The UK's Bank of Scotland and the Sunday Times have launched a 25 million pound 'Entrepreneur Challenge', in search for UK's Bill Gates. In a nutshell, 5 entreprenuers will be selected to share the winning prize. Each winner can win up to 5 million pounds funding (interest free loan) depending on the business.
Now, here's an idea for Brunei! Why not launch a similar but in a smaller scale entrepreneur competition? Maybe of up to $250k per winner for those budding entreprenurs who have the vision and ambition to drive their businesses to the top but lack of the financial means.
Of course, there should also be mentoring from Brunei's prominent entrepreneurs just as the UK ,where Sir Philip Green owner of BHS, would be mentoring their winner.
However, it would be silly to let just any Tom, Dick and Harry to enter the competition, this is after all, not Brunei Idol!, there will be criteria to be met. Eg. an indication that the participant is already in business (not merely of having a business registration of course), perhaps an already existing product/service to sell, a turnover of some money and so on. For the UK's Challenge Criteria click here. I suppose, Brunei should have a lesser stringent criteria to ensure good response.
K. Hope somebody will take up on this and thrash it out in the next meeting ; )
Salaam!
ps. Melinda Doolitle should have won the American Idol!
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3 comments:
don't brunei already have this kind of competition? i don't really remember the title of the competition, but i think it's the "Livewire business awards"?
This year, they opened another category that caters to business that are already in operatoin for 3 years *i think*.
i think u already know livewire brunei website right? hehe *no offense here*
btw, i'm one of your regular readers. cheers
Hello Surkrew
I am so glad you mentioned Livewire as I purposely didn't mention it in my original post (in the hope that someone would!).
You see this 'entrepreneur challenge' should cater for a different level of entrepreneurs who are already in serious business and want more. It should be in the line of creating Brunei 'millionaires'. And I was hoping agencies like BEDB and BIBD could team up and offer some serious money, and sort of making it a 'high profile' competition. That I believe will show how serious Brunei is in creating some 'kick-ass' entrepreneurs.
Anyway thank you for the info rgd Livewire's new category. Will look for it later. And THANK YOU to BSP and HSBC for having such competitions running.
Salaam.
i understand what you mean and totally agree with having a high-profile competition and creating kick-ass millionaires entrepreneurs.
but then again, which would you rather have? a few millionaires, or several kick-ass startup entreprenuers with kick-ass business? what i mean here is, if we give the prize money to a few (already) successfull business to go further, we'll have a few kick-ass millionaries, correct? but if we give the prize money to several start-ups, with very very good business ideas, then we can further grow the number of entreprenuers in brunei and at the same time, be proud that us bruneians have something produced locally by our locals (but that's if these several start-ups will produce fresh ideas and will make the products locally), correct?
my point here is, it's all about having a few winners, or several more winners that can contribute more to the economy. what's your opinion? as for me, i have a split opinion, but i think i would go more towards supporting good potential start-up businesses, but not just an ordinary start-ups, those that are really really good and HUGE potential.
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