Following the establishment of a new collaboration between Malta Enterprise and the University of Malta’s Centre for Entrepreneurship and Business Incubation (CEBI) that will provide start-ups with pre-application support and mentoring, Maltese portal BusinessNow.mt interviewed Ing. Joseph Bartolo, who manages TAKEOFF, and Prof. Russell Smith, Director of CEBI.
They talked about how CEBI and TAKEOFF were conceived in 2012 as an EU-funded project with a study programme designed by Oxford University Consultancy. Among the consultants were Prof. Smith himself.
With over 150 students being CEBI alumni, and going on to set up their businesses, both Ing. Bartolo and Prof. Smith feel honoured to pass on their knowledge to those who need it to take the next steps to success.
Among the overload of information available about start-ups, the TAKEOFF proposition to help those looking to make this step, is about speeding to success.
Prof. Smith compared businesses to ice cream – saying “it’s all made the same way, but with different flavours”, with flavours representing the economic sector the businesses are active in.
What the CEBI offers is a step-by-step guide to building a business that is equally applicable to the person working from home to the person building an empire.
The interview, conducted by Mr Robert Fenech, can be read in its entirety online.