The business environment

Launching and growing a new business in the UK has become more difficult in the last two decades.  Increasingly the fundraising required by each business has stalled and business growth and survival has paid the price. Would-be entrepreneurs have found it harder to get started and impossible to grow, and larger companies have encountered an increasingly diminished pool of smaller businesses that they could seek to acquire. This has has effectively broken down the business 'food chain'; CoVentures has been developed to address this challenge.

While company development is not just about funding issues, it is necessary to start from there. Early stage companies in the UK have been struggling to raise the funding to start up, and grow to the critical mass necessary capable of survival.

The almost total absence of private sector funding (traditionally from venture capital sources) has resulted in widespread business underachievement. The ability to both fund-raise and make companies financeable has been lost. As a result, new ideas fail to see the light of day and fledgling companies which fail to find funding do not survive for long.

Early stage opportunities have the growth potential to be good investments and are essential to promote the growth of larger companies as potential acquisitions. Investors can make considerable profit out of the rapid creation of value in these companies when they are built to succeed. However, action is needed to de-risk target companies or business ideas associated with the appropriate level of support. CoVentures represents a comprehensive way of addressing this challenge. It has been developed from work undertaken in the eco-commerical sector, but is also readily transferable to other knowledge based sectors and regions.