Round Two: The StartUp Britain Summer Bus Tour 2011

This week marks the second and final week of the Startup Britain Summer Bus Tour which has brought the StartUp Britain’s double-decker bus to 14 locations across the UK to encourage budding entrepreneurs to start their own business.

Complete with business experts and local entrepreneurs, the second leg of the tour kicked off in Brighton with a visit to the Portslade Aldridge Community Academy which recently re-launched with an entrepreneurship specialism. The Academy is focused on nurturing enterprises in the UK and shares our belief that entrepreneurship is a strong driver for community regeneration, so it was an ideal stop for the bus tour. What’s more, Brighton needs to create 6,000 new jobs by 2014 simply to maintain the current level of employment in line with population growth – a perfect target to bring our campaign launched by entrepreneurs, for entrepreneurs.

Don’t forget we’ll be giving away a free Dell Vostro business laptop with the latest i5 Intel processor worth £650 to one winner at each region we visit. Brighton’s lucky winner was Alex Hall of CPP Waste & Recycling Limited who visited the bus after hearing about the tour on the radio with wife Elaine Hall from start-up Halls Hair Design. Also joining us in Brighton was local MP Mike Weatherley, and Oli Barrett, founder of Tenner Tycoon and co-founder of the StartUp Britain campaign. The bus then rolled on the University of Brighton where we met with entrepreneurial students aspiring to launch their own businesses.

StartUp Britain was excited to take part in the first Business Festival to be held in Bury St Edmunds, supported by Business Link, with the bus reaching Suffolk on Tuesday. Business experts including Richard Alvin, managing editor of Business Matters magazine, mentored a host of local start-ups, answering queries on everything laying the foundations for a successful start-up, to execution and expansion. Richard was even able to make a work offer to a web design start-up!

Check out my thoughts from the first week of the tour and what some of the local entrepreneurs we met with had to say.

Don’t miss the final bus stops this week and stay tuned to hear what we get up to!

About the Author: StartUp Britain