How RBS is powering up the next generation
Latest partner to join The Herald Entrepreneur campaign is on a mission to boost economic development in Scotland
WHAT inspires people to become entrepreneurs? Money isn’t necessarily the main motivator: for some, freedom from the constraints of the traditional workplace is the prime driver while for others it’s the opportunity to explore unrestricted horizons and realise a unique vision.
The energy and innovation that entrepreneurs bring to Scotland’s business landscape are vital to the swiftly changing trends and demands of the global economy in which it competes.
“Entrepreneurs are the lifeblood of the Scottish economy and focusing on start-ups and early-stage scalable businesses is crucial to our economic future,” says Gordon Merrylees, Head of Entrepreneurship at Royal Bank of Scotland, which is a key partner in the Herald’s Entrepreneur campaign and welcomes its support for business start-ups.
“We think the partnership approach is vitally important and a great example of what we can do in supporting the entrepreneurial spirit is through this collaboration with the Herald.”
Merrylees agrees that starting a new business can be tough in the current economic climate but is convinced that with focused ambition and hard work backed by the bank’s experience and network and an impressive existing cohort of entrepreneurs the potential of many more nascent companies can be realised.
It’s a field that he and RBS have been energetically promoting. The bank’s Entrepreneur Accelerator, with 12 hubs throughout the UK, is now one of the largest incubator programmes in Europe and over the past three years has supported some 4,000 entrepreneurs who have raised £225 million in investment between them.
The newest hub opened in Glasgow in May. It hosts 80 entrepreneurs and, says Merrylees, RBS has received 1,800 applications Uk-wide to join the next intake in October.
Merrylees was inspired by hearing Sir Tom Hunter explaining how the accelerator programme Entrepreneurial Spark was changing the business landscape by helping to disrupt and reinvigorate the market – and within days was in negotiation with Jim Duffy, Espark’s CEO to form the partnership that launched the RBS Accelerator which since March this year has been managed solely by RBS.
There was, he felt, an urgent need to support people with a passion to launch and grow their own business. Historically, Scotland’s start-up rate has been lower than in the rest of the UK – a challenge that is now being addressed by the RBS Accelerator.
“Given the journey that RBS has been on, perhaps more than other banks we felt that we had a duty to support the entrepreneurial spirit in Scotland,” says Merrylees.
“With our expertise, knowledge and the networks we have – and the fact that we are the largest SME supporters of any bank – we should be at the very heart of that entrepreneurial ecosystem.”
For Merrylees it has also been a highly personal commitment, one backed by RBS and entrepreneurs such as Sir Tom Hunter and Willy Haughey. “We have had tremendous support from these serial entrepreneurs,” he says. “Entrepreneurs have a passion, a mission to do something they are exceptionally good at and enjoy. They have a sense of purpose, an ability to thrive through uncertainty and a mind set for growth rather than a fixed mind set.”
These qualities, he believes have helped to change the culture at RBS through a valuable symbiotic relationship. “We are learning so much by working with that entrepreneurial talent and it also means serving our customers well and better, supporting the business community and enterprise.
“It has also become much more than that. We are working with some of the brightest and most talented entrepreneurs across the country and have unprecedented access to innovation that will help us to become more efficient as a bank.
Merrylees says that a number of entrepreneurial ideas have been evaluated then escalated to Ross Mcewan, CEO of RBS and some of those have gone to pilot and to contract. “That’s a terrific result. These entrepreneurs have the active backing of RBS for their concepts on a scale that we didn’t anticipate.”
Entrepreneurialism, he adds is highly valued in the current labour market. “Corporates such as RBS aspire to be disruptive, innovative and agile in our markets and these are all the traditional qualities that you would find in an entrepreneur. We are learning a tremendous amount first-hand about the pressures that entrepreneurs experience and how we can support them through those.”
The Entrepreneur Accelerator provides space and workshops on subjects such as finance and funding sources to help develop and focus business concepts. Aspiring go-getters also have the chance to mix with established entrepreneurs.
This is, says Merrylees, a comprehensive programme of mentoring, insight and bespoke coaching developed over the past three years that has revolutionised the way that the bank supports entrepreneurs – and one that he believes is really working.
“We offer up to 18 months of fully-funded office space and a collaborative community that connects them with a community of hundreds of their peers,” he says. “They have coaching with one-to-one acceleration managers who challenge them to take their business to the next level – and the price to stay in the hub is proven progress,” he says.
“Then there’s the RBS network – a tremendous supply chain and access to a customer base that helps them validate their ideas and their services.”
And Merrylees concurs that fostering entrepreneurship is not always about money. “It’s about wraparound care,” he says.