18 December 2018
What a year it's been at the Business & IP Centre
In the last weeks of 2018, we are taking the opportunity to look back at all the highlights in preparation of yet another prosperous and busy year at the Business & IP Centre. From expanding our National Network, to our biggest ever Start-up Day and truly inspirational guest speakers at our Inspiring Entrepreneurs events, this has been a year to remember. Here's a look back at some of the successes and key achievements in 2018 both for the Centre and among our network of users, supporters and partners.
Inspiring Entrepreneurs
Our Inspiring Entrepreneurs events are always a highlight, but in 2018 we welcomed speakers ranging from the founder and CEO of Square and Twitter, Jack Dorsey to the Queen of Shops Mary Portas.
The year got off to a great start back in February when we delivered our first Inspiring Entrepreneurs of 2018, focusing on successful online businesses and heard from Tom Adeyoola, Founder and CEO of Metail, Rikke Rosenlund, Founder of BorrowMyDoggy, Karen Hanton MBE, Founder of Toptable.com and Sara Murray OBE, Founder of confused.com but more recently Buddi and Non-Executive Director of Bohoo.com. Each of them had plenty of advice for the audience of budding entrepreneurs.
Our journey into tech-enabled entrepreneurship and a digital future for small businesses continued when Jack Dorsey, co-founder and CEO of payments firm Square got together with the brilliant Dr Anne-Marie Imafidon MBE, founder of social enterprise STEMettes for an evening of empowering conversations on anything from tech, machine learning and cryptocurrencies to the future of the economy. For the benefit of everyone who wasn’t as lucky as us, we have compiled the highlights of a fascinating, in-depth discussion about things as big as the future of the economy and as intimate as the personal journey of an established entrepreneur from a childhood fascination with maps to the lasting impact of disrupting more than one industry, on a global scale.
But we didn't stop there. In July, Inspiring Entrepreneurs: Feelgood Founders brought together Liz Earle MBE, Mark Constantine OBE, Co-founder of Lush, Simon Duffy MBE, Founder of Bulldog Skincare for Men and Sherille Riley, Founder of Nails and Brows Mayfair Boutique who shared the stories behind their well-known health and beauty brands. Other Inspiring Entrepreneurs events this year featured Women Mean Business, Black Britain in the Creative Industries and last, but not least a candid conversation with Mary Portas. You can visit our YouTube channel BIPCTV to catch-up with highlights from all these, and more.
Our biggest ever Start-up Day
In September, we delivered the biggest Start-up Day to date – a nationwide event delivered across our network of UK libraries designed to give aspiring entrepreneurs all the information and inspiration they need to take the first steps on their business journey. Some of the highlights on the day include activities in 17 libraries around the UK, 101 business events delivered, more than 1,000 attendees across all locations and webcast views from around the world. Start-up Day, in collaboration with Santander, once again proved to be a huge success. You can catch our highlights and keynote presentations here.
A growing network of Corporate Partners
We are committed to working with a network of professional corporate partners and to sharing information on their relevant services and support with our network.
It was on our Start-up Day campaign that we once again worked closely in collaboration with Santander Breakthrough, who attended each separate event and provided well received extra guidance on navigating business finance. It’s been extremely valuable to tap into the Breakthrough events programme and we’ve met some exciting and inspirational founders through our events together, including Becky Slater from Shine Creative Solutions and Wendi Lai of Lonbrella.
Of course this just gives a brief flavour of what we’ve been getting up to this year and there’s much more to celebrate, not to mention expanding our National Network of Business & IP Centres by launching services in Cambridgeshire & Peterborough, Glasgow and Nottingham during 2018 too. We’d like to wish a Happy New Year to all of our users that launched their business or continued to expand it in 2018, and to our partners and speakers who supported them in their achievements. We look forward to working with you all in the year ahead to help your business go from strength to strength.