Guest post from Emma Jones, founder of small business support company Enterprise Nation www.enterprisenation.com and a co-founder of StartUp Britain.

StartUp Britain: post launch + 2 months

National campaign, StartUp Britain was launched on 28 March, meaning the campaign has just passed its second month. Emma Jones is one of the campaign founders and offers an update on how the campaign is doing and how you might like to get involved.

Re-cap

For anyone not aware of the campaign, StartUp Britain aims to encourage more people to start a business and support existing businesses to grow. It does this by shining a spotlight on useful resources and opening up access to corporate offers.

The campaign is about promoting enterprise and does not itself deliver business support. There are enough great bodies/groups/individuals doing that, and our job is to point you to them!

The campaign was launched with support from the Prime Minister and is run by a small team of business owners, of which I’m one.

Impact

The campaign has motored since launch. The site www.startupbritain.org continues to attract high traffic and other impact points include:

  • People searching for term start-up has risen 25% since campaign launch [Experian]
  • Over 2,800 Start Up Guides downloaded and thousands of corporate offers activated (ed's note: check out Microsoft's StarUp Britain offers)
  • Over 1,500 hours of mentoring pledged by top entrepreneurs
  • Support from three corporate sponsors; AXA, PayPal and Barclays
  • Inspired projects including StartUp Saturday and Industry Open Weeks

More to come

The action doesn’t stop here! Indeed, we’re about to enter six months of activity where the campaign will be represented at events across the UK from a StartUp Summer at UCL through to MADE Festival in Sheffield and a ‘Homes & Gardens’ start your own business show. A couple of points to flag for your immediate attention:

  • If you are a start up or small business owner, you’ll want to know about a full week being run by the Marketing Agencies Association in partnership with StartUp Britain where marketing agencies will open up their doors, invite you in, and offer instruction, advice, guidance on how to best market your business. This Marketing Open Week will take place from 4 to 8 July and it will be very special!
  • If you are passionate about seeing start ups thrive in your area, why not create a StartUp campaign for your area? This will be my personal area of focus for the next couple of months; helping people adopt and adapt the StartUp brand in your own town/county/region. Please get in touch if you’re interested.

In the meantime, do visit the campaign site or contact the campaign team with any questions/ideas/suggestions. Let’s together ensure StartUp Britain is a continued success – the country will be a better place if we do!