James & Marco: Co-Founders of FindInvestGrow.com

Find, Invest, Grow. Three words that any budding young business person will need to negotiate as they launch their start-up. But help is now finally at hand in the form of FIG (Find, Invest, Grow), a new start-up company launched to help young entrepreneurs fund their business projects in the form of investors and outsourcing. FIG helps students and business graduates alike, create their projects in earlier stages by finding them investors as it is hard to obtain the resources with such little experience.

James King (the company director) founded Find Invest Grow in September 2009 after being frustrated from his personal experiences of trying to raise funds for his own business start-up. He decided to create something that would give support and funding to students and fresh graduates for free. Something they could use to find someone who will take them seriously as banks, angel investors and venture capital firms would look upon their ideas with little sincerity. King then started work with business partners James Herbert and Marco Geninazza, creating a sustainable and scalable model that would do just this. And so www.findinvestgrow.com was spawned.

FIG have strategic partners who they open the doors to after business ideas have been submitted and fleshed out by students and graduates themselves. The suitable investors – known as FIGureheads – access the unique website filtering through the material that they’re interested in. This helps them find investment opportunities that they believe will directly benefit themselves and the creator. The final stage is implementing the investment and birthing the idea into a start-up business.

What makes James King so in touch and hands-on is that he has actually been in the same shoes as many students trying to find investors to help start the development of business ideas. King worked with a variety of events companies as a business analyst, teaming up with some of the internet industries most influential professionals. He later gained a scholarship to Leeds Universities Entrepreneurial Scholarship Scheme on its debut. Whilst still studying as a full time student, King managed to raise £150,000 for a business venture that he had been working on. It is obvious to him that students need a simple route to finding the right investors to help their business grow.

Kings business partners James Herbert and Marco Geninazza are also no strangers to the student life. Herbert started his company Brightsparks Recruitment, as he studied at Durham University and has seen it grow from just a mobile phone and a laptop to a key supplier of staff to international events at world famous venues such as the Wembley Stadium and Twickenham. Herbert provided the initial finance for FIG.

Marco Geninazza graduated from University College London before working in Marketing, PR and Event Management. He also worked for London’s most established events company Nick House Entertainment Ltd, where he was responsible for the brand images, PR and marketing. He helped them raise an annual turnover of £1.4 Million.