At the Tyneside Cinema today, investors will hear from the teams that have been forging promising start-ups in the high-intensity environment of the Ignite100 programme. John Hill looks at how it came about and what it offers to potential business owners with promising ideas.

THE first time I wandered up to the sprawling loft in central Newcastle, they were putting out chairs in a small end room like they were planning a school assembly.

The teams selected for the first ever Ignite100 accelerator programme had settled into the space where they’d work and occasionally sleep for three months, nudging their ideas around on sofas, tapping furiously behind desks and brewing ideas by the coffee machine.

But in a couple of hours, they’d be jotting down advice from Foursquare co-founder Dennis Crowley, live from New York City via Skype.

The Ignite programme is effectively Europe’s first £1m business accelerator, offering teams the chance to secure £100,000 in investment each after undergoing 13-weeks of intensive start-up development in Newcastle.

But the real value of the programme is that it looks to answer the age-old problem of how a great start-up gets hold of the quality advice it needs to progress, and builds the contacts it needs to succeed.

Every day, each team was bombarded with advice, with several mentors visiting the loft to offer feedback on how the business should develop. These ranged from Foursquare’s Crowley to venture capital experts, fellow start-up founders, and even an actor giving public speaking tips.

“The money is important, but it hasn’t been as significant as the mentoring and help we’ve received”, says Mark Ryan, co-founder of Ignite100 participant Blooie. “We’ve saved ourselves four years of failure in 13 weeks. We wouldn’t have clicked so easily if we hadn’t had these conversations with people.”

The North East has been torn away from the comforting embrace of One North East. Funding from our regional development agency has dried up, and it’s forced people to ask important questions about what a business needs to survive in the modern world.

Funding is still available to an extent from private investors such as venture capital firms, but money’s only useful if you use it properly.

So why not tap into the advice of the thousands of driven and willing people that have walked the same trail, and can help push embryonic businesses in the right direction?