Matt Freckelton, the 23-year-old entrepreneur who's won £5,000 and a two year programme of mentoring support in the Lloyds TSB Enterprise Awards, is a man with ambition.
Two years ago, Matt noticed how many politicians used social media platforms as promotional channels, and how few people were leveraging that data commercially.
He quickly got his Yatterbox site running "on a shoestring" to aggregate politicians' output on social media sites.
"We're building real-time online intelligence platforms so organisations can keep on top of political data," explains Matt. He now reckons he's working with about one third of all UK PR agencies.
He's happy with Yatterbox's growth: "We're doing pretty well. We've created half a dozen jobs, so we're doing something right". But, if you press him, he'll admit he'd "really like to have been in five countries across three continents with 100 staff by now!"
Unlocking further potential
Matt sees the potential of Lloyds TSB's two-year mentoring programme to help him achieve that ambition. "The fact that it's coming from the Bank adds clout; it'll be really good accessing knowledge at that high level and plugging into support, networks and leads.
"The mentoring will be invaluable in unlocking further ideas . We're entering a rapid growth phase in the business, so we'll be looking closely at building in the right practices to ensure the company is as turnkey and streamlined as possible.
"Here in York, there's quite a hub of like-minded enterprises, entrepreneurs and business support networks. I know many who have positively benefited from mentor support – I've never met anyone who says it hasn't been valuable."
Matt also emphasises the importance of accessing expertise from a variety of sources, wherever and whenever you can. "It's always interesting to get different takes on what you do, but people might see mentorship in different ways. For instance, we have mentors on our board of directors. We've never really called them mentors, but that's what they are doing."
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