Opening keynote announced for Start-Up 2013

Building on its fantastic first outing last Autumn, the second Kent 2020 Vision START-UP LIVE will take place on Wednesday 23rd October 2013 at the Kent Event Centre, delivering another full day of inspiration, practical advice and vital information for the early stages of any new venture.

We are excited to confirm a very special keynote to open this year’s event in style:

> Emma Jones, Entrepreneur, Founder of Enterprise Nation & Director of StartUp Britain

Emma Jones is founder of small business community Enterprise Nation and a co-founder of the national campaign StartUp Britain.

Following a degree in Law and Japanese, Emma joined international accounting firm, Arthur Andersen, where she worked in London, Leeds and Manchester offices and set up the firm’s Inward Investment practice that attracted overseas companies to locate in the UK. Bitten by the dot.com bug, Emma left the firm in 2000, to start her first business, Techlocate – and after 15 months, the company was successfully sold to Tenon plc.

The experience of starting, growing and selling a business from a home base gave Emma the idea for Enterprise Nation which was launched in 2006 as the home business website. The company has since expanded to become a small business community of over 75,000 people who access content, events and funding; online, in print and in person.

In March 2011 Emma was one of eight co-founders to launch StartUp Britain, the national campaign to encourage more people to start a business and support existing businesses to grow. Over the past two years, the private sector campaign has facilitated mentoring, hosted Industry Weeks, toured the UK with entrepreneurs and experts, launched special projects such as StartUp Loans and StartUp High Street and has had a critical role to play in record results of people becoming their own boss.

Emma is currently acting as campaign director of StartUp Britain and was awarded an MBE in June 2012 for Services to Enterprise. As an expert in small businesses, she is also the author of several books including Spare Room StartUp, Working 5 to 9, Go Global and The StartUp Kit.

Kent 2020 Vision START-UP LIVE is the South East’s leading event for new businesses, organised by BSK-Direct in partnership with Kent County Council and The KM Group. This year, the event takes place alongside Kent 2020 Vision MARKETING LIVE, a new one-stop-shop for Kent marketers.

The event is completely free-to-attend and is aimed at young businesses (typically established for less than 2 years) or individuals looking to start a business in the next 1-2 years.

CLICK HERE to register online.

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