Q&A: Transition of a start-up idea to commercial reality
When:
—
Venue:
Birkbeck Main Building, Malet Street
The problem is not the volume of entrepreneurial activity, but the ability to turn that activity into a commercially viable business.
Entrepreneurs pitching to investors for the first time tend to focus on their product. They often forget that investors are not interested in the product as such, but in finding out whether it solves a problem for a large group of customers. In this Q&A, you will have a chance to ask any critical questions that you have around starting and growing a business.
This Q&A is designed for leaders and entrepreneurs who want to develop their understanding of what is required to transition from an idea to a commercially viable business opportunity. It's suitable for those with a business idea, who are in the early stages of starting up a venture or are keen to set something up in the near future.
It is designed to help you gain a better understanding of how to develop a business model and to identify any pitfalls that may arise before any potential investors may examine your business.
We will start with a few pre submitted questions and then open up the Q&A to the attendees.
This session will be delivered by Windsor Swan LLP.
Andrew Harwood:
Andrew is the founding partner at Windsor Swan - a boutique advisory firm in London which helps entrepreneurs to get investment ready.
Andrew has been an entrepreneur in business (with a number of successful exits), corporate finance and venture capital for over 34 years, founding, managing and growing businesses ranging from start-ups to multi-million pound publicly traded Companies.
Most recently, Andrew was a Partner and Investment Director at Jenson Solutions in Corporate Finance & Venture Capital where he was responsible for business development and providing an extensive range of business funding and investment solutions. He was part of the team that established the Jenson SeedEIS fund which pioneered using SEIS as a VC fund to support start-up and early stage business opportunities, which went from launch to 5th most active VC in Europe in 18 months.
Andrew has served a wide portfolio of clients including some of the world’s top institutional venture capital funds, hedge funds, Family offices and high net worth individuals.
Ghazala Zia:
Ghazala is a partner at Windsor Swan focusing on providing specialist advisory support to ambitious early stage businesses that are not quite yet fully formed, investment ready or investible. She has helped numerous entrepreneurs (wherever they are in the business lifecycle be it Concept, Seed, Start-up or Scale-up stage ) to create, sustain and grow their business idea by working closely with them to create their business architecture.
From working with various founders she is able to provide a much needed sensitivity and expectations check of the harsh realities of their business and actual time frame to the next funding stage.
Before joining Windsor Swan, Ghazala was a Legal Specialist for Aviva Investors, an asset management company which has global assets under management of £457 Billion. Prior to that, Ghazala worked in worked in a number of inhouse legal roles for corporates such as Centrica and BP, as well as investment banks such as Citigroup and Abbey.
Contact name:
Lucy Robinson
Contact phone:
020 3926 3336