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In his recent column in WalesOnline, Prof. Dylan Jones-Evans asked: “So, what must we do to help entrepreneurs flourish in Wales?”

At Indycube Ventures we are demonstrating how entrepreneurs can flourish.

Mark Hooper, founder of Indycube, Wales’ community of co-workers, approached me early-2013 after reading my 50Upstarts article. Indycube was then at only 3 locations, but Mark had a plan to roll out Indycube across Wales. There are currently 13 Indycube’s, with more than 300 desks and there will be 25 within the next year.

Together we established Indycube Ventures to support the development and growth of promising businesses within the Indycube community. We work with these businesses to develop their business model, build their minimum viable product and help raise finance to deliver the potential of the business.

We do this for equity, taking no money out of the business. There are Government funded support programmes that don’t cost businesses cash or equity. These have been recognized as low quality and have not delivered, particularly, by companies that have come to Indycube Ventures after being on these schemes.

Two of the main programmes designed to help startups were announced by Welsh Government in 2012:

·      “The £2m High Potential Starts project aims to support 50 business ventures, delivering a combined turnover of £36m and creating 480 jobs. Business Minister Edwina Hart said the new pilot would identify and support entrepreneurs and young businesses with high growth potential.” 

·     “The £17m Business Start-Up Service could, according to Edwina Hart, create 6,500 jobs by establishing 690 new businesses each year   
Mrs Hart said the aim is to establish 690 new businesses with growth potential each year, creating around 2,190 jobs and helping 2,000 individuals to become self employed.”  

      These were ambitious targets, but three years on, have they been achieved with the development of sustainable businesses? Have any of these been a result of the above programmes?

        The Government has now called for consultants to deliver a new Accelerated Growth Programme worth £20,000,000.

This is not money for startups, but money to support consultants and advisors who take no risk. The entrepreneurial culture is one of risk and reward. The consultant’s is one of timesheets and expenses. They get rewarded for delivering numbers to the Minister; the quality of their advice is not questioned or reviewed.

This money should be for startups, early-stage businesses and the entrepreneurs of Wales.

The Government closed the Technium centres, deeming them a failure, at a cost of over £100 million to taxpayers. These were meant to provide office space and support services for startups. Now they are repeating this exercise buying a building in Newport to be a Technium in all but name. Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result is Einstein’s definition of insanity! 

In addition, they have funded the establishment and running of co-working spaces like Welsh ICE and TechHub Swansea. 

Indycube has been adversely affected by this State Aid supported direct competition.

I agree with Prof. Jones-Evans’ call for “all stakeholders to work together to create a vibrant and supportive ecosystem that will transform Wales into the enterprising nation we all want it to be”. This can only happen if we stop squandering taxpayer’s money and make sure that funds go direct to startups and entrepreneurs, not to middlemen and property developers.

July, 2014