James Codling, co-founder of equity platform Venture Funders (one of the sponsors of last week’s Discovering The Power Of The Crowd conference), says in The Director magazine that peer-to-peer business lending (P2P) is at the forefront of expansion in the UK.
James is an entrepreneur as well as an experienced venture capitalist. He has grown a number of business and actively helped them flourish. Not least of which is his vineyard in Argentina, which, as he revealed at the conference last week, he and his family converted from bare land into a flourishing entity producing good wine. The magical countryside around the Carmelita winery is pictured above.
“The number of new businesses being created each year has been rising consistently and reached a record-breaking 581,173 in 2014 – an astonishing figure,” says James in The Director. “Recent statistics from Companies House show that so far this year a remarkable 204,075 start-ups have been launched and that total is climbing continually.
At the same time there has been a proliferation of new companies offering alternative sources of finance for start-ups and early-stage businesses that choose not to access funding via traditional routes. Certainly, there are now a number of different ways for entrepreneurs to secure finance.”
*** Are you registered with Money&Co.? Our registered users had the opportunity to claim a ticket at last week’s Discovering The Power Of The Crowd conference at a discount of £40 to the full £190 price, which included a star-studded line-up of speakers, lunch and networking drinks. We are planning another conference in Exter this autumn, with fuller detail to be released soon. Register to make loans and to benefit from future conference discounts by signing up here. It takes just a few minutes.