The latest ‘entrepreneur led by entrepreneur recovery programme’, that involves a lot of celebrity and not a lot of credibility. Yes, it’s been thrown out (more booted out) by just about everyone from each sector, including Enterprise, Creative and others.
I may live to regret saying this, but, it seems true at the time of writing.
Social media is used so publicly by people in a professional capacity, it seems it’s left to people who are not professionally profiled to speak up a bit. It’s only in this space, it seems harm can’t really be done.
The last time I saw one of these #hashtags on Twitter, it said #SmallBusinessBritain and it was an UK Wide initiative run by @IntuitUK and it was sponsored by Natwest Bank and Smarta. When this initiative started in 2009, it became apparent that the tag line “join the small business movement” was a little jaded, especially coming from a US Corporation. I remember hitting it hard with @mikechitty, who has a different and well rounded view on enterprise similar to my own.
Yesterday, I tuned Twitter on about 4pm after meeting a Twitter pal of mine for lunch. I saw @mikechitty tweeting about #StartupBritain. @mikechitty joined me on the solo crusade of raising a couple of questions about the Intuit initiative. He is a mild mannered breadmaking, fish keeping, enterprise wiz and what caught my eye was he was tweeting with @shaawasmund from Smarta.
Smarta is one of those business websites that’s not really sure who it’s aimed at. They say ‘small business’, but I think they mean first time startups that are impressed by ‘success’. Smarta regularly seems to come under a lot of criticism for their really bad blogs, articles and advice, yet its smeared by their political and high profile TV Celebrity reach with TV Celebrity Dragons. All the same, their content is pretty poor, often mistaking definitions like ‘company’ for ‘business’ and selling odd ball things like National Business Register certificates as some defacto thing a sole trader must or should have, when in fact under the Business Names Act, there is no central register. LOL. Just shows you how bad this stuff is and how it is aimed at the unaware.
Working on B2B stuff within a small business framework, I really dislike seeing these mis-leading campaigns, so I thought I’d click through and see what was being spoken of. As the evening unfolded and the conversational tweets started to take up pace, it seemed that #StartupBritain had similar haulmarks.
Yet again, it was sponsored by Smarta. Okay, that’s fine. Yet again, it was sponsored by another TV Celebrity Dragon, DougRichards from School4Startups (Public funded SocialEnterprise). Okay, fine again. Ohhh, and yet again, EnterpriseUK, this is the Government Quango headed up by @DragonJones. I hope you’re getting the picture. Smarta is underpinned by Debroah Meedham and Theo Pathetis, so it seems we have all the TV Dragons in one place.
This ‘campaign’, as it is called, is different though. We’re not sure what the campaign is for, who it’s from or what it aims to achieve. It’s got our Prime Minister backing it and is/was due out on prime time television. Fantastic, something the whole country can get behind, right? Sure. Sure it is. Let’s get behind it. Before we do, lets lift the bonnet on this little enterprise.
I remember Shaa Wasmond original tweets pre-election having the Business Minister on Smarta Board as Non-Exec Director and I also remember Doug Richard also being party to their table too. Where Mr Richard was also working in an advisory role to the Tory Party separately. I remember this from the early Tweets made by Shaa. This is all great, Entrepreneurs are now advising government in our interests. GREAT..!
Things are not all they seem though. It would appear whatever is going on, may not be in ‘our collective’ best interests. In fact, I’d say there’s a strong will to push money away from our shores elsewhere. Firstly, I work in the creative sector and it’s buzzing with new starts, green shoots and a lot of activity. It’s a growing sector and one that has a lot of value to add in the future. I was pretty fuming when I saw the Prime Minister endorsed BuyALogo $25 link from 99Designs (American Spec Artwork company) on the official #StartupBritain website. Conflict? Ethics? Morality? Together coupled with what Smarta do, which is dropship/linkto BusinessPlan templates to another Amercian company (http://www.paloalto.com). It seems basically a collections programme for offshore companies. Sending money and back to the USA or off-shore companies.
Generally however, I get the feeling that actually, these people are struggling, otherwise they wouldn’t be trying so hard to market stuff. It looks like a collective huddle of all the crap together. As a blogger put it yesterday, it looks like the epitome of Internet Marketing all in one place.
You can kind of skim over all this until you learn and realise who the corporate level sponsors are for this ‘new’ campaign to support small companies. Firstly, Google. Yes. The American conglomerate that is breaching our privacy laws with their mapping and also with their obtrusive unintention WiFi connections when roaming the streets in their mapping cars. They are one – yes, they are offering a free £ 30.00 hook to adwords and in addition Microsoft also have a tie in as well.
What cheeses me off, is people talk about UK Business. They talk as ‘ambassadors’, yet at every level all the way up its riddled with extraction of money from the UK to another source. They are merely skimming off the order. There is no value added, nothing created, no skill, just empty vanity business. Add to this debate the non-domicile status of many Top UK Entrepreneurs and you do begin to wonder what cards are being played here. Top UK Entrepreneur? You mean Top UK person who is not feeding the money back in to the economy. They are here to ‘feed’… like vampires.!
My rants about ‘UK Ambassadors of Business’ are all over the interwebs and its no wonder this time, this particular ‘official’ campaign has caught the eye of so many other companies in the creative sector. This time, it’s not so much about enterprise, but it’s got everything to do with where you source and supply your services from and the direction the money and good will is travelling in. Commoditisation is so, so disrespectful to the green shoot companies currently coming up.
Having visited the www.startupbritain.co.uk website, it seems that it is nothing more than a link farm for mainly US Companies. Why US Companies? Well, if any favouritism was taken over UK Companies, of course people would complain about unfair competition. LOL. Answer, just ship it abroad and sod the lot of them.
If you’re providing advice, provide it, if you’re giving it, give it freely, with no tie-ins. Please don’t come forward and say “this is to HELP small businesses”, when in actual fact, all you’re doing is lining your pockets promoting and selling for off-shore companies. A co-blogger wrote yesterday, we can afford to go to war with Lybia but we can’t afford to promote best practice and train our own country. Mr Cameron, if you want to build this country up, start at the right places.
Generally, as a member of the creative sector, I’m far from amused.
As a member of Chamber of Commerce, I’m not convinced about this #StartupBritain initiative. Surely, any such initiative should either come through channels such as FSB or British Chambers. Is that not what they exist for? WTF is #StartupBritain? Ohhh… it’s a startup, I get it. We’re shifting contracts and power are we? Well, I actually liked BusinessLink far more.!!! And that’s saying something.
I gather that the creative sector will be speaking out a little more about this over the coming week. If there was ever a way “not to do business” for the good of the country, it’s the extraction of wealth to pay 3rd party suppliers off shore.
Shame on you.
I certainly won’t be advocating any of your services. From what I understand, none of the creative sector will either. Mr Cameron, whoever is advising you, they certainly haven’t managed to win anyone’s hearts and minds, other than your own PR team.
Brad Burton was quoted as saying something not so positive about this, referring to it as washing over and everybody will return to what pays their mortgages before long. He’s usually the first to be ‘on one’ with this stuff. In fact, although I’m quite feisty with Bradly, I’d say he’d make a much better job of this than this bunch or half wits.
Moreover, for those of you who are more ‘marketing’ savvy. You’ll remember 1st March 2011 brought about changes in the Advertising Standards Authority and it’s said use on Social Media as an advertising tool. Well, it seems that aside from social media, this campaign and the said £1,500 worth of vouchers (this is the big offer) made available to X thousand startups as part of #StartupBritain may actually breach the ASA Code. This in itself is a complete mockery of the whole framework of marketing and business in the UK. It appears that the deal offered is actually very similar to the Voucher Deal that Tesco offers, who has also been hit hard for saying we give you X, when in fact you can only redeem a small amount. So, your marketing is flawed too.
I’m wondering who advises on all this Maverick law breaking stuff. Are you operating above the law? NO.
Some of these things just don’t add up. Arggghhhhh. It’s all a bit wrong.! Still it doesn’t matter, Smarta have an eBook and Top UK Entrepreneurs who can patronise you to death. In addition, there is Oli Barrett, who of course can give you a tenner and turn you in to an entrepreneur whilst you’re still at school. That’s right, you can be a TV Celebrity Dragon too, but you have to go back to buying school dinners and accept a magic tenner from Oli first. I’m sure Oli will be pleased that I’ve mentioned him. After all, he seems like a nice guy too.
During the course, I was tweeting with my Twitter pal @LINGsCARS and Oli seemed to want to tweet something. He said, “@LINGsCARS, if you were the co-founder of a site, I’d be disappointed if you did not have a car advert on there 
”. Oli was referring to his role in co-founding this website and the placement of advertisements on it. Now, it’s the little ** wink ** that got me. ** wink wink **. This tweet was saying, ‘sure, I’m doing all this helping, but only because I’m secretly advertising on there’. This was said immediately after Oli has said he was doing ‘all this’ to HELP UK Entrepreneurs. LMAO: sounds like, you’re lining your own pockets and doing it under the guise of helping businesses. Well, can’t you just sod off? You’re spending tax payers money on this rubbish and then feeding it back to us and the only beneficiary I can see, is you.
In this whole affair, the only people that it seems need help are those who are trying so desperately to rape and pillage the already successful SME market. It’s not SME’s who need help, it’s the corporates, the business coaches, the entrepreneurs and investors who don’t know what to do. The rest of the SME market is actually buzzing. Corporates are the ones who made the redundancies and they are the ones who need all the assistance. SMEs are fine. We always have been. LOL.
Still, this is okay. Oli can advertise his company, he founded the website, along with Google, Smarta and of course David Cameron our Prime Minister and the other TV Celebrity Dragons. Remember DragonsDen was supposed to be an Entertainment Show, yet in fact, its actually becoming a virtual reality.
Whatever is actually going on in this weird little camp, it seems there is only one intent and that is mass marketing against ASA code to consumers who are looking to form businesses. Now, this is only my little view of the world and this is only a blog, so, remember, this is social media and this is all opinion 
You can make your opinion and comment afterwards.
My final point, is that of a “company”. Yes, a limited company. Under the Companies Act, you are required by law to display the company registration details of a trading company on your website. Nice to see Mr Camerons new website has no mention of the trading company. Woooopsss… another commercial law broken. In addition, its interesting that the website is encouraging email signups. Let me just take a read of their Data Protection Policy… what? No DATA Protection Policy? Not another set of data getting exported and farmed? What would the Direct Marketing Association or Chartered Institute of Marketing say about this? Perhaps, actually I should ask for the name of the Data Controller at the company? Ohhh no…!! There is no company, you’ve left the company registration details off. Who are you people?
Really, breaking of ASA, Companies Act not adhered to and no Data Protection Policy. This is all just a bit nuts.
The PR, Social Media, Marketing, Website and Data people involved in these project should all be sacked. It’s a complete mockery. Clearly, nothing is thought through, some really bad practice taking place and they’ve cut so many corners that all we’re left with is a card-board cutout of what looks half official.
In fact, if I produced that product for a customer, they’d laugh at me. Seriously, I wouldn’t get paid, I’d get sued..!!
If you want to know what people from other sectors said about different aspects of this, read below…
There are others:
Mike Chitty for an Enterprise Perspective – not good
CreativeReview for a Design Perspective – not good
UKBusinessLabs for a Designers Perspective – not good
PostDesk for a Rounded Business Perspective – not good
Generally, it’s not good.
Official Website:
www.startupbritain.org
Anti-Websites:
http://www.cockupbritain.org.uk
http://www.shutdownbritain.org/
Let me know what you think to this… I’m still formulating my opinions ))
Doug
Helloooo...!!
@tweetsbyskeet is on Twitter, micro-blogging, writing musings and enjoying the difference between Web1.0 and Web2.0. There is nothing this skeeter doesn't enjoy more than looking round the web and creating musing and thought provoking blogs for people who are now taking part in the interwebs. Despite the rambles, our skeeter has an honours degree in business information systems, has worked in systems design, coming from a Business Analyst discipline and now churns out plug and go artwork products for companies of all sizes.
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