Richard Muscat, project manager with Startup Malta Foundation for
Entrepreneurship, talks to Blanche Gatt about their mission to promote
entrepreneurship among young people.
Five years since the first Startup Malta business plan competition was
launched, Startup Malta has evolved into a dynamic foundation, dedicated to
the promotion of entrepreneurship among young people. While the business plan
competition is still held regularly every year, the Foundation, set up last
year to give the organisation structure and continuity, has now embraced a
much broader portfolio for itself, one that sees Startup Malta as being both
an impetus to entrepreneurial endeavour in general and a motivational and
instructional tool for young entrepreneurs to access throughout their start-up
processes.
I met Richard Muscat earlier this week, to ask him about how Startup Malta
operates, what their main lines of initiative are and how they go about
achieving their ambitions for the organisation.
"One of our slogans is `Entrepreneurship makes society work', he said." Anything that goes on in society really depends on entrepreneurship, anyone
who has a full-time job is dependent on an entrepreneur to provide that job
after all. So it is a very fundamental part of the way society functions.
Increased entrepreneurship reduces unemployment, creates new products and
services, and generates the cash that NGOs need to do their jobs. From
something as mundane as petrol for your car, to something as important as
private healthcare for your family, all these things depend on entrepreneurs
to make investment and set up companies.
Promoting entrepreneurship, however, he continued, is one of the hardest
things to promote ever only a very small percentage of people are ready to
take the plunge and actually do it. And this is precisely why our target
audience is students and young people. Obviously it is very hard to convince a
person with a family, who has school bills to pay, dependents to support, to
leave his job and do what he always wanted to do instead. Responsibilities may
make that impossible for them.
But for young people who have not yet taken on these responsibilities,
entrepreneurship can primarily be fun. It's the best thing you can do with
your life, whether you are setting up a small one-man show or a large company
with many employees. The concept of entrepreneurship allows you to develop
your skills on multiple levels, and I think the greatest endorsement of
entrepreneurship comes from real life observation: you rarely meet a person
with a job who is dying to get into the office every day, yet on the other
hand, you rarely meet an entrepreneur who isn't dying to get in to the office
every morning.
The financial promise of entrepreneurship is also a great motivator, of
course, though it is a nebulous promise indeed for some. Intellectual property
issues are also a distinct stimulus, Richard added." For scientific
researchers, often coming up with some brilliant new idea means giving it to a
large company who will make millions on it and assume ownership of it. An
entrepreneurial scientist could use his own ideas to create his own company,
retaining not only ownership of the concept but also reaping the financial
benefits."
The evolution of Startup Malta from an organisation, whose main focus was the
organisation of an annual business plan competition, into a Foundation aimed
at promoting and empowering entrepreneurship in young people was perhaps a
natural one.
"The great thing about Startup is we are a very young organisation. We're just
five years old and these five years have already seen so many changes," said
Richard.
"We started as a five-person-team who got together to do a business plan
competition and we are now a fully fledged Foundation. Over the past year we
have looked back at our achievements in order to see what are the best ways we
can achieve more in this field. The Business Plan Competition is fun but it is
just a competition and we felt we could do much more. And through this process
we established our primary mission, which is to encourage entrepreneurship in
young people."
Startup Malta's main focus, therefore, is directly related to this. I asked
Richard to explain what precisely they hope to achieve.
"We are now working towards a situation where we can assist Startup companies
in their actual operations, providing a platform where a person who has an
idea can come to us and we can guide them through all the processes involved,
from the generation stage to actually giving practical support during the set
up and beyond."
What form does this practical support take, I asked?
Well, Richard replied," It could be financial, through access to investors,
it could be office space, within our own premises, it could be recruitment,
finding the right staff for them, and it could be making resources available
to them."
In line with priority, we will be moving to a new office in Kappara in
January, premises that the Edward De Bono Foundation used to use, he
continued. This means we will be in a position to offer the above amenities
to start up companies that come to us.
Addressing the issue of widening the scope for entrepreneurs in Malta, Startup
Malta also embarked on a networking exercise; looking around internationally
to find organisations similar to theirs, making contacts and attending
conferences and other gatherings.
"Our intention at first was to make ourselves known to incubation centres
around the world," said Richard, and in March this year we attended a
conference in Cambridge organised by MIT, the Global Startup Workshop. During
this conference we gave a presentation on Startup Malta and made many valuable
contacts with whom we remain in touch regularly. And we are now looking at a
couple of projects that will depend on these international contacts,
especially in the Euro-Med region, so we also generated many contacts all
around this area.
What sort of projects would these be, I asked? One of them is a variation of
the Business Plan Competition, specifically directed towards scientific
research, he replied.
"The concept is to get more value out of all the studies taking place at the
University, and of course this has much more value if it is backed up by
international contacts. So for example, the question of financing Malta has
no Venture Capital or Business Angel tradition and even banks are very
reluctant to invest or loan money to a start up. There are not many
opportunities for Maltese start ups to access finance here. In Europe,
however, there are opportunities. For example, there is a programme called
Gate to Growth, which is co-funded by the EU and Oxford University, which
brings together Venture Capitalists from all over Europe in a match-making
process. If you have a solid idea and a good business plan, you have an
excellent chance of meeting potential investors through this initiative."
With the new focus on promoting and facilitating entrepreneurship in young
people, Startup Malta now sees one of its main activities as being to actually
generate start up companies.
"And we have already done it," said Richard, but as a side-effect of the
business plan competition. Every year so far, we have had the winners of the
business plan competition come to us for help to actually set their companies
up. For example, last year's competition winners `SMS Cettina' have set
themselves up as per their winning business plan and are providing SMS service
for students in university and residences. The concept has an international
flavour to it. it is not just for the Maltese market, and they are currently
working on a couple of small pilot projects in Ireland. They operate out of
the Kordin Business Incubation Centre.
"Another of these start ups is Start Marketing Ltd who were one of the first
companies to participate in our competition, in 2001. They are now a fully
fledged marketing agency and have been in operation for three years already."
This must be a source of immense satisfaction to the organisers of Startup
Malta, I remarked.
Indeed, said Richard, this is the whole purpose of the organisation and so
it is very good to know something tangible is happening. Another example I
could give is the competition winners of two years ago, The Second Agent.
They set up their second- hand bookshop, basically a broker between people
buying and selling second hand books, and are doing fantastically well,
recently opening up their outlet on the University roundabout.
The business plan competition however, is still an important feature of
Startup Malta's activities. It has proved to be an excellent way of getting
people excited about entrepreneurship, as the above examples illustrate. "Apart from being a learning experience through the workshops, seminars and
business contacts the competition provides," said Richard, it's also a way of
generating awareness and excitement among young people. Very often, even if
people participate and don't actually start anything up, the experience and
knowledge gained will be valuable to them throughout their lives and careers.
This year's competition, which is about a third of the way through at this
stage, has attracted entries from 13 teams, involving more than 60
individuals.
And all of these teams have presented fantastically innovative ideas, said
Richard.
We were very pleased to see the level of ideas that were presented this year,
and in fact, we have noticed that the quality of ideas being submitted to the
competition keeps getting better every year. Teams are provided with guidance
throughout the process, and each team is also allocated a mentor, usually
provided through the Mentoring Society of Malta, set up by retired businessman
Paul Dalli, and with whom we have an excellent relationship. The finals of the
competition will be held in April, so there is about four months to go before
we have a winner.
Involvement in Startup Malta for all its student volunteers has meant hard
work and focussed dedication through the years. However, this hard work is
paying off as the organisation achieves recognition in official circles and is
now regularly asked to participate in official policy forming or idea
generating fora.
For example, explained Richard, "We were involved in the Working Group
within Austin Gatt's Ministry for IT and Investments which had the task of
proposing new fiscal incentives for encouraging the creation of new start up
companies. What we proposed and what was implemented was, related to the
setting up of the Malta Enterprise VC fund, people who invest in this fund
would get tax credits on what they invest as well as on exit. Besides that,
Malta Enterprise regularly include us in their study projects, as does Edwin
Vassallo who asks us to participate in Think Tanks and meetings on a regular
basis."
Sponsors, or partners, of Startup Malta include Malta Enterprise, APS Bank,
Island Hotels Group, the Cooperatives Board, the Edward Debono Foundation,
iWorld Group and Ernst & Young, and their continued partnership and
involvement definitely offers one of the most powerful endorsements, Startup
Malta's activities. And it is their continued and increased support, as well
as the enthusiasm and commitment of the Startup Malta team, that will no doubt
ensure the Foundation continues to grow, both in strength and in significance.