Growth & Jobs | FAJ bolsters SME support with five months of virtual meetups

THE PANDEMIC has interrupted many activities, but First Angels Jamaica (FAJ) remains committed to founders of start-ups and early-stage companies, ensuring their exposure to valuable knowledge and new skills to support the growth of their businesses. The FAJ has announced that it will host a series of five virtual meetups for founders of high-growth potential start-ups and early-stage companies between this October and February 2021.

First Angels Jamaica (FAJ) has created a reputation over the years of being Jamaica’s first and most active angel investor network, providing founders with ‘smarT’ capital. This includes promoting good governance, mentorship, coaching and workshops geared at equipping company founders with the relevant knowledge and resources to succeed in business and grow the entrepreneurial ecosystem. The FAJ has a strong belief that the key to Jamaica’s economic development is growth-oriented through small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

AFFORDABLE OPPORTUNITY

“Many people are faced with the challenge of growing their businesses during this time. We are excited and we look forward to providing an affordable opportunity to SMEs in support of the growth of their business. We have carefully curated the topics of these meetups to focus on some of the key issues that founders will need to address as they work to survive and thrive during this ‘new normal’ business environment,” said Sandra Glasgow, co-founder of FirstAngelsJA.

The first presenter will be Andrew Nooks, director of Symptai Consulting Limited. The meetup will be held tomorrow and the topic of discussion is ‘Cybersecurity: Securing business and client information’. Nooks has over 27 years of experience in the information and communications technology industry. “As more and more small businesses have an online presence, cyberattacks pose an ever-increasing risk. Many people think that only big businesses face cyberattacks, but the evidence is that small businesses are the new frontier for cybercriminals. SMEs are more vulnerable because they may not have the dedicated information technology staff and network security systems to ward off attacks,” shared Glasgow.

Other speakers for the virtual series include Gregory Peart, who leads the NCB merchant sales and relationship team, and will address ‘Leveraging digital technology to enhance business growth’; Carmella Vong who is an account manager on the Google Ads mid-market team; and Jeremy Neuner, who is the head of start-up content at Google. Vong will discuss ‘Building and scaling products with the best of Google – its people and advanced technologies’, and Neuner will lead the last two virtual meetups that will discuss ‘What founders need to know about managing people and culture’.