I went along to The London Funding Conference at the British Library last night and was again impressed by the Library’s ability to host these events.
In football terms the conference had scored a couple own goals, with over-long sponsor’s talks during the first half, but came storming back to win with truly excellent insights [...]

A few days ago the office of the Prime Minister sent a letter to many small businesses and SME organisations explaining that a new online tool called Contracts Finder has been launched that will show all government tender opportunities.
At the same time he said they would eliminate the prequalification questionnaire (PQQ) for low value orders [...]

There’s a common misconception of the typical entrepreneur being a charismatic individual business person, not needing or wanting a partner’s help in driving forward his all conquering venture.
Think Richard Branson, Bill Gates, or the latest film idol, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook fame.
Yes they were the front men and there’s no doubt that they steered the [...]

The first question is should it cost anything? After all it is the Investors who have money, so why should they charge in order to pitch to them?
Well, actually almost all Investors don’t charge a penny for entrepreneurs to present an investment case to them.
Investors are not looking to make money from people presenting [...]

I was putting together a business plan workshop for some MBA students the other day and looked for a couple of quotes to illustrate points. There are, as you can imagine, quotes for everything, sometimes contradictory.
There is one area though that no one disagrees with and it happens to be a pet issue with me. [...]

Last night I attended the keynote event of Global Entrepreneurship Week (GEW), yes it’s this week, how could you miss it? Sitting in a packed conference centre of the British Library, I looked around at the alert eager faces of budding Entrepreneurs and thought this has to be the future for Britain.
Tom Bewick, the CEO [...]

Business gets ever quicker and there’s never a time now when we aren’t connected and “on-call”. It used to be that if you were on a train or car journey, there was valuable down-time where you could ruminate on life and free your mind to come up with new ideas.
It’s good to keep busy – [...]

Yesterday’s budget reminded me that there are still considerable tax benefits to owning your own business, beyond the normal personal tax choices of taking salary, or dividends.
The Chancellor has for a start not only continued with the Entrepreneur Relief Rate of 10% but expanded it up to a value of £5M. Now many entrepreneurs busy [...]

Well let’s first look at the terminology “hung parliament”. It is a term that is designed to send shivers down your spine. Hung, drawn and quartered, a hung jury, hung from the highest tree.
It provokes the public into a sense of unease, if not outright terror. The danger is that this sense of [...]

The Tories have vowed to get rid of Business Link, the government-funded business advice service in England, but what if anything will replace it?
Business Link has had over the years a mixed reputation. Your view of the whole organisation usually depended on which adviser you were allocated.
I certainly remember my original encounter with them. I [...]