Insider Media Limited

Two Birmingham firms have joined forces to sponsor the Oxygen Accelerator start-up programme. The scheme aims to find potential entrepreneurs and boost inward investment by bringing them to the West Midlands.

Accountants Mazars and law firm Cobbetts will be part of a sponsorship team turning early stage technology businesses into fast-growth companies.

Oxygen Accelerator is a partnership between serial entrepreneur Mark Hales and Birmingham Science Park Aston (BSPA).

Ten teams – two from the West Midlands, five from the rest of the UK and one each from Austria, Lithuania and Romania – will be offered funding of up to £20,000 during a 13-week "boot camp" at BSPA.

The funding is a loan which is repayable once sufficient investment has been received or the business reaches a stage of profitability where it can afford to repay it.

The "boot camp" culminates with a series of investor days across the UK where the businesses pitch to business angels, venture capitalists and private equity groups for next stage funding.

Oxygen Accelerator also invests for six per cent of the equity of each company.

Mazars and Cobbetts will provide financial and legal mentoring respectively.

David Chapman, Midlands managing partner of Mazars, said: "Given our current economic position Britain is desperate for fresh-thinking, innovative entrepreneurs capable of growing a business. Birmingham was once the City of a Thousand Trades – today we need the same sort of vision, skill, risk-taking and inventiveness which made this city and country great."