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Workshops to aid local entrepreneurs

Newcastle Science City and North East Access to Finance are hosting a series of workshops aiming to help North East entrepreneurs secure investment.

Speakers at the events in September include Apprentice runner up Helen Milligan, online dragon for BBC’s dragons Den Julie Meyer and TV presenter and social media expert Ian Aspin.

It is hoped that the workshops will inspire start ups and pre-start ups to refine their business propositions and prepare their pitches for investors. Each workshop will focus on a specific aspect of the delegates businesses, including commercial, financial and management-related issues.

Niall Dunne, former managing director of Saatchi and Saatchi and now chief sustainability officer at BT, was a speaker at the last workshops. He said: “They are an excellent way of ensuring young businesses have access to the best possible advice and of introducing them to people who are really in a position to help them.

“The North East is a hotbed of entrepreneurial activity and it is vital for the economic growth of the region that these businesses are given all the help they need.”

Experts who can relate their own experiences to the topic in hand will lead each of the five sessions, which will take place at Newcastle City Library.

Alan Holmes, project director for North East Access to Finance, said: “Where this series of workshops truly differs from previous initiatives, however, is that young, ambitious businesses will have the opportunity to put their business plans in front of the people who hold the purse strings.

“Indeed we have set ourselves an objective that, at the very least, two of the participants will achieve investment in their businesses as a result of what they will learn.”

Information about these sessions are detailed below in our events listings and online at http://bdaily.info/events/finance/01-09-2011/a-series-of-six-workshops-access-to-cash-pitching-for-investment-in-your-business/

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ruth Mitchell .