PM Helps Launch ‘StartUp Britain’ Scheme For Entrepreneurs

Prime Minister David Cameron on Monday pledged government support for a new scheme designed to support entrepreneurs.

The initiative, StartUp Britain, was organised by entrepreneurs and is backed by 60 major companies, who are offering discounts on products and services intended to help new businesses get off the ground.

Discounts

This support is worth more than £1,500 for every British start-up business, according to the organisers’ estimates.

The scheme is a private-sector response to the government’s call for an economic recovery led by enterprises.

“If you’re working for a big firm but know you could do a better job on your own, now is the time to make the leap,” the Prime Minister (pictured) said in a statement. “There are thousands of people out there who are entrepreneurs but they just don’t know it yet.”

Google is pitching in with free advertising for start-ups, while Regus is offering free membership to Businessworld and O2 is offering a month’s free line rental.

Fujitsu is offering a 30-day free trial and 10 percent off the first year’s costs of its cloud-based infrastructure, such as processing power, IT network, servers, storage and back-up, for those who sign up by 15 July. The company estimates those discounts are worth £5,500 to the average start-up.

Good advice?

The initiative offers deals from other backers including Barclays, RIM, HP and Experian.

Not all industry observers were wholeheartedly in support of the scheme. IT industry analyst James Governor said in a Twitter post that the initiative’s advice amounted to: “Step one, ‘find idea’. Step two, ‘write business plan.”

“Trying to imagine a world in which Step 2 for [Google founders] Larry [Page] and Sergey [Brin] was ‘Write a business plan’,” he wrote.