Entrepreneurs teach entrepreneurship following MBO

Submitted by on Fri, 9.05.08

The North East has a new specialist investment readiness company
following an MBO by two leading entrepreneurs.

 

Jonathan Gold and Peter Hiscocks have established Finance Tree to help companies prepare for investment.

 

The new company has been created after Jonathan, a former director of NStar, and Peter, an international investment expert and business angel, completed a buyout of the NStar Finance & Business team.

 

Having developed the innovative programme with support from One NorthEast 18 months ago, Jonathan and Peter are now practising what they preach by running the business as entrepreneurs.

 

The business, which has offices in Newcastle and Wynyard Park in Tees Valley, helps entrepreneurs and small companies explore ways of raising growth finance through a series of courses, software tools and mentoring schemes. It has helped over 1,000 businesses in the past year.

 

Jonathan explains: "This is an exciting opportunity for us to put into practice what we're teaching and really make a difference to investment prospects in the region. There is an increasing demand and need for these services.

 

"I came to the North East five years ago to develop investment funds and investment readiness training so that businesses were better prepared to meet investors and access early stage finance. Significant progress has been made since and this is the next step.

 

"Peter and I are taking the business forward with our own investment to deliver an investment readiness programme for private entrepreneurs run by entrepreneurs.

 

"We chose the name Finance Tree to symbolise our work in taking the business from the initial idea through to attracting start-up finance and beyond."

 

Besides running the Finance & Business programme, Finance Tree delivers a range of support to help entrepreneurs prepare for investment. This includes BIRT, the business investment readiness tool, which is available online to help business planning from an investor prospective and enable companies to test out their ideas before meeting a mentor or actual investor.

 

Finance Tree will also help firms to access finance by signposting them towards the most appropriate sources of funding. 

 

Jonathan added: "We have a raft of support for entrepreneurs. Finance Tree is growing these services to better meet the needs of entrepreneurs and investors in the North East."

 

Andrew Mitchell, chief executive of NStar, said: "Investment readiness training is an essential element in improving access to finance. It's part of an evolution of NStar's original mission to grow access to capital in the North East.

 

"We are happy to see Jonathan and Peter take this project forward and we wish them every success."