Government kicks off Tech City entrepreneur boot camp

The government kicked off Global Entrepreneurship Week on Monday, which will see 250 entrepreneurs attend a boot camp in Tech City to learn techniques intended to help them launch a successful business.

The Entrepreneurs Festival at Bethnal Green in east London is being held by the Tech City Investment Organisation (TCIO), and will encourage start-up mentors from around the world to share best practice tips with the entrepreneurs in areas such as funding, research and development, and press relations.

Mentors include Conrad Poulson, head of start-up business development at Orange, and George Whitehead from venture capital firm Octopus Ventures.

Around 80 per cent of the entrepreneurs will be from outside the UK, including the US, India, Singapore, Russia, Spain, Iceland, Turkey, Ghana and South Africa.

Stephen Green, minister for trade and investment, gave a speech on Monday to introduce the event.

TCIO chief executive Eric Van der Kleij and science minister David Willetts will give speeches on Friday, before the top 20 start-ups from the week are given the opportunity to pitch to an audience of leading European and US investors.

Saturday will see mentors from Silicon Valley discussing cutting-edge technologies and business models with the entrepreneurs and UK policy makers. The US delegation will also visit Oxford and Cambridge universities to talk to entrepreneurs.

Global Entrepreneurship Week was started by former UK prime minister Gordon Brown in 2008 and has since grown to over 100 countries and become the largest celebration of entrepreneurism in the world.

"This week is about showing off the talents of entrepreneurs in the UK and inspiring the entrepreneurs of the future," said prime minister David Cameron in a statement today.

"They have no greater champion than this government. Every success story starts with someone taking the brave step of striking out on their own. The more we can encourage people to take that step, the better for them, for our economy, and for our country."

Cameron hailed the growth of London's Tech City on its first anniversary last week, after new figures revealed that the number of companies based in the area has grown from around 200 to over 600 in just 12 months.

On a visit to east London, Cameron launched a Tech City Map created by local firm Trampoline Systems which is designed to visualise the large number of businesses now in the area, alongside useful analytics data.