On The Buses: Startup Britain Takes To The Road
This week sees the Startup Britain campaign takes to the streets of the UK on their Summer Bus Tour. Starting with Bristol on Monday, the bus will visit 14 cities up and down the country over the next fortnight.
The campaign team for StartUp Britain will travel on the bus, complete with experts, mentors, entrepreneurs and small business authors, to locations including Brighton, Cardiff, Cambridge, Birmingham, Sheffield and York.
Since a glitzy and somewhat controversial launch, the campaign backed by the government - in spirit, if not financially, the US equivalent Startup America has $2bn in matched investment funds - has gained the backing of AXA, Barclays, Dell, Intel, Intuit, Microsoft, MITIE and PayPal, who will each be giving specialist business advice and discounts to entrepreneurs across the UK.
Once on board the bus, entrepreneurs will receive mentoring, business advice and take part in speed networking sessions from successful entrepreneurs and business leaders.
Emma Jones, co-founder and interim chief executive of StartUp Britain, said “Thanks to help and support from our local StartUp champions, this tour allows us to take StartUp Britain across Britain. The bus will travel from north to south and east to west, loaded with business experts, start-up advice and valuable offers.
“We will be meeting with students and helping them turn ideas into ventures and we'll be visiting people moving from employment into self-employment. I look forward to welcoming hundreds of start-ups and small businesses on board.”
Sally Revell, head of marketing at Intuit UK, said: “Small businesses form the backbone of Britain and what better way of supporting and encouraging these entrepreneurs than by providing our expert advice on how they can best manage their finances.
“Not only will this tour give vital help to start-ups and small businesses up and down the country, it will spur them on to give the UK the economic boost that it needs.”
Judging from the video of the bus' stop in Birmingham, it's going to be an entertaining and hopefully productive couple of weeks:
Follow the bus tour on Twitter @startupbritain.
Comments
A big shout out!
To Emma Jones and her team at StartUp Britain for their tireless efforts in promoting self-employment as a viable option. At Ve Interactive, we believe that entrepreneurialism is a crucial component to economic recovery.