Buildenterprise’s Blog

So as I said the SPEED training made me think about brand image in a strategic fashion. My image and hence logo, had to say certain things about the organisation, while also making sure I wasn’t giving out any wrong messages.

The first logo had no strategy behind it and the only criteria was it must stand out, hence text and colour.

The second logo was thought about much more strategically but as my artistic ideas outweigh my ability the logo and brand image never realised their potential

The Third and final logo was designed by a professional, Rich Baddeley www.baddeley.be/portfolio2008.pdf. Thanks for you help and also for putting up with my brand image demands

Starting the summer with the SPEED training I had a lot to think about and get on with, for starters I had to re brand then redo the website I’d been slaving over, before planning future events and networking with other organisations who might be able to help the cause.

In the summer months the undergrads go home and both the Uni and Selly Oak become very quite It was though best not to hold any official events but there seemed opportunity for a SPEED BBQ, as suggested by several people at the SPEED training. However, due to some the low numbers (4) available on August date and in light of the very, very bad weather, it seemed best to cancel the event as to avoid a a poor turnout.

Also during August I returned to PESS this time strangely as judge of the weeks business competition, I was there to plug Build Enterprise and advertise our September event ‘First Venutures’ a postgrad only event supported by Roberts Funding.

Towards the end of the Long lonely Summer I met up with an old friend Rich, who has joined the movement and been a massive help, Thank you so much. Rich has since given us a much needed professional re-branding make over.

We all thought of ideas over a couple of weeks thinking about it when we had time. Eventually we came up with Build Enterprise Birmingham or BE Birmingham for short, the anacromyn BE  seemed perfect because of its personally empowering sound, BE Something, BE Birmingham, Build Enterprise! unfortunately although the name stuck for a while but unfortunately we had to lose the Be Birmingham wording when the council revealed its plans for beBirmingham 2026, a plan to become the global city with a local heart!

On the flip side aim 1 was to succeed economically in several areas of the city, with our area, Selly Oak being one of them. Build Enterprise definitely had a place in Birmingham’s future.

 First of all big thanks to Dan and Nat at the Uni’s EIC for all their help.

‘The SPEED Programme offers placements to students who are would-be entrepreneurs. SPEED is designed to help students with a sound business idea take the first steps towards running a real business’ http://www.eic.bham.ac.uk/speed/

Basically SPEED gives you £2000 to start a company and pay you a small wage for all your hard work. Its fucking great! The greatest opportunity I think I have ever been given and all for free!

Now Build Enterprise at the time was not a business it was just an idea to form an informal group of business mind friends, yet there was clearly room for it to develop into a ltd company in many ways. So I enquired about SPEED and found that the deadline for the last planned cohort was was under a week away I had to submit a sound business plan, but as I said previously, at the time it was not a business and furthermore being a PhD student I didn’t have much free time to make it into a business. I stared the plan on Friday night worked solidly with minimum sleep getting it finished it by 11:00pm Monday, only 1hr till the deadline of Monday.

Next task was to do the Dragons Den style interview, for the folloowing Thursday. It went well as soon as I stopped trying to follow my damm cue cards and just went with the flow. I got the place and and planned our first evnt for May.

First of all a big thanks to the Graduate School, especially Janet who was a tremendous help in the early days and one of our warriors in the Great Red Tape Funding Battle… Thanks for all your help x

The Great Red Tape Battle_For funding we had decided to apply for Roberts Funding money supplied by the government to university’s for the extra curricular training of Research postgrads, allowing them to develop skills their research doesn’t teach them. PESS itself had been funded by the very same source. We applied and got granted funding just before we broke up for Christmas.

We aimed to have the first event early March, but the Great Red Tape battle started bringing many complications with spending of the funding. Firstly as we weren’t an official entity and we weren’t recognised by the University, hence we had to organise it and spend our money through the Graduate School. We also had to use University suppliers for the catering and printing of promotional material. Unfortunately this meant not only did we see our costs rise to a premium for a lower quality of service, a service which made it impossible to plan our events, we’d have to do everything months in advance.

So despite the fact the University could give us a free venue the cost of our perposed 8 events went from £3000 odd to £8000 and something and came with loads of bureaucratic red tape to boot. For example; Flyers would cost £290 for 3000 instead of £85 for 5000, and would take a couple of months to get printed. since we would have to conform the designs to the uni’s standard and get them approved, Then on top of this we would have to wait a few more weeks for them to get printed because of the crap lead times; Also if we had external speakers we had to fill out freedom of speech form and get it approved before we could book a venue another red tape task that would eat up some time; As for actually booking the venue, I don’t even want to get started on that!

After trying to organise another event, this time for my department, I have lost all faith in Birmingham uni, self branded original thinking, what a joke.  Although in their defence I assume its the same for other unis these day’s. Its no longer about the accademic elite, its about the number of middle class people you can fit in a lecture theatre, no matter how dumb they are. O and dont forget the non-English speaking cash cows! Our education system is in decline.

Anway, sorry for the rant! Back to the point of funding. We decided we had been defeated and started to look for a new source of Funding.

The first thing I did with the email list was ask for help from my new found friends. 3 people came forward: Georgios, Vibour and Simon. We got together and developed the idea into something much more concrete the events that would follow a general format. starting with a talk on some entrepreneurial theme followed by a short networking exercise and ending with a buffet, drink and free flow networking. The aim was to ensure everyone talked to each other about their own ideas and opinions on topics raise by the talk. In short it would become the breeding ground for tomorrows entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial teams.

Next step was to come up with a name, plan it all out and then seek funding.

The idea of Build Enterprise first came about in August 2007 when I attended Birmingham University’s postgraduate Enterprise Summer School, a yearly event held the the Uni’s Entrepreneur and innovation Centre (EIC). Its an intensive week long event where about 50 postgrads learn about entrepreneurship, at the start of the week participants are split into teams and form a business proposal throughout the week, which then ends with a Dragons Den style Business competition.

It was a truly amazing week, we all learnt so much and gelled really well, it was the first time I had been in a room full of people who aspired to be entrepreneurs. personally I had always thought I’d like to be an entrepreneur but always doubted myself and my power to do so however PESS made it clear that I could become an entrepreneur, but It also made me aware that I couldn’t do it alone and so if I wanted to be successful I would have to form my own team.

With this in mind and the fact that everyone at PESS seemed so enthused and full ideas I decided to take everyones email in order to start up some sort of entrepreneur club thingy majig’. The idea being that we could meet up regularly, discuss ideas, develop them and then form teams to make the best ideas a reality.

A year since the start of the project (Setember 2007), I’ve decided to start a blog about Build Enterprise, a social network for both aspiring and active entrepreneurs that I founded with the help of some friends. The following posts are back dated to April (when we recieved funding) and are a history of the last year in setting up Build Enterprise. Its taken so long firstly because of our initial entanglement in Birmingham University’s bureaucratic Red Tape and then secondly because, after our first event in May, we had to wait for the long lonley Selly Oak summer to finish and, as I’m realsing, Rome was not built in a day!