After a welcome from Mark Hill, who heads up Deloitte’s Entrepreneurial Business Group, teams spent the afternoon exploring the issues of business start-up and the retention of graduates in the region. After talking to local experts, they devised innovative solutions which they presented to a panel of judges for a cash prize.
The event was sponsored by Deloitte and Veale Wasbrough Vizards and supported by Martin Coulthard of the Bath & Bristol Enterprise Network, Mark Dunn of BusinessLinkSW and Nick Sturge of the SETsquared Business Acceleration Centre based at the University of Bristol.
The winning team comprised Economics and History student Parijat Kumar, Charlie Robinson (Economics), Ali Wallace (History of Art) and Xi Chen (Accounting and Finance). Their scheme sought to overcome graduate fears of start-up failure by creating a Teach First-style scheme in which major employers funded a two-year window for graduates to start their own businesses (in which those employers had a shareholding) before either continuing to run their own business or taking their business experience into a bigger firm.
It was a great opportunity for the students to meet local business expertise and think about their own options for entrepreneurial careers.