Delegates at Edinburgh's EIE20 event to hear from tyre entrepreneur Mike Welch

Serial entrepreneur Mike Welch has been signed up to talk about his business journey at this year’s EIE20 in Edinburgh – which aims to foster top early-stage tech firms.

Welch - who was awarded an OBE in 2016 - sold online tyre retailer Blackcircles.com to Michelin in 2015. Picture: Stewart Attwood.

Welch sold online tyre retailer Blackcircles.com to Michelin in 2015 in a multi-million-pound deal, is behind Edinburgh fashion site Atterley.com and is currently splitting his time between Edinburgh and Miami from where he recently launched Tirescanner.com, an online tyre retail site aimed at the US market.

EIE20 is billed as a year-round investor readiness programme run by Informatics Ventures, where 50 ambitious data-driven start-up to scale-up companies pitch to investors for seed to series A funding.

Taking place on 23 April this year, it has seen IBM Ventures, Silicon Valley Bank and Octopus Ventures join its investor panel.

Welch said: “Launching a start-up is not for the faint-hearted. The setbacks, stress and isolation are enough to put most off. But if you get it right, the rewards, in more than just monetary terms, can be so much greater than those achievable from a ‘normal’ job.”

However, he added that getting the right investors on board “is a tricky process and can make or break early-stage companies – it’s great that the Informatics Ventures team and EIE provide a format that can help navigate founders through that minefield”.