Wow! Ever since David Cameron’s announcement on Monday about the launch of Startup Britain, there has been a hive of activity in the media and on Twitter – and it’s a very mixed response….
If you’ve not seen what StartUp Britian is offering , here’s the link to take you straight there: http://www.startupbritain.org/. In a nutshell, it is the government’s initiative to help entrepreneurs get their business idea off the ground. So what’s the big deal?
On the plus side, there are some pretty decent product offers available to new startups. On the downside, these may not be the most affordable to you at start up stage; and they may not be the most suitable products / services to your particular business or business needs (case in point: Barclays Bank may be backing this initiative, but it certainly pays to shop around for business banking offers – and trust me, Barclays is not offering the best deal. I’ve done my homework on that one!).
Also on the plus side, is that it has the backing of some succesful entrepreneurs who do have their finger on the pulse of entrepeneurship in Britain (Emma Jones of http://enterprisenation.com/). On the downside, it’s still unclear exactly how these entrepreneurs are going to help those of us who are starting smaller or part-time businesses, whilst raising younger children… While our dreams are BIG some of us are starting small, so that we can have family/life balance initially.
Me? I’m on the fence at the moment about the whole thing. Two things clearly missing from this initiative right now (but which are supposedly planned according to the webpage “New Features Launching Soon”) is exactly what most mumpreneurs tell me they need sooner, rather than later:
- Mentoring - fact: in most cases they want this from a succesful business mum who has been there, done that.
- High Quality, applicable Training – that is affordable, and that they can implement in their business quickly and efficiently.
Business mums, what do you think?