End of Term

If you have ever wondered what the Hive does, and what we offer visit http://www.businesshive.ntu.ac.uk/activities.asp. I work for Phil on the SPEED project, although his role is much more diverse than that. The Hive is a dedicated business incubation unit, with facilities for start up businesses from with Nottingham Trent University and beyond.

What makes the Hive so dynamic is the range of people and businesses it's involved with. It's a fun place to work in and do business from, but supportive too. Not all the entrepreneurs are NTU graduates, nor are they all Business Studies graduates.

We have links with many of the schools, with students from Art and Design, Infomatics (that was a new one on me when I joined NTU!) and Education to name but a few.

There are a few SPEED entrepreneurs who are reaching the end of their placement. Marc Lee http://www.eyetxt.com/ Dan Breen http://www.uni-fied.co.uk/ and Stuart Hogg http://www.sphmarketing.co.uk/ have been with us for 12 months. Luckily we won't miss them for long, as one way or another they are keeping contact with us at the Hive.

Busy times ahead

It's quite an exciting time in the Hive at the moment. There are a number of new businesses getting started, with the June HeadStart programme just beginning and a new SPEED cohort joining us. We are losing a couple though, Nik Venios and Stuart Hogg are both moving home. We'll miss them!

Phil and I are planning our SPEED seminars which start on 22nd June. Phil is really keen to get away from the blackboard and get into a dialogue, which really gets you thinking about your business. Our aim is to engage you in the process of learning about starting up a business. We won't be telling you how to do it, more helping you find out how you will approach it. At the end of the day, we want our SPEED students to learn by doing and there's no better teacher than real experience!

We still need suggestions for topics, the list so far is- finding and retaining customers, getting funding, what happens when you set up a limited company and what goes into a business plan. If you want to add to that, either contact me directly or post a comment. If we can cover it on the sessions or in the blog, we will.

Jayne