A NEW SOURCE OF FINANCE AND STUDENT JOBS

Universities, schools and colleges are currently rightly positioned as centres of innovation, but with the lack of risk finance (that has always existed) only a tiny minority of the good ideas and drive that exists within the academic and the student bodies are harnessed.

Having founded, raised finance for and grown a machinery manufacturing company, just four years after graduating from Southampton University, I found joint venturing to be the best way forward until I had some blue chip sales and installations under my belt. Without having been able to borrow prototyping components, space in an industrial unit, a telephone and a car to prospect my first customers, I would never have got started.

As the father of two young entrepreneurially minded, creative children aged 4 and 7 - who have already come upo with two new toys/sports products - I would have liked to have helped create a ecosystem that helps educational institutions and their students unlock their full potential by the time that they reach university age...or ideally well before that.

Senake Atureliya, Founder, Pie Finance and Joint Venture Hubs

In the real world, our solution directly addresses the issues that discourage entrepreneurship and job creation. Our MatchMaker web site helps individuals 'finance' their ideas to market (albeit with others spare timeand resource) and our Dealmaker tool helps protects them from 'bullies' - more experienced business people who want to take all the rewards for their hard work.

By adding our hosted, own branded web pages to your institution or club's web site, you could achieve the following:

+ Position your university, college, club or school as an innovation centre.
+ Enable collaborative enterprise and job creation.
+ Encourage bonding between students and parents.
+ Create revenue streams for your institution and local community.
+ Empower student to create their own long term jobs.

So how would it help students?

By positioning themselves as DealMaker experts, students could gain the opportunity to sit alongside the experienced management teams of local business - or use the tool themselves - to define and collaboratively de-risk a detailed plan to bring their ideas to life. The derived people, resource and finance requirements together with proposed payment schedules would then be uploaded to our MatchMaker web site to attract students, parents, local people and businesses willing to offer their spare time, underused assets and loan finance to fulfil them.

Notes:
(1) For universities: we understand that the intellectual property for innovations developed by academics and students is usually retained by the institution and our solution accomodates this requirement.
(2) We recommend that individuals only work on this basis part time and take whatever paid work they can find at the same time to meet their basic living costs where possible until the revenues of the venture they are working upon start to come in - if and when it succeeds.

We are currently running a campaign to try and help 2011 school leavers by providing schools in the UK with a hub web site, DealMaker planning tool access and training on a first come, first served FREE basis funded by sponsorship and revenue shares. To find out more, please contact us by clicking the chat icon on the right.