General Resources on financial management in SMEs:
This is not an exhaustive resource and we are still adding to it. Do email us if you have something we should know about!
- The UK’s Business Link site contains a number of articles which are generally useful for entrepreneurs, such as ‘Preparing to raise finance’ and ‘Managing Suppliers and Payments’.
- There are a vast number of helpful and constantly updated articles and tips on Entrepreneur.com, such as ‘Three Common Accounting Mistakes’ and ‘How to Pitch to Investors’.
- Small Business.co.uk has a comprehensive resource of articles on small business finance for owner/managers, such as ‘Managing Cash Flow’ and ‘Negotiating Prices.’
- A good guide on the basic principles of Finance for Small and Medium Sized Enterprises is a 2009 Best Practice Guideline for SME financing, authored by Business Link. (PDF Download)
Funding and Investment for SMEs in the MENA Region
Our partners at Wamda have collected a huge number of useful resources, articles and links to information on each of the MENA countries we work (find out more on the Mowgli Business Skills page here). Wamda’s comprehensive list of angel and seed capital investment/sources of finance in each country are a great resource for entrepreneurs- we’ve provided them below (as downloadable PDFs):
- Sources of Funding in Syria
- Sources of Funding in Jordan
- Sources of Funding in Palestine
- Sources of Funding in Lebanon
Funding and Investment for SMEs in the UK
- The UK’s Business Link Funding Search :The Business support finder allows you to search for potential sources of help with starting up, running or developing your business. Support may be available in a number of forms, including financial assistance and free or subsidised services which provide advice.
- Funders Database. This is by all appearances a free service with a comprehensive database of banks, investors and loans. You have to register, but you can search by region, amount, business sector or type of loan and you can also create an application for funding directly from the site. Whether or not the applications are recieved directly by the funders we aren’t sure but this is very worth checking out simply for the directory.
- The UK Angel Investment Network is a ‘matching scheme’ which provides entrepreneurs with access to investment, via their database of investors. Sign up here.
- Another searchable database of investors is here at UK Funders.
- Angel’s Den is a similar website to the above two. They claim to have a network of over 4000 business angels.
- UKTI provides grant support for SMEs to attend trade fairs, both in overseas export markets and in the UK. To find out more, click here.
- For biotech and medtech companies, there is a comprehensive list of investors and funding sources here at the OBN.
For mentors who want to brush up…
The UK Department for Business, Innovation and Skills has launched a portal with a number of resources for mentors and entrepreneur’s tools. It’s well worth a look: http://www.mentorsme.co.uk
We thought this video series of a master class in finance, designed by a number of the UK’s leading banks specifically for mentors, would be useful to many of you. Click here to access it. (If you’re from outside the UK you may not be able to see it.)
