Brighton Entrepreneurial Spark Hatchery: Round Two

With Brighton’s Entrepreneurial Spark hatchery welcoming its second cohort of the region’s most promising entrepreneurs, Sussex Business Times took the opportunity to catch up with NatWest’s Head of Entrepreneurship, Gordon Merrylees to find out what’s happening in Brighton and across the country…

SBT: So Gordon, now that the hatchery has welcomed it’s second round of entrepreneurs, what are your reflections on the first six months?

Gordon Merrylees: The biggest takeaway is that it’s been even more successful than we originally envisioned. The entrepreneurs have really captured the imagination of the ecosystem and established themselves as part of the local business community. This is evident through the numerous enquiries we get from local entrepreneurs and business people wanting to know how they can get involved and pay it forward by offering to mentor and lend their expertise, knowledge and advice, and most importantly access to their networks to these fledgling start-ups. Watching the ‘chiclets’ develop as businessmen and women and as entrepreneurial leaders has been awe-inspiring.

SBT: Is the popularity of the hatchery surprising you? What have you found most satisfying from the day-to-day activities?

Gordon Merrylees: For the first time ever, there’s more than 5 million businesses in the UK and 99% are SMEs. As the UK’s biggest bank for supporting SMEs and start-ups, we know that there’s a huge desire from people to run their own business and become self-employed. The world needs the passion that people feel about their chosen field; it can make a difference to people’s lives and they get paid while doing it. Being your own boss is hugely attractive, so we knew that the demand would be there for the Entrepreneurial Spark programme.

But what’s been particularly exciting to watch is the collaboration that goes on amongst the chiclets. It can be daunting and lonely starting your own business, so providing the office space has eliminated some of that isolation while also providing a community, encouraging them to bounce ideas off each other and work together to overcome their challenges, many of which are common to any business regardless of the sector.

This enthusiasm has proven infectious and the number of people at NatWest that want to get involved has been overwhelming. So we’re now putting thousands of our staff through an Entrepreneurial Development Academy run by Entrepreneurial Spark which will enable them to develop the mind set and behaviours of an entrepreneur and in doing so better understand the challenges they face, serve them better, and improving customer service as a result.

SBT: What’s happening elsewhere in the country?

Gordon Merrylees: In February, we launched another three Hatcheries in bank premises in Belfast, Manchester and in the Royal Bank of Scotland’s main headquarters in Edinburgh. These three brought the number of hatcheries across the UK to nine alongside those in Birmingham, Leeds, Bristol, Ayrshire, Glasgow and, of course, Brighton.

The opening of the Hatchery in Edinburgh was particularly momentous and indeed symbolic. Over the past year, we have been literally knocking down walls as part of the transformation of the bank’s former ‘executive wing’ into an ecosystem of entrepreneurship and innovation, where the new, state of the art Entrepreneurial Spark business accelerator hub sits alongside Open Experience, RBS’ new Technology Solutions Centre.

We look forward to the impact that all nine hatcheries will have alongside the four we will be opening in Milton Keynes, Cardiff, Newcastle and London over the next 12 months. Across these 13 hubs we will be supporting more than 7,000 entrepreneurs over the next five years.