Angels and Stars – Week In Review

Written on August 14, 2010 – 10:07 pm | by Michael Harris

Awards are great; they’re wonderful and are a great measure of how well your company is progressing. Last year we were finalists, this year we aim to pick up one the most important gongs there are for start-ups – the HSBC Start-Up Stars 2010 Award. Our raison d’être is to help innovative companies raise the Angel Funding they need to grow and be successful. Too often we focus on the successes of our customers and forget the impact we have on the industry. So to be nominated alongside some other fantastic new businesses gives us great satisfaction that others are inspired by what we do as much as we are of our customers.

If there was ever an example making your dreams come true by not taking “no” for an answer then you should follow the example set by Neil and Janet Allday who emerged from Dragon’s Den with no funding, but eventually raised £75,000 from other Angels for their “One Dress“.

The big(gish) news of the week was the possible setting of bank lending targets for small-businesses. Of course Angel Investment isn’t going to be suitable for every business. Sometimes the quickest way to get a project started is to borrow modest sums from the bank. Well the news is that Barclays has refused to join any government scheme to set these targets. We know how government targets can skew good sense, we much prefer the concept of providing a stable economic environment with systemic incentives to innovate and invest. Perhaps we should follow the Danish lead?

Around the internet we read a great post by the SEO legend Bruce Clay about the benefits of blogging daily. So if you’re a corporate blogger struggling to get the motivation to step up and increase the frequency of your posts then here’s a good reason why. We’re even getting some juicy insights ready to blog about … stay tuned.

And just a quick look at the events we’ve got coming up during the rest of the summer and into the Autumn. We’ve got SpeedFunding events restarting and scheduled to run every month in London from September. We have more Angel Funding clinics in August than any ever before, in fact, we’ve got another five this month. There’s a North East Road show with Stewart running funding clinics in Leeds and Newcastle as well as a number of SpeedFunding events. Not to feel left out Barry and Andrew have a number of Business Funding Clinics in Singapore, plus a SpeedFunding event on 7th September. And whilst you’re at it, you can join our Angels Den Singapore group on Facebook, or just the Angels Den UK group if you’re so inclined.

Perfect Business!