Introduction In recent years there have been some incredible success stories for start-ups that have had an accelerated growth into very large and profitable businesses, including Snapchat, Uber, Whatsapp. Even well known global businesses such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Box and Dropbox are still relatively new! The vision and skills of the entrepreneurs that created and built them are both celebrated and highly envied. The venture capitalists that had the incredible insight to invest heavily in them have cultivated a reputation of having a 6th sense in identifying the next success story. It reads like a compelling story of bold investments and awesome returns. The reality is a bit different! More…

Introduction According to the Enterprise Research Centre small businesses in the UK are growing at their fastest rate in seven years with the UK’s population of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) growing at its fastest rate of growth since the financial crisis in 2008. Since the financial and economic crisis in 2008, around 13 million jobs were lost in the UK, according to ERC figures. However, net private sector job creation turned positive last year, as 13.4 million jobs have been created in the last seven years with more than 600,000 new jobs added in 2014 alone! IT is also going through tremendous growth with global spending on IaaS expected…

Introduction The ‘Prequin Global Private Equity & Venture Capital Report’ recorded that last year 994 Private Equity funds managed an estimated $3.8 trillion of corporate assets, with another $1.2 trillion of ‘Dry Powder’ waiting to be spent! It also highlighted that 2014 saw over $400 billion invested and over $500 billion of successful exits. That’s up from previous years. If you are considering getting some investment into your business It would certainly appear to be a great time to do it! The type of funding vehicle and the associated terms will vary depending on whether you are looking for funding for a start-up, or to help accelerate the growth of a…