I wanted to do this having spent the last 20 years in a sector where entrepreneurialism, talented people with a shared purpose and backing yourself have often prospered. I have been lucky enough to set up and build successful staffing companies over the past 15 years – having taken a 2 man start-up in my spare bedroom to an international staffing business with over 300 staff and sales over £120m. I’m proud of this achievement and happily put my name to it. However, the real story is one of trial and error, making 50/50 calls, making big mistakes, moving quickly, talking quickly, learning to hire and inspire with precision, listening to others (who are normally cleverer than you are) and also ensuring you have the right advise and support along, what can be, a risky road…

This fund is focussed on launching, supporting and accelerating new businesses in the staffing, technology and talent management sectors. We provide seed capital but also the expertise, support and infrastructure to help get the great ideas off the ground. I want to draw on all the experience I have gained and my field of expertise is pretty narrow and being a simple soul it was imperative that we stick in areas that we understand deeply and where we can add more value than just money…

Technology is having a profound effect on how the staffing industry operates and how people (skills) interact with brands (would be employers) and there lies loads of opportunity to innovate and change old working practice. A good example is that when I first started out a candidate preparing for a job interview would really only have the information I was able to give her (websites where crap and social media didn’t exist) from my briefings and the client purely had a paper copy of the CV – I would drop it off the day before! Fast forward to today both client and candidate know more about each other than is probably healthy some taking snooping to the stalky level of researching social media / feed / posts/ / reading rants on Glassdoor from disgruntled ex-employees etc. This kind of takes the romance out of it but it makes for a far more information enriched encounter and if handled right – more accurate hiring. This is a basic example of how things have changed over the last 10-15 years but the change is accelerating and how new generations are entering the workplace and are going to approach the job market looks set to change radically. Just think how AI might support your job search or potential employee screening. Will a permanent job really fit a tech enabled generation Y when ‘gig working’ and having your work but on your own terms really kicks in as the ‘new normal’…

The most success I have had in my career has been when I’ve invested in young, ambitions talent and created a ‘challenger brand’ environment that feeds this energy and you quickly find you have a fast growth business on your hands. Arrows Group has been ranked in the top 100 fast track lists multiple times and this has always during periods when we have got the blend of talent, opportunity, environment and shared purpose right…it’s a powerful experience. I want to share this.

Back when I was starting out if there had a been a fund like this that I was aware of I would have bitten their hand off for some financial backing (saved some sleepless nights!) and more importantly some advice, mentoring and technical know-how to help me concentrate on the big priorities and stop worrying about smaller things…at one point I swear dealing with our printer connection took up as much time as client meetings…until we went paperless (I threw it out the window).

This fund will suit the person who has that big idea…knows the destination but needs help with planning the journey. That’s where we can help by bringing energy, direction, support, connections and most importantly have fun along the way.