Beer & Partner teams up with Campus Ventures

The North of England office of Beer & Partners, a national network of business advisors to start-up and early-stage companies, has joined forces with Campus Ventures, an incubator, to help secure funding and offer strategic advice to newly-formed technology enterprises.

“There are some strong technology companies in the North of England, strong because the people who own them are realistic about their valuations, which makes it easier to source funding,” said Chris Webber, one of Beer & Partners’ members.

Webber also said the number of companies approaching Beer & Partners had increased of late, which he believes was because a number of larger companies were scaling back amid the current economic downturn, and therefore requiring smaller rounds of funding.

The group currently has around 200 clients and is connected to around 800 investors, from whom it can source capital injections of between £100,000 and £2m, said Webber.

Lynda Wilcox, director of enterprise support for Campus Ventures, commented: “Finding seed finance for start-ups, particularly in the current economic climate, can be difficult, but this agreement will give us the opportunity to start to address this problem,” she said.

Campus Ventures was founded in 1995 and today supports around 80 businesses. The company is based at the University of Manchester, but is preparing to look at other towns and cities in the north-west of England.

Beer & Partners is now looking to arrange similar deals with other universities in the North of England and Scotland, said Webber.