Raising Finance

Going from the eureka moment of SuperJam to actually seeing the finished product on the shelves was a process that required hundreds of thousands of pounds of investment. Since I wasn't in a position to raise any finance from a bank or investor, being so young, I had to figure out how to get my ideas off the ground without much financial backing at all.

My family certainly wasn't in a position to lend me any money and I had little more than a few thousand pounds in savings, mostly money that I had made from selling home-made jam on a relatively small scale for the previous year or two.

Money was needed for product development, design, jars, lids, fruit and promoting the story to the press. All of those things cost money that I simply didn't have, so I had to consider all of the different options available to me for raising finance. I spoke to charities, such as The Prince's Trust, and even met with potential investors and banks, sharing my business plan with them.