Accessing funding for enterprise

New businesses come from great ideas and hard work. But sometimes, depending on the size and scope of the start-up, ideas and hard work just aren’t enough. To get off the ground, some new businesses will need some external financial help, too.

Business Link Yorkshire is there to help

A great place to start when you’re setting up in business is Business Link Yorkshire. It’s the single regional gateway for everything to do with business—including funding options. They’ll be able to advise you, or point you in the direction for more specialist help, on all sorts of issues from registering with HMRC to managing your money to registering patents.

The Business Link website details sources of potential funding, such as the ‘Grants and support directory’, and there are lots of other useful pages for entrepreneurs, such as ‘Tax advantages for those starting up in business’.

Connect Yorkshire is a great place to start

Connect Yorkshire, supported by Yorkshire Forward, matches innovative, ambitious companies with investors looking for growth. Additionally, they hold an investment forum twice a year—a platform for you to present your business plans to venture capitalists, business angels and other funding providers. Connect Yorkshire can even help you to make your business plan more relevant and attractive to potential investors.

Types of funding to consider:

• Equity funding means exchanging a share of your business for an injection of investment capital. Not all equity funding comes from venture capitalists; there are other sources, too. Find out about the options in Yorkshire & Humber, and whether this could be right for you
• A business loan from a bank may be something you’ve already considered; however, there are other sources of business loans, too. Some of these are quite specialist, according to what you’re doing and where you are, but our loan Funding page and Business Link Yorkshire can help you find out whether there are any relevant to you
• If you’re in a rural area, visit our rural funding page to find out if the Rural Development Programme for England (RDPE) can help
• If your new business involves trading overseas, you may be able to get help with export funding. A good place to start is with the Passport to Export  programme, which provides new and inexperienced SMEs with great preparation before they start looking for funding, after which you may want to explore TESS funding
• If you’re working in a university research environment, and you’ve got a great idea or technology you want to turn into commercial reality:- you may be able to access a proof-of-concept of between £30,000 and £70,000 to help demonstrate full proof of concept
• If you’re in science, engineering and technology, you may qualify for a Collaborative Research and Development grant
• The Yorkshire Enterprise Fellowship (YEF) offers up to £10,000; a specialist enterprise development programme; mentoring; and help in finding investors.