Loop is a growth programme for founders of tech startups based in the south west of England.

Good accounting enables a business to understand how it is performing and enables the founders to focus on opportunities for growth. Good tax means meeting your statutory obligations so you can sleep easy, while maximising opportunities for growth through tax optimisation and available grants and tax credits. Good management means making the right strategic choices and implementing those decisions in an efficient and timely manner. And always learning from what went well and what didn’t.

Roy is a Chartered Accountant with over 30 years experience in advising businesses. He founded Affecton in 2002 having worked as a tax partner at EY in Australia and the UK.

Before co-founding Workbrands, he was director of a recruitment comms agency and MD of an international publishing and events company. A passionate advocate for the use of creativity in strategic business thinking, Nick is well-versed in helping others tell their own story through design in a way that engages their audience.

From a very young age, Nic used his entrepreneurial mindset and technical skills to develop products for businesses and has often gone against the grain to provide outside-the-box solutions. Never shy of a challenge, Nic has built his company from the ground up and the testimonials from his clients and team members speak for themselves. A word of warning: Nic has a skill for card games so don’t challenge him to one!

He specialises in the interface between government and SME’s: he has helped over 30 ambitious companies win grant funding, land government contracts and develop profitable products and services.  Working with big companies or government departments can be lucrative and doesn’t have to be onerous with carefully tailored processes that provide the right levels of compliance.

Focused on creating the right strategy and frameworks to allow his teams to deliver results, Ashley has delivered record revenues, successfully scaled sales units and created high-performing teams that beat the market. Ashley has extensive experience of specialist B2C and B2B enterprise sales, and of working in different ownership environments; most recently private equity – high growth, energy and entrepreneurialism. He is proud to demonstrate an extensive history of delivering multi-channel commercial growth, whilst developing high impact new revenue opportunities that complement his purpose values. This experience led Ashley to co-found HdE, a performance growth agency for fast growth digital and tech businesses. HdE currently work with a range of exciting businesses across the West & Wales, Europe, North America and most recently APAC helping them to grow their audience, their brand and their profits.

Paul specialises in corporate finance work with a particular interest in start-up and scale ups. He is committed to helping businesses raise finance through funding rounds, dealing with both small family and friends rounds through to series A venture capital fundraising. He regularly acts for clients on mergers and acquisitions, management buy outs and buy ins, joint venture arrangements and shareholder agreements. Paul is company secretary to the Business and West of England China Bureau and a director of the Happy City Initiative.

With 25 years’ experience in the public relations and marketing sector, her previous roles include head of PR at McCann Erickson and managing director of PR at ThirtyThree. Joanna, who has specific expertise in issues management and the crafting of multi-channel communications campaigns, was recognised as one of the Top 100 Influential Women in the South West in 2018 and is a dedicated mentor and diversity campaigner.

One of the UK’s only BCorp certified businesses of its kind, a technology, data, marketing and recruitment business with a mission and impact that goes far beyond recruitment. In addition co-founding and launching TechTalent Academy. A business that builds careers through the development of new tech skills and transforming companies with diverse talent. Finally he’s also co-founder of enable sales recruitment, a team who work with tech start-ups to build out their business development functions.

He is an investor in and coach to early stage tech startups and develops personalised accelerator programmes for them to achieve better outcomes. Prior to this Tim founded London and New York based startup studio Mint Digital and exited Picklive and Stickygram. Prior to Mint, Tim worked in M&A. Tim has sold companies (including his own) for more than £150m.