BT Joins StartUp Britain Initiative

BT’s Business arm has announced a partnership with StartUp Britain initiative that will see the largest telecommunication provider in the UK share its expertise with aspiring entrepreneurs.

As part of the deal, BT has launched a digital start-up hub on its Business Insight website.

The company hopes that its contribution will help attract young talent to Tech City and inspire more Britons to start their own business.

Be your own boss

StartUp Britain is a nationwide initiative launched by David Cameron in 2011, with full backing of the UK government. Despite this, it operates independently through private sector support.

The organisation runs educational sessions and competitions, provides help in finding the first office, offers discounts on products and services and generally encourages people to strike out on their own.

Since its launch, StartUp Britain has forged strong links with StartUp America and helped inspire new initiatives around the world, including StartUp Italia and StartUp Greece.

As part of the initiative, BT Business will provide information on IT infrastructure and products necessary to start a business. It will also feature advice on website design and management, finance, offer case studies and business articles. The company will be joining over 60 sponsors including Dell, Intuit, PayPal, Intel and Google.

“We are delighted that BT Business has come on board to help us to continue our work to support and encourage start-up businesses and fuel British economic growth,” commented Emma Jones, co-founder of StartUp Britain. “We’re seeing record numbers of people becoming their own boss and long may it continue.”

“We’re proud to sponsor Start Up Britain,” said Nick Ratcliffe, Business Marketing director at BT. “With over 50,000 start-up businesses joining us each year, we’ve had lots of experience helping new companies find the communications and IT that helps them on their way.”

This year, StartUp Britain plans to continue its PopUp Britain campaign, which gives young businesses affordable access to the high street via empty shops.

In 2011, it emerged that the StartUp Britain website was unwittingly serving ‘malvertising’ – advertisements that were linked to websites infected with malware. The links were promptly removed.

The campaign was previously described by some analysts as a government-backed ‘link farm’ that brings little benefit to real entrepreneurs.

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