Big names backing city’s move to offer rent-free home for new starts

GLASGOW Council is to make its vacant properties across the city available rent-free to start-up businesses in a bid to boost job creation.

The move comes in response to a private initiative, Entrepreneurial Spark, which will provide facilities and advice free of charge to nascent enterprises.

Uniquely, the programme has been set up as a social enterprise, meaning that budding business leaders will not have to give away any equity in exchange for this support.

Backed by businessmen Sir Tom Hunter and Willie Haughey, Entrepreneurial Spark wants individuals and organisations to donate funds, facilities and expertise to help create businesses. Start-ups can access this support for up to one year.

Entrepreneurial Spark will work in collaboration with a network of existing support agencies and professional service providers.

Jim Duffy, who came up with the idea and will manage the programme on a day-to-day basis, has already held preliminary discussions with more than a dozen organisations.

Glasgow Council leader Gordon Matheson said he was “determined” to go further in boosting economic activity by making redundant city property available to start-ups.

This would give businesses such as those coming out of Entrepreneurial Spark a place to go when they finish with the programme.

“Why shouldn’t it be free of rent? We need fresh approaches during this downturn,” Matheson said yesterday at the unveiling of the programme, which will be housed in the headquarters of City Refrigeration Holdings.

Though details are still to be ironed out, Matheson said he hoped to begin making some space available from January, which will coincide with the formal launch of Entrepreneurial Spark.

Duffy – a former police officer who has since managed and sold pubs and a car valeting businesses – hopes to have between 20 and 25 entrepreneurs at work in the “accelerator unit” within the first month of the New Year. Ventures at any of four stages ranging from initial conception up to fundraising will be eligible to pitch for a place.

About 20 business leaders have so far committed their time as mentors, but Duffy would like to raise that to a panel of 50. Representatives from Babson College near Boston, one of the world’s top business schools, will also provide advice via regular video interviews.

“Nowhere else in Scotland provides that kind of access to such a high level of expertise and know-how, and I’m incredibly excited about the potential for Entrepreneurial Spark to create some great new Scottish business success stories,” Duffy said.

The project has initially been funded by a “substantial” but undisclosed sum from Hunter, who also backs the centre for entrepreneurship that bears his name at the University of Strathclyde. Haughey has provided 6,000sq ft of space – plus IT and other infrastructure – that had been earmarked for a call centre at his headquarters.

The value of the latter has been estimated at about £1 million over the next three to four years, and though Haughey will now have to find alternative premises for the new call centre, he said he hopes Entrepreneurial Spark eventually expands to occupy the whole of 12,500sq ft on the second floor wing.

“People who are in a position to help have to step up to the plate,” he said.