The entrepreneurial FD

by Catherine Woods - Monday, 26th November 2007 -

Colin Glass didn’t have to give up his day job to satisfy his entrepreneurial spirit. He’s combined his passion for SMEs with a profession that brings in the cash – accountancy.

Twenty years ago the firm he founded – Leeds-based Winburn Glass Norfolk Chartered Accountants – started offering FD and other accountancy services to SMEs that couldn’t otherwise afford in-house support.

“We started our practice from scratch in 1975. We had to have a bit of an edge and I fancy myself as being a bit entrepreneurial so we decided to offer this model. It’s worked quite well. We’ve taken four companies from start up to AIM,” Glass says.

The model is this: the firm is prepared to “roll up” traditional time costs, and risk that they may never be recovered, but take a small equity stake in the business “as we believe we can add value”.

One of the small companies Glass is FD of is Yorkshire-based Go Sim, which produces international pre-paid SIM cards. “They needed to raise some funding and I specialise in raising funding and helping small companies develop,” Glass says.

The idea is for the companies to grow to a size where they can provide their own accountancy support in-house.

“Not too many firms have copied us because it’s high risk. Only a few deals come off,” Glass says. “You’re always lagging behind on the traditional time-cost basis.

“We would like to think we can recover those costs but it’s not always possible so we hope the small equity holding we have will produce a capital gain.”

Picture source

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