How Economic Development Organisations can identify and support growing businesses at the right time
About shipshape.vc
shipshape.vc is an investment search engine that helps entrepreneurs identify relevant investors for their companies. The platform enables founders to search for funds and investors globally based on their specific domain. This potentially reduces research time that might otherwise take months.
The search engine addresses a common challenge facing entrepreneurs: the time-intensive process of identifying investors who are genuinely interested in their particular sector and development stage.
Why shipshape.vc Focused on Economic Development Organisations
Ken Poole, Head of Economic Development at Cardiff Council, initially alerted shipshape.vc to the role that economic development plays in terms of the local and national economy. Poole noted that the platform was identifying high-growth potential businesses through usage patterns, which presented an opportunity for local economic development efforts.
This led to incorporating geographic data into the platform’s functionality. By tracking specific zip codes and postcodes, the system began identifying high-potential businesses within particular jurisdictions. For EDOs seeking more effective ways to support local businesses, this geographic precision offers new possibilities for targeted business retention and expansion programs.
Understanding Business Retention and Expansion (BRE)
Business Retention and Expansion represents a critical component of local economic growth strategy. Most jobs created in a local economy come from existing businesses. They might be expanding their workforce by 5% to 10%. While these percentages may seem modest for individual companies, when aggregated across all businesses within a particular jurisdiction, they represent substantial job creation numbers.
This explains why economic development organisations place such emphasis on BRE initiatives. However, managing these relationships from an aftercare perspective presents significant challenges for EDOs, particularly when it comes to identifying which businesses are ready for expansion and support.
How shipshape.vc Supports BRE Efforts
When companies use shipshape.vc, they complete forms that capture information about employee count, capital requirements, revenue, and location. This data can then be shared with relevant EDOs through designated alert systems.
Rather than waiting for businesses to discover available support programs, EDOs can identify when local businesses are actively seeking investment. The timing of these alerts can potentially improve the effectiveness of business support interventions.
Giving EDOs a Proactive Role in Business Support
Traditional economic development outreach often relies on general marketing efforts that may not reach businesses at the right time. A data-driven approach to identifying businesses actively seeking capital can be a useful way of tackling this challenge.
By providing information about businesses that are currently expanding, EDOs can engage at moments when support is most relevant, rather than relying solely on broad promotional campaigns about available programs.
Making Better Use of Grant Funding Resources
Grant funding presents a persistent challenge in economic development. Substantial resources are often underutilised despite being specifically allocated for business support. These funds, whether from central or local government sources, frequently represent tens of millions of dollars, euros, or pounds managed by relatively small teams with multiple responsibilities.
The marketing and promotion of these funds typically receives insufficient investment, creating a disconnect between available resources and businesses that could benefit from them. shipshape.vc helps bridge this gap by identifying businesses at the precise moment they need capital support, ensuring grant funding reaches its intended recipients more effectively.
How shipshape.vc Can Help 'Crowd In' Private Capital
EDOs can sometimes offer grant funding that’s conditional on private investment. When EDOs can identify local businesses that are raising capital and provide conditional funding support, this may create additional assurance for private investors.
Public sector involvement can potentially reduce perceived investment risks and encourage private capital participation. Public funding can therefore be used strategically to attract additional private investment, rather than replacing it entirely.
These data-driven approaches to economic development represent one way of addressing persistent challenges in business support and funding allocation. By focusing on timing and targeting, such methods may help improve the efficiency of both public and private investment in local business growth.
