So my advice is this, create a good business plan and think about ways to sell your product even before it is completely done (it is called lean management- if you don’t know this then you shouldn’t even be in business). Then yeah go to investors, you will be in a much better position to negociate with them.

With sales of £3/4 million in 2008, projected to grow to £1.5 million in 2009, then upwards to £3 million by 2012, our dear bank manager at HSBC where we had a £20,000 OD wrote to tell me in April 2009 that my business was a credit risk to the bank and speculative and could not support the trade finance but was prepared to sign us into a invoice factoring agreement at a set up cost of £8,500. It was at that time I decided enough was enough and placed the business up for sale to find a buyer at any price to retain all the hard work that the whole team had put into it. What was for me a start up in 1998 using my own money as I felt the time had come for change in how we burn up what is left of the worlds fossil fuels the business went into administration and was sold off for £7,000 that included £30,000 of stock, displays and equipment to a person who knows nothing about the business.

The speed of the recession which forced the closure of that business leaving my wife and I at 62 and 65 to re-think how we can start again, as we have no option to do exactly that, but never again being in hock to a bank. For us and our overseas investment in the manufacturing side in China we made 4 years ago, is our future in solar energy IF we can find a like minded investor who can take what has taken me 18 years of my life developing for the future of this country.

Very few investors have yet to grasp outside the need to maximise gain with minimum risk but with no understanding of the business in the first place, except it’s a business that interests them because the media has exposed them to the words climate change and global warming and the need for renewable energy if we as a country are to secure our future energy needs. My American partner has the same problem with raising new capital and his company is listed on the penny pink sheet stock. His patented product allows my solar collector to store heat during the day and release it at night for heating a home tax free. In April next year Ofgen will pay out £0.18p a kWh to home owners who invest in solar heat generation, but as yet nobody knows about this.

1/. Despite being called “Start-Up” they all demand that we have been trading successfully for at least 1 year, before we can even apply.

2/. They are never more than £5,000, which would barely clear a month’s laundry & ‘leccy at todays prices.

3/. They all demand registration at Companies House, which would cost several £?,000, & as a charity we would also have a similar problem with the Charities Commission. Obviously, we would also have horrendous legal expences for this, @ £600/hr., always assuming that we could find a suitably qualified solicitor who can drag himself away from the Golf Club, just long enough to snatch our money.

We believe that the entire grant system, state or private, simply provides extremely good salaries, & pensions, for the idle rich civil service fat-cats whom we find in the relevant admin.

They oft remind me of the Gestapo, & are at best gov.uk quangos.

As for Business Angels, they appear to collect a far better income from the BBC/ITV than they would ever receive from any form of investment. The only place to meet ‘em is in a TV studio. I have tried to gain legal entry to so many areas of the press, & always fail at the first hurdle, it is a completely closed shop. Party members only!