Programme: Postgraduate Diploma in Entrepreneurship 2017
Country: United Kingdom
Nationality: British
Sector: Fintech/proptech, construction tech and property development entrepreneurship
The programme experience involves deep learning of entrepreneurship via the programme and the cohort whilst making lifelong friends and establishing a great support network.
How did you benefit from the programme and how is it helping you today?
“The programme provided me with enhanced knowledge and confidence to take my ventures forward with minimum outlay and risk.”
Biography
An accomplished property developer of over 25 years specialising in strategic land and lifecycle development of mixed-use projects. With a background in supermarket, retail park and factory outlet development in the UK and Ireland. Formerly CEO of a property development company for 8.5 years focussed on strategic land and housing.
Founded a client advisory form in 2012 to service retained clients including Travelodge Hotels and Memoria, a developer, owner and operator of crematoria in the UK. Returned to University in 2014-2015 and gained an MSc in Property Finance but realised the real-estate industry will change with automation, smart contracts and alternative finance. Being dissatisfied with persistent market failures in traditional bank lending, it was considered necessary to explore crowdfunding as a pre-eminent, alternative entrepreneurial route to finance. Crowdfunding within digital space has global reach with access to larger networks of entrepreneurs and investors without the bias and barriers faced by traditional lending. It allows access and freedoms whilst socialising entrepreneurial finance. The enterprise idea is crowd-sourced equity crowdfunding of real estate development via propertycrowdfunder.co.uk. The activity requires FCA regulation akin to an investment club in order to protect “equity investors” and legal compliance is mandatory. More recently the venture has pivoted entirely in favour of property development only and the venture renamed to propertydevelopment.com a domain name I have owned for 20 years!
In February 2019, I became sole UK importer of Fatbee Scooters, a zero-emission electric scooter that has EU homologation. The venture is focussed on penetrating the UK market with the road-going Fatbee H1 model and Fatbee X3 golf-course variant. The venture has significant challenges under a bootstrapping regime.