple programme to enable their success.
Taking an idea from concept to development, seeking funding, protecting and monetising the concept requires a huge amount of energy, knowledge and expertise. Avoiding the traps and navigating the trail to success can be extremely challenging, often teaching new skills along the way and asking a great deal of those involved. While entrepreneurship is becoming an ever increasingly popular area for academic development, and courses (such as Henley Business School’s Entrepreneurship and Management MSc) constantly appear, these skills can be difficult to learn. This is where KickStart comes in.
KickStart, a specialist toolkit designed to get entrepreneurs and start-ups up and running, providing checklists, FAQs, advice from experienced entrepreneurs and steps to consider when launching your business
and commercialising your idea. Alongside the online toolkit (
www.pitmans.com/ KickStart) the “What I wish I knew” element provides advice from serial entrepreneurs to guide others and avoid commonly made mistakes. The package includes mentoring from professional business advisers, legal clinics to share and discuss your venture, engagement with the local business community and introductions to valuable suppliers and potential clients. With fixed fee services, tomorrow’s business leaders have the opportunity to assess their opportunities and risks to take the best steps forward with the guidance and support of trusted advisers every step of the way.
Pitmans KickStart toolkit delivers vital information to assist tomorrow’s leaders, broken into the following elements:
• Structuring your Business • Regulatory • Raising Finance • Commercial Agreements • Protecting and Commercialising your Brand • Recruiting and Incentivising.
Pitmans KickStart service, provided with fixed fee options, also includes regular legal clinics. These are organised and held at the Student Business Incubator, Reading Enterprise Centre and Reading University’s Science & Technology Centre. The sessions encourage those with ideas to discuss their plans with professional advisers, identify potential barriers and
effective solutions to enable success. Our team enjoy mentoring and guiding others and believe that through this investment of time and expertise, we can contribute, in a very small way, to the growth of tomorrow’s brands and the success of our region.
KickStart was officially launched at Henley Business School’s Entrepreneur Society event on March 19. The Society plans to equip entrepreneurs with the vital skills, knowledge and support required to monetise ideas and launch their new business venture. The ‘You and Your Venture: Legal’ highlighted the following areas for tomorrow’s leaders:
1 Intellectual property – protecting and monetising your ideas
2 Commercial contracts – mitigating business risk
3 Employment – effective recruitment and retention strategies
4 Shareholder agreements – structure and funding options
5 Terms and conditions – succeeding in business
HCfE IDEAFEST is back and open to entrants. The inaugural event was won by PhD student Ese Omoarukhe for Hi’Fab, a natural beverage whose main ingredient is the extract from Hibiscus Sabdariffa, a plant that has been discovered to regulate blood sugar and lower raised blood pressure. The competition judging panel included John Hargrave, finance director of Pitmans; John Cavill, founder and CEO of Intermezzo Ventures; Pete Doyle, founder and CEO of Social Retail; Norbert Morawetz, lecturer in entrepreneurship at the HCfE; Jurek Sikorski, business development lead and executive in residence at HCfE; and Jenny Tooth, CEO of the UK Business Angels Association. Interested students should contact Jurek Sikorski at
jurek.sikorski@
henley.ac.uk to discover how they and their business could contribute.
For further information about Pitmans KickStart service contact Richard Milner.
Details:
rmilner@pitmans.com 0118-9570263
www.pitmans.com
Enabling tomorrow’s leaders to thrive and succeed
www.pitmans.com/kickstart THE BUSINESS MAGAZINE – THAMES VALLEY – APRIL 2015
www.businessmag.co.uk
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