As the British economy looks set to grow in 2025¹, a new film is set to explores all sides of the investment table for UK SMEs, including in life sciences.
The Future of Finance, the latest in a series of new documentaries from the North East’s Innovation District Newcastle Helix, is officially released on 28 February.
Telling the stories of businesses who have secured game-changing investment and the expertise of people providing those funds, the documentary explores what it takes – both professionally and personally – to grow a UK business.
The film finds follows two bioscience businesses on the Newcastle Helix site, home to a wide range of organisations including The National Innovation Centre for Ageing and The National Innovation Centre for Data.
The entrepreneurs behind NunaBio and CellRev are making phenomenal strides to support medicine manufacturing and application, and share their own experiences with bootstrapping, grants and equity investment.
For NunaBio CEO Joe Hedley, bootstrapping his venture demonstrated his passion to other investors down the line: “I think it shows a huge level of commitment to the business, particularly when you’re asking others to commit,” he explains in the film.
CellRev CEO Chris Green gives his view of the importance of understanding the end goal for investors: “The reason an investor invests in your business – and I think it’s important that all founders, all entrepreneurs, all CEOs, understand this – is ultimately because they want to make more money, and your job is to make them more money. It’s as simple as that.”
Business support is explored in the film by experts at the NatWest Accelerator – which is also based at the Helix innovation site – as well as the Innovation SuperNetwork. The film shares insights from the Venture Capitalists in the form of NorthStar Ventures and crowdfunding expertise from Next Gen Planners.
Sophie Gowling, Enterprise Acceleration Manager at NatWest Accelerator, explains: “When you’re raising finance, you are not alone. One of the things that we want to focus on is to make sure that business owners feel really comfortable to talk about their business and the value that that provides.”
The documentary is part of a wider series of films highlighting the wealth of development and business growth taking place at Newcastle Helix.
Estates director John Seager commented: “The opportunity to learn amongst peers and collaborate is one of the things that makes Helix special and I think our latest film in The Future of series will be really interesting for burgeoning entrepreneurs – The Future of Finance – a great place to start!”
To watch the film, go to https://youtu.be/qfqP9B5T1gA?feature=shared.
