START-UP ADVICE

MAKE IT
START UP ADVICE
WANT TO SECURE SE
INVESTMENT? START
FUNDING CLUB SHO
ENTREPRENEUR & INVESTOR Magazine caught up with Stephen Page,
founder of Startup Funding Club Ltd, an organisation we hear many
entrepreneurs are turning to, to help them secure SEIS investment.
One thing that has been
consistent throughout
Stephen’s years in business
is his desire for the freedom
to make his own decisions,
and follow his own path.
He proudly points out that
the only time he has been formally
employed by anybody is the 4 years he
spent studying accountancy after leaving
school in the 70s. As soon as he had
qualified, however, he was off, joining a
road haulage firm as head of accounts.
He learnt a lot, he says, not least the
value of a good suit, after being taken to
Savile Row in the boss’s Rolls Royce and
told to choose an outfit on the spot.
Suited and booted, he was on the road
again just a year later, this time joining
a Chartered Accountants specialising in
data processing and creating software
for the likes of British Beef. The interview
took place in a local pub, and when he
arrived for his first day he was informed
his new boss had taken a month’s
holiday, and he should do whatever he
thought best. Eat your heart out, Alan
Sugar!
Unsurprisingly, Stephen developed a
taste for being in control of proceedings,
and his first Company, Sapphire, a
financial modelling firm, was founded
soon after, winning investment,
before the bottom dropped out of the
market as a new industry, “Information
Technology”, (you may have heard of
it?) began to make brand new products
obsolete on an almost daily basis.
Undeterred, a few months later he
found himself in Atlanta at a COMDEX
conference, bidding for exclusive
distribution rights for a new desktop
database called Dataease, using credit
cards he and his business partner had
obtained in a few days, no questions
asked (things were different back then),
back in the UK.
With the help of one or two more
backers, he ended up paying £50k for
the UK rights to DataEase, a ground
breaking new technology that would
eventually make Sapphire Group an
international success, with offices in
15 countries, millions of pounds of
investment raised, several companies
bought, sold, and rebought, and
hundreds of staff hired, and, inevitably,
fired.
Stephen’s 30 year involvement with the
Company, always as CEO, introduced
him to the world of boardroom
shenanigans, lawyers, takeovers,
acquisitions, even a “shotgun wedding”
merger, in 1991. Partnering with
software companies in the US in the
80s and 90s must have been a pretty
tough business to be in, but boy what an
education!
Stephen’s only regret is the Company’s
shareholders not accepting a $60m
offer for the Company, tabled by Lotus
Development Corp, back in the 90s,
before Microsoft released its proprietary
database, Access, effectively ending the
discussion on where the world would
store its data, for the next 20 years, and
counting.
What followed tested Stephen in
ways he could never have imagined;
managing a Company on the slide, he
found, was a thankless task, but a vital
one, as he attempted to wind down his
operations in as productive a manner as
he could. There were low moments, such
as when he sat on a beach in Barbados,
a faxed list of the names of hundreds
of staff in his hands, and tried to decide
which hundred or so to let go.
Sapphire Group is still, in fact, alive and
reasonably well, but Stephen has moved
ahead with the launch of the Start-Up
Funding Club, incorporating the Funding
Alpha SEIS fund, and it’s what we are
here to discuss. Excuse the lengthy intro,
but in business it is all about context!
Without context, it is hard to understand
that right now London and the UK is
one of, if not the outright best place to
invest in start-ups in the world, thanks to
the launch of the SEIS scheme, which as
we all know is the best thing to happen
to UK based entrepreneurs since the
Magna Carta was signed.
Just to recap, if your investment
succeeds, you pay no Capital Gains Tax
18