Advice creates ugly ducklings not supermodels, claims entrepreneur

BUSINESS SUPPORT bodies in Yorkshire were attacked yesterday by a leading entrepreneur who said start-ups were facing financial ruin by being given “false hope”.

Ajaz Ahmed, the co-founder of Freeserve, said the public sector funded advice bodies were allowing early start businesses to think they had a winning idea even if in reality it was doomed to failure.

Mr Ahmed, who made a keynote speech at the Venturefest Yorkshire event in York, said business support bodies needed to take an approach seen on TV programmes Dragons' Den and the X Factor where contestants are told immediately that they haven't got what it takes to be a success.

Mr Ahmed, who joked that he had received fewer Christmas cards over the festive season after criticising venture capitalists at Venturefest last year, likened the experience of approaching business support bodies, which include Business Link, publicly funded funding bodies, and support agencies funded by Yorkshire Forward, with an idea to him thinking he had what it took to become a supermodel.

He told the audience: “A model agency would take one look at me and say you're ugly and fat and you'll never make a supermodel.”

But he said if he approached a business support agency they might think the same as the agency but would still devise a plan for him to become a supermodel by telling him to get a new haircut and clothes, wasting both his and the public's money through its work.

“But then you'll get the reality check and the bad news and this bad news will come after you've built up your hopes and spent money on things,” he said.

Mr Ahmed, from Huddersfield, said: “The generic advice provided by public bodies about VAT and accounts is not a problem. The problem is we are still giving advice to people with poor ideas.

“We need to stop funding and supporting people with poor ideas because it seems the kindest thing to do. The public bodies, instead of telling them that they haven't got what it takes, they build up false hopes.

“We have got to focus on providing the right support to make companies ready with good investment teams.”

Mr Ahmed said public sector funded advice bodies often measured success on how many people they had helped, not on how many had succeeded.

He added that the Internet gave entreprenuers in Yorkshire an opportunity to become dot com successes and build up huge companies but he warned that their products had to be simple to use, they had to listen to their customers and had to delegate growth plans to experienced people.

Meanwhile, FoodSpecifications.com, a company based in Horbury, near Wakefield, which manages food specifications from producer through to consumer won £30,000 of support after winning the event's Investment Competition.

Venturefest Yorkshire is an event which allows entrepreneurs from across the region to promote themselves to investors.

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