The Student Enterprise team at Keele has been supporting participants in various business start up programmes since 2002.
The student enterprise team has recently completed working on a European funded scheme aimed at encouraging and supporting Keele University students, graduates and staff in the start-up stages of establishing their own businesses.
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The Speed WM (Student Placements for Entrepreneurs in Education West Midlands) and the EFS (Enterprise Fellowship Scheme) programmes ran simultaneously for 42 weeks, with three cohorts over two and a half years from April 2009 until December 2011.
Participants in the programme attended 12 three-hour training workshops covering all aspects of starting up a business. Sessions included: company formation, financial management, insurance and taxation, sales presentation skills, negotiation, marketing and business planning. These intense training sessions provided the participants with a broad understanding of how to start up a business and an awareness of the challenges many start-ups face during their initial stages.
In addition to this aspect of the scheme participants were given access to a business mentor with whom they met with at regular intervals for the duration of the programme. Participants were given the option of having additional mentoring sessions if they wished and they were also offered support, guidance and signposting from the student enterprise team. The participants also took part in mandatory review sessions at quarterly stages and completed the programme with an end of year review. These sessions helped to identify any issues or queries that the participants had and helped the team to keep up to date with the progress of the start-ups.
All of the students, graduates and staff taking part in SpeedWM and EFS were able to register their businesses and have a prestigious business address at Keele University Science and Business Park where they also had access to hot-desking office space.
The final aspect of the two programmes was the provision of funding of between £3500 and £8400 to enable the participants to purchase the goods and services they needed to get their businesses up and running.
