Food for thought at the PemBRIDGE CLUB

London, England -- Last night’s quarterly PemBRIDGE CLUB session brought together a mixed audience of about 75: creative, media and tech entrepreneurs, folk from the regional development community and the guys from 4ip ... plus one new intern finding her feet, writes Adele Barlow.

My first day at Pembridge has helped me to test this theory: if ever you're worried about looking like a newbie, prepare a disclaimer saying, “I am a newbie,” and insert it early on into conversation. People not only appreciate your honesty. It also cuts the nightmare of trapping someone into a monologue, with them unsuccessfully trying to converse with a silent deer caught in the headlights.   

As the new Pembridge intern, I come from a social enterprise background, and the finance world is as familiar to me as Burkina Faso. So I was genuinely terrified of dropping a word like ‘equity’ in the wrong place in a conversation when I rucked up to the Soho Bar @ The Groucho Club last night.

Turns out that I needn't have worried. The topic of the session was "equity" and I soon found that there were just as many creative people in the audience asking the same questions as me about accessing loans, EFG funding and angel investment. In a nutshell it was about securing finance for creative, media and technology firms.

Rose Lewis, Partner at Pembridge, welcomed everyone and spoke about how the general mood in the market is that it is beginning to recover; and that entrepreneurs should be feeling more confident as now is a good time to raise money. She introduced entrepreneur Steve Salam of Dene Films, representatives of bankers RBS; Darrel Connell from the Corporate Finance team at Grant Thornton; and Tom Loosemore, Head of 4iP, Channel 4.

Despite the recession, it's not all doom and gloom, Rose pointed out: “There is money out there. We need to get entrepreneurs to increase their confidence and their borrowing; and to help entrepreneurs understand what they could do with their money.”

“Larger, more sophisticated businesses - the big corporates - talk about leveraging their assets. Essentially, this means borrowing,” she continued. “These are highly leveraged businesses, and they have more appetites for borrowing. Now is the time for SMEs to use that model and make the case for banks to lend to help accelerate growth.”

The general consensus was cautious optimism.

“If you need money, the banks are now talking and deals can be done,” Steve Salam said. Although the mood in the industry seems much more positive compared to Q1 2009, he cautioned that it could take entrepreneurs a long, long time to raise money – a viewpoint supported by other members of the panel.

Steve has recent experience of re-financing his business: “Don’t leave it too late, because even though you may get agreement within a few weeks, it can take up to six months to complete,” he advised. “Prepare your case as well as you can. The funders will want a lot of detail on sales pipelines, cash flow, balance sheet forecasts and your P&L. It has to be rock solid.”

Overall, the PemBRIDGE club event got me thinking about the culture-shock that happens when creative types meet financial folk. I have to say that some tasty food and wine helped everyone enjoy the evening, even if I'm still digesting a lot of what I learned.

Which makes me think ... maybe what's needed to make the connection between creativity and commerce is a plain-language translation of the menu.

I'll be sharing more of what I pick up during my time at Pembridge over the coming weeks and months. I can't guarantee that what I write will be as trendy as the Groucho Club. I can assure you that every morsel will be easy to digest.