1DayLater - The Blog

Loans? You must be barking mad!

As business continues to progress, we’ve been looking closer into sources of finance to see us through these first crucial stages. We’ve looked into: winging it (not enough hours in the day), venture capital (too much stress), borrowing from friends and family (too much responsibility) and then finally getting a loan…

With all this “economic stupidity” the whole situation for bank lending is rapidly changing, which is doing a great deal to confuse and baffle us! Basically the old scheme (Small Firms Loan Gurantee, or SFLG) has been replaced with a new improved scheme (Enterprise Finance Guarantee, or EFG).

This cute dog represents the new EFG scheme - check him out

To cut a long story short, the EFG promises us the cash we need and the government will guarantee 75% of the loan amount - meaning we’d only be responsible for a smaller portion (especially when divided between me and David). The EFG can even be used to convert overdrafts into loans, which is a bit like those debt consolidation adverts you see, except endorsed by PM Brown…

With that said, EFG loans are in high demand at the moment, and even though the scheme was put in place to encourage borrowing there’s still a lot of hoops to jump through. We need to convince the banks that we’re a low-risk, high-growth company, but quite luckily we’ve found our bank managers weakness… chocolate!

PS - we’ll be writing about the new Voiceovers very soon!

North-East finance for entrepreneurs

Tomorrow 1DayLater will be featured in the business section of The Journal alongside a very awesome company called Finance Tree. They’re a local company that have many fingers in many financial pies and are all about helping local businesses and entrepreneurs to go the extra mile. Peter Hiscocks and Jonathan Gold were our mentors on the Sunderland Software course and they were influential in steering the 1DayLater boat toward success (or rather, away from danger!).

If you’re thinking about money and business you really can’t go wrong giving these guys a toot to see about grants, forecasting, advice and pretty much anything! They run regular courses and events (some free) to help you get your brain working properly!

Don’t forget to grab a copy of The Journal tomorrow ;-)

Finance GO!

Well it’s go johnny go go around here yet again.

After a fine morning of number crunching with our lovely and enthusiastic accountant Fiona (FEL Accounts) we’ve finally got some decent money forecasts we can rely on. I think me and David had a moment of realisation and clarity when we looked into the scary abyss that is our cashflow forecast….that pipe dream of a business 6 months ago is now a “viable” business.

Excellent!

^ (Me and the lovely Fiona Laughlin of FEL accounts)

Ah little did she know I was spelling “boobies” out on my calculator hehe

Catch you all soon!

Paul

Starting a business…

…is like making love to a beautiful woman. Suggest something that’s never been done and with enough capital you can make it happen. You might need a partner or two to tackle the challenge, but if you can keep going long enough you can make a big deposit when you withdraw.

On a serious note, the business plan is due soon, it’s looking really good but we still have a few questions about our market that will effect the way our business will be built and run. We really dreaded the plan, but it’s been an incredible tool to help us think about the nitty gritty details - like watching our future unravel in inky form!

If you wanna help out, do fill out our survey, it takes a minute and we’ll be indebted!