Entrepreneur First plans to help graduates start their own businesses. Praetorian Outsource Marketing looks at the scheme and the investors.
Entrepreneur First is a new initiative to encourage the brightest graduates to start a business instead of heading down a traditional career path. Praetorian Outsource Marketing, a marketing and outsource sales company based in Birmingham was delighted when they first heard of the scheme which is backed by investment from organisations like Microsoft, Silicon Valley Bank and successful entrepreneurs such as Songkick founder Pete Smith.
The scheme was inspired by Teach First, a scheme which encourages the best graduates who would not previously have considered a career in teaching to work in some of the toughest schools in the UK. The first set of applications saw 425 entries from 88 universities and 34 will be chosen from those. The successful applicants will start making a business plan over the coming months and then they will start their companies, along with their peers, in September.
What do Praetorian Outsource Marketing think this means for graduates? A spokesperson for the company believes it is a really exciting prospect, “With the incredibly high rate of graduate unemployment we have been encouraging graduates to look for less traditional career routes for some time now. This scheme is a fantastic initiative and will give young graduates the support they need to do something incredible, to start their own business.”
One of the graduates on the scheme is Emily Brooke who quit her physics degree at Oxford to study product design at Brighton University. She said “At Oxford, all I could see was a City career mapped out ahead of me and I wanted to do something more creative.” Praetorian Outsource Marketing believes that this scheme will encourage more people that there are other career options out there.
Microsoft is on hand to offer places on the software giant’s graduate scheme if after two years the participants wish to opt for a more conventional career. The Praetorian Outsource Marketing’s spokesperson continued, “This is an incredible win-win scenario for these graduates. They get a chance, and the support to follow their dream, but have a fall-back plan if they decide it’s not for them. We believe this scheme will put entrepreneurship on the radar for the best and brightest students.”
