Business With Bite

When ACES Magazine caught up with Nathan Keeley of accountants, tax and business advisers MHA Carpenter Box to talk about BITE 2017, his enthusiasm around the upcoming event was obvious. For those not in the know, BITE, which stands for Business, Innovation, Technology and Efficiency, is a full day’s event aimed at inspiring businesses to grow through forward thinking and the use of technology.

What was the inspiration behind BITE?

As an accountant involved with hundreds of businesses, I’ve always kept an eye on the innovations that can help our clients. I’ve tried to keep at the front of the curve in terms of making the best use of what is out there and passing my experience on. When we came up with the concept of BITE in 2015, it was because we wanted to demonstrate some pretty revolutionary stuff in relation to the future of bookkeeping and accounting in the cloud. The feedback from the over 200 delegates who attended encouraged us to repeat BITE – so here we are again!

So coming onto this year’s event, what’s the plan?

Although the cloud will very much be a feature of BITE 2017, this time we are focusing on empowering entrepreneurs to grow their businesses. We will do that through two innovative keynote slots, a business exhibition and a number of breakout sessions over a full day. We’re really excited about both keynotes, but in particular we are thrilled that we have secured a speaker called Marnus Broodryk from the South African equivalent of Dragons Den which amusingly, given the fact that we are staging BITE, is called ‘Shark Tank! Marnus’ keynote is titled “The Mind of the Successful Entrepreneur” and we think it will be a fascinating insight into the mind of a young entrepreneur who has already made millions.

You mentioned that there were two keynotes, what’s the second?

Finding funding is often an issue for entrepreneurs trying to grow a business or indeed attempting to bring something to the market for the first time. Our second keynote is going to be a fascinating panel discussion around alternative funding. Our panel includes Andy Davis, the former FT City Editor who authored ‘Beyond the Banks,’ as well as representatives from Crowdcube, Satago Coast to Capital and Touch Financial. Delegates will have the opportunity to both submit questions before the event and ask questions on the day. This is the third alternative funding event that we have run the other two being extremely popular and interesting so we expect no less of this one.

With the two keynotes, a business exhibition featuring companies who share a vision around making business better, and up to six breakout sessions from speakers looking to add even more value to the day the problem won’t be filling the day, it will be deciding which bits to leave out because there will be too much for one person. Having a couple of people along from a business would probably allow full coverage on the day.