Going to America
My name is Luke Walsh. I’m in my fourth year of a five year course studying electronics at the University of York and am a founder member of the University’s Enterprise Club. I was recently awarded a year’s fellowship to study ideas of entrepreneurship.
The fellowship is an initiative sponsored by Gordon Brown, designed to promote enterprise in Britain. He set up a scheme in collaboration with the Kauffman Foundation in the US, a very wealthy foundation with two billion dollars in assets with the sole aim of promoting entrepreneurship. The scheme involves you spending six months in the UK and six months hosted by the Kauffman foundation in America.
I was put forward by one of my lecturers and quite lucky to get selected. We went over to the US in January and spent an intensive five weeks being given advice by speakers flown in from the likes of Harvard Business School, MIT, and founders of multi-million dollar businesses. It was phenomenal, I felt like I was the luckiest person alive at that point!
Before I actually went over I wasn’t completely certain I wanted to set up my own business, but you can’t help but be inspired by the experience. Now I’m working on an idea with someone I met on the scheme, it’s a bit hush hush at the moment but I can reveal we’re working on an internet based advertising platform to launch within a year.
We’re just trying to put together the money to buy a patent, we need about three and a half thousand plus VAT. We’ve sent emails out to everyone we know asking for help, and said we would hope to return their money three times over if everything goes well, and repay them eventually if it goes badly. It’s difficult to get money out of people without giving too much away about the business though!
It’s been really interesting actually, noting the difference in attitudes between patent companies here and in the US. Before I went out I spoke to a patent company here whose opinion was basically that it’s probably been done before, but in America they were pretty much of the attitude if we had the money they could set it up for us! They’re a lot more willing to just have a go at something and take a risk than companies in the UK in terms of
entrepreneurship.
Anyway that’s all for now, will update you on our funding progress next time.
