Resources to support your business growth.

Princes Trust offer an Enterprise programme to equip you with the training, tools and mentoring support you need to start your own business. They also offer the chance to apply for a low-interest loan.

StartUp Loans give advice on business plans and cash flow forecasts. All applicants will be paired with a business adviser , who will offer support and mentoring through the application process.

Better Business Finance have produced a cohesive ‘ Business Account Opening Guide’, to help aspiring entrepreneurs set up and run a successful company. They offer continuous financial support, and also provide help constructing business plans.

The Scotent Smart Scotland Grant provides grants to Small to Medium Enterprises based in Scotland. The grant helps businesses undertake technical feasibility studies and research and development (R&D) projects that have a commercial endpoint.

The Standard Innovation Voucher encourages new first time partnerships between a company and a university or further education college. The value of a Standard Innovation Voucher is between £1,000 and £5,000, which covers the academic project costs and is paid directly to the university or college.

Zero Waste Scotland support and fund opportunities for Scottish SME’s, who are helping to create a more circular economy. Resource Efficient Scotland offers a free consultation with one of their specialists.

This microgrant offers £250 to work on your business or project as a LGBTQ+ business owner or ally. The parameters are flexible and the applications are open multiple times per year.

Enterprise Nation support a variation of businesses. Their membership gives access to a range of tailored benefits such as; connections, resources, promotion and financial advice.

Espark focus mainly on developing an entrepreneurial mindset and the attitude of the people involved in the business. From 1st March 2018, Entrepreneurial Spark will be supporting organisations across the globe to create and build their own ‘acceleration programmes’.

Young Enterprise Scotland develop opportunities for young people across all of Scotland. (YES) is a registered charity that has been working to inspire young people to develop through enterprise in Scotland for over 25 years. They can provide access to workshops, training and potential funding.

Business Gateway is a publicly funded service that provides access to free business support services in Scotland.  They give advice to people starting or growing their business through online support and funded workshops/events.

Scotland Can Do issued a ‘shared statement of intent’ towards becoming a ‘world-leading entrepreneurial and innovative nation’. On their partners page, they list organisations who offer different kinds of help to businesses throughout the UK.

Women’s Enterprise Scotland is a not-for-profit Community Interest Company which works to create an entrepreneurial environment where women-led businesses can flourish. They inspire, advocate, influence and champion women in business.

Future-X organise unique events and programmes that bring together visionary entrepreneurs and private sector leaders.

AWS Activate is a program with resources designed to help startups get started on AWS. Join some of the fastest-growing startups in the world and build your business using AWS.

As a member of BRT you can now access you can now access this service with free credits for up to 2 years!

Angels Den is an online investment platform that allows individuals to invest in early-stage companies. Prior to launch, Angels Den will provide companies with a lead investor who will invest their own money, time and connections to help the business grow.

Par Equity is a venture capital firm created to facilitate investment into smaller companies with high growth potential. They are primarily interested in innovative companies.

Equity Gap is a group of private individuals who invest and support emerging and growing businesses in Scotland. The group are particularly interested in assisting young companies that have achieved the SMART award.

Investing Women support female entrepreneurs throughout the UK. They offer advice on networking and how to apply for their grants. Their typical range of investment is between £50,000 and £250,000 of capital in early stage ventures that are based in Scotland.

SIES is designed to help companies raise money when they are starting to trade. They do this by offering tax reliefs to individual investors, who buy new shares in a company. If your company has been trading for less than two years and have less than £200,000 of assets, then you may be able to attract an investment of up to £150,000.

Mercia Fund Management provides the ‘Complete Capital Solution,’ offering a range of debt, venture and growth capital to UK SMEs.

Design thinking 101 will help you to understand the building blocks of thinking creatively.

History of Design Thinking describes the background of design, including an overview and visualisation of the six phases of the design thinking process.

Strategyzer is a global standard used by millions of people in all types of companies. The canvas can be used to describe, design, challenge, and pivot your business model.

Disciplined Entrepreneurship is a 24-step intensive process created by Bill Aulet, Managing Director of the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship and explained in the book and workbook with the same name.

A tool for converting and resizing PDF documents ready for transferring.

Copy.ai is a content generator, for emails, social media posts, blogs, and more. 

Another tool for generating blog posts based on information you submit into the tool.  

Jasper creates written and visual content for marketing, social media and sales.

Otter records meetings, takes notes in real time, and generates an automated summary to share with everyone and to help you remember everything.

Generate endless AI faces to use in promotional materials.

Typeform helps build engaging forms for caputring market reasearch and feedback from clients.

Create forms for all purposes in seconds, without knowing how to code, and for free.

Create forms that can accept payment and generate intuitive reports, automating your workflow.

One of the most popular form building tools, as you can access from any google account. Repsonses can be exported automatically to a spreadsheet.

A free guide from Enterprise Nation detailing ways you can start your entrepreneurial journey while still a student.

TinyJPG allows you to resize and compress your files for use in digital media or to send to clients.

PNGWing has a selection of cut out design elements with transparent backgrounds to add to your digital media.

Icons8 has a range of design elements including vector files, ready to download.

Storyset allows users to customise and animate illustrations to use in presentations and digital media.

Pexels has a wide range of free stock photography.

Unsplash has a wide range of stock photography.

Figma is a collaborative design platform, where teams can work on proojects together.

Upload any image to create AI designs, automatically removing backgrounds, enhancing colours, adjusting shadows, and more.

Another tool for creating logos, but also has embedded features for creating printed materials featuring your logo.

This tool helps you generate a professional logo to use across your platforms.

This tool removes the background from images, great if you are looking to isolate your products.

Frontify helps users to simplify their brand management by centralising key assets and materials.

Canva is a graphic design platform, used to create social media graphics, presentations, printed materials etc. It has lots of free templates and is very user friendly.

Coolors helps you to generate a colour scheme for your brand or designs.

Startup Grind is a global startup community designed to educate, inspire, and connect entrepreneurs.

Future X have a team of experts that create unique opportunities and events for entrepreneurs to learn from each other.

Creative Edinburgh is the largest network of creatives in Edinburgh. They support creative individuals and businesses, helping them to create, collaborate and stay connected at every stage of their careers.

Creative Mornings is a free monthly breakfast lecture series, designed for creative communities. They hosts events in over 180 cities worldwide, in 65 countries. Their events are run by approximately 1,500 volunteer organisers.

Creative Mornings is a free monthly breakfast lecture series, designed for creative communities. They hosts events in over 180 cities worldwide, in 65 countries. Their events are run by approximately 1,500 volunteer organisers.

Udemy offer 65,000 online courses in a variety of fresh topics.

Startup Stash is a directory of resources and tools to help entrepreneurs build and develop a company.

Alison offer free online courses from the world’s leading experts.

Discover a range of free learning content designed to help your business or in your career.

Professionals sharing their experince and knowledge through presentations and infographics.

Calendly is a scheduling automation platform for eliminating the back-and-forth emails, as you can scheduled available times for people to book direct.

Free PDF editing in browser.

A variety of free online tools, for editing PDF's merging documents, resiszing files, and much more. mails, as you can scheduled available times for people to book direct.

An all-in-one workspace that allows you to access a variety of apps to manage your projects and workloads.

A very user friendly CRM software.

Grammarly helps users with grammar, spelling, and tone to help improve professional communication.

Zapier centralises and automates much of the common daily tasks of business owners and entrepreneurs.

This analysis tool helps evaluate the quality of your headlines, and how likely they are to be reposted and shared to maximise your reach.

In minutes, you can collect text and video testimonials from your customers with no need for a developer or website hosting.

Connect with a wide range of professionals who can support with adhoc projects.

With Fiverr, you can request adhoc work such as copywriting, design work, research, and more. You cna also advertise your own skill set to connect with new clients.