Date: Thu 18th September, 2008
Venue:
Insider’s Rising Stars dinner 2008 provided an opportunity to celebrate some of the best young entrepreneurial talent in Wales today, to hear from two contrasting individuals who have set up companies of their own, to make some new contacts and to exchange ideas.
Every year Insider picks out 25 entrepreneurs and promising business people aged 40 or under. These are the Rising Stars. They made up the bedrock of the Rising Stars dinner at Cardiff’s Park House Club on 18 September, made possible by sponsorship from Berry Smith, KTS Owens Thomas, Venture Wales and the Park House Club itself.
The first speaker was Professor Jeremy Stone, deputy chairman of life sciences investment firm Excalibur, who started with a personal overview of the problems which have hit the financial system over the past year. He contrasted the “alpha males” with aggressive attitudes to risk in some financial institutions, with more cautious types like Lloyds TSB chief executive Eric Daniels who appears to have been proven right for his approach to the housing market.
Daniels, he said, was a typical of contrarians who take the flak for not following the herd but get rewarded when the majority view is proved wrong. “Never be afraid to stand out from the crowd,” he said. “Trust your gut. Have a good spouse. And have fun – if you are not having fun, do something else.
Next up was Richard Matthews, a Rising Star from 2007 and the chief executive of Freshbaked Group. He told how he had left a large training provider to set up Freshbaked, with training as its first line of business.
Matthews took a different tack to Stone’s “contrarian” line. He said: “I am a fan of saturated markets. If you can get into a market that is quite popular and put out a product that is full of USPs (unique selling propositions) then I think you can do well. We try to keep innovating our products. The markets we are in are very competitive, and margins are being cut all the time.”
The group now has seven lines of business, including the public relations division which was set up earlier this year with Jon Hollins, the former Freshwater director. The directors of each division have equity, giving them more of an incentive to drive the group forward.
And Matthews told the audience his longer term objective: “By 2013, we want to be a complete business services provider with a turnover of £15m.”
