SyncIpswich - Asking for help. Things I wish I knew
We would like to thank Chris Filip with who gave a talk about Asking for help. Things I wish I knew.
Asking for help: things I wish I knew about business support and grants before I decided to take a 6 month unpaid holiday to work on my not-for-profit business idea and failed miserably.
Game Anglia has had a tumultuous past. The events were always huge successes but they were never meant to be profitable. A Game Anglia conference takes 9 months to pull off, between venue, speakers and marketing before THE BIG DAY of the event. With a team of sometimes 10-12 people working remotely, part time and on a volunteer basis this is not a recipe for success. It also does not help if you just start trying to put together a business, and you've never had to deal with these types of issues before, such as people's morale, goals, delegating etc.
In this talk I want to address the topic of asking for help and how Game Anglia and myself have been saved by a business support programmes. I will then present a variety of current business support programmes available to folks from Suffolk, including grants and financing, and open the floor for discussion.
✔ Why your first business should not be a not-for-profit
✔ What business support programmes are for and what they're not for
✔ What's available in the region
✔ What to do when you really need money to get your business off the ground
✔ How all of this ties to the tech industry
About Chris Filip:
Game Anglia is a Community Interest Company helping young people and independent game developers in the East of England get the skills, connections and expertise they need to be successful in the games industry.
Chris Filip is one of the founders and volunteer directors of Game Anglia. In his day job, he works as Programme Manager for Creative England, jointly overseeing the Creative Enterprise set of programmes which help grow the screen industries in the English regions with business support, investment readiness and funding. Before realising that he could help people by putting together programmes, Chris was Game Designer and Product Manager at a variety of games and tech companies.
