Blackpool entrepreneurs to launch tech hub

A Blackpool entrepreneur who created a £3.4m turnover-a-year business is helping to launch a new venture aimed at making the coast a hub for technology and online companies.
Entrepreneurs  Peter Brookes and Elliot Evans who are launcvhing Team HQ a new tech business development hub in BisphamEntrepreneurs  Peter Brookes and Elliot Evans who are launcvhing Team HQ a new tech business development hub in Bispham
Entrepreneurs Peter Brookes and Elliot Evans who are launcvhing Team HQ a new tech business development hub in Bispham

Peter Brooks who founded Trusted Travel which offers a range of meet and greet, park and ride and airport parking and lounge services has helped create Team HQ to encourage new tech start-ups in the Blackpool area.

The new business incubator will be based at Darwin Court in Bispham in the office above Trusted Travel.

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His partner in the new business Elliot Evans said they were inspired by wanting to help people create their own new businesses and concerned that too many talented young tech and internet savvy youngsters from the Fylde Coast were moving away to London to find work.

Elliot said: “There is lots of talent here coming out of the colleges but there needs to be hub of tech businesses to help retain it.

“And we want to dispel the image that everything in this area is closing.”

He said Team HQ to provide hot desks for developers and start-ups access to high quality internet services, a social hub to bounce ideas as well as regular mentoring and advice seminars from Fylde coast experts.

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Peter, who started Trusted Travel with just £1,500 in his garage in early 2016 said: “Even now in 2018 there still a lot of businesses which don’t operate online and have not developed their digital capabilities and many have not made the culture change needed to be successful.

“There is so much more than just having a Facebook page.

“Trusted Travel has traded just shy of £8m in under three years. It has not been easy, it is still not easy but it shows it can be done.

“There are lots of people working hard for someone else out there. They could apply that effort to their won online business.

“We want to create an entrepreneurial eco-system here hence the name Team which stands for The entrepreneurial advancement machine.

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“Running your own business does not have to be scary and our ethos is that people can help and support each other. You can have a successful business by doing good. It does not have to be cut-throat competition.”

Elliot added that they had developed two developmental programmes for start-ups and were due to launch next year.