Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Hi, My name is Mark Hales,I'm an entrepreneur and investor, I have a
particular interest in working with young entrepreneurs
. specializing around technology and emerging technology
I run a growth capital fund that invest in young entrepreneurs to help
them build their business to the next level
I spent most of my career as a youngster in the motor industry and then
joined a family business in
around 1999
and with the original founders of that business built that business from
an employee base of twenty five
up to four and a half thousand over a ten-year period
So, OXYGEN is split into two primary parts, one is Launch48 which is the
technology events business, that holds
entrepeurial events across the world
generally bringing together about a hundred people
and we help them launching a new business
.and OXYGEN ACCELERATOR
is a more intensive thirteen week programme
that provides seed funding
partnered with a significant number of mentors to help people launch
a sustainable viable business.
I think for me what excites me working with entrepreneurs is
the possibilities are endless and especially young entrepreneurs . if
I look back into my own career,
first started out there was very little business support available
. of a credible nature
. so
what I've tried to do is build a program that brings experienced entrepreneurs
experience mentors,
. and specialists in their field
to provide great intervention at the very early stage because what I know is that
if we can get to know right stage and we can influence their decisions in their
path
then the outcomes are significantly higher,
but they just great fun to work with, particular young entrepreneurs with, they
have some energy, so much drive, so much passion, and that's infectious you know
I love doing what I do, I probably work with sixty or seventy young
entrepreneurs each time through the programme we' run that programme every six
months
so it's great fun.
I think Birmingham is a great place to do business, it has a great ecosystem
very supportive ecosystem,
and one that's full of diversity.
We've got some great universities in Birmingham that have a great
range of different specialism,
and when you put that all together with it's diversity and it's ethnicity
and it's support structures
it's a great place to be in work.
I think certainly there's lots of ways that I and OXYGEN ACCELERATOR and the
OXYGEN group can work with Aston going forwards. At the end of the day we are focused on
technology, and we are focused on business
two of Aston's biggest attributes
from an individual perspective and thinking about how we might work with
individual students what we're looking for is individuals that have a can-do,
will do attitude
and I think it's really interesting that
as part of my research in looking at what Aston actually does do
the employability statistics that come out of Aston, eighty nine percent of
students going on to employment
demonstrates that can do will do attitude
and really that's what I'm looking for when I'm when I'm looking to fund
and invest and work with and give up my time I'm looking for individuals that have
same passion that can do will do attitude