The Oxford Trust, Barclays Eagle Labs, Oxford Innovation and Freeths launch a new expert-led event series called Exit Right for entrepreneurs looking to drive their business from start-up to exit.
Hosted by experts in their fields, the six free-to-attend talks are a series of masterclasses to help founders and their senior management teams successfully grow and exit their business.
Speakers include CEOs of successful start-ups who will give first-hand advice and heads of companies and organisations that work to support entrepreneurs, such as incubators, solicitors, HR consultants, marketing and branding experts, and funders.
It will include Marlin Svanberg Larsson, Corporate Partner at Freeths; Andy Robinson, Senior Business Development Manager at Barclays Codebase; Paul Essery, Founder of My Sales Guru; and Richard Cooper, Managing Director of Oxford Investment Opportunity Network Ltd (OION Ltd).
Flipping the journey on its head and starting with a talk on Exit Planning, the series also covers: Scaling Up; New Business Development and Customer Acquisition; Marketing and Branding; Fundraising and Pitching; and Product-Market Fit.
These sessions will be key to helping build and structure a business from the start and drive the best value at the end.
With over 43,000 businesses registered in Oxfordshire, at least 99% of which are SMEs and 6,194 are new businesses that have been registered since January 2020*, there is a real need for an event series to support start-ups to thrive.
The series is sponsored by Freeths and organised in partnership with The Oxford Trust, Oxford Innovation and Barclays Eagle Labs, Oxford.
Steve Burgess, CEO of The Oxford Trust, said: “We are really pleased to partner with Barclays Eagle Labs, Oxford and Oxford Innovation to run the Exit Right event series at our Wood Centre for Innovation in Headington.
“We have found from the start-ups and spin-out businesses in our Centres that there is a real need for this first-hand expert advice for founders and senior management teams. We hope that it will help them on their entrepreneurial journey.”
Nicki Campling, Ecosystem Manager, Barclays Eagle Labs, Oxford, said: “At Barclays Eagle Labs, Oxford, we support hundreds of businesses a year on their start-up journey. Post-COVID, we felt that it was just the right time to launch the Exit Right event series – an accelerator programme not only for our cohort of start-ups and spin-outs – but for those within the county and hopefully across the UK.
“We have some excellent speakers who will be able to give advice from first-hand experience but also those that are experts in their field, whether it’s marketing, HR, finance or exit planning.”
Wendy Tindsley, Innovation Director at Oxford Innovation, said: “I am approached by entrepreneurs who, for a variety of reasons, decide now is the time to exit their business, only to find that if they had got all the pieces of the puzzle in place much earlier, the outcome could have been considerably better.
“So, we have flipped the business journey on its head, suggesting that companies start with the exit in mind and, six events later, ending with the very basics of product-market fit. The Exit Right series will ensure that you look at all the elements that need to come together to give the very best return on all the hard work that it takes to grow a business.”
Malin Svanberg Larsson, Corporate Tech Partner in the Oxford office of Freeths, said: “Oxford’s position a leader in innovation is a significant reason for Oxford’s reputation in the global marketplace. I find the entrepreneurial spirit demonstrated and the willingness to try something new and to push the boundaries of what’s possible hugely exciting.
“This is why Freeths, in partnership with The Oxford Trust, Oxford Innovation and Barclays Eagle Labs, have launched Exit Right, an expert-led series of masterclasses designed to help founders and senior management teams understand some of the challenges they will encounter on their growth journey.”
The talks are 45 minutes, followed by a 15-minute Q&A session. Events will be held every other Thursday from 28 April 2022 for an hour and will start at 5.30pm, at the end of the working day.
The events will be held at The Oxford Trust’s Wood Centre for Innovation in Headington – for those that want to meet the speakers. The events will also be live-streamed. Each event will be followed by drinks and networking at the Centre.
*Oxfordshire Local Enterprise Partnership Impact Report, 2020-21
