Change, from a Tenner

The word “Entrepreneur” is a loanword.  This, as you know, means that it has been borrowed from another language.  French, to be precise.

Perhaps, in its own way, Tenner is a loan project.  Inspired by a vicar, borrowed by some, enhanced by many.  At its core, about lending, borrowing, doing something big with something small.

When I put it to Tom Savage, Scott Cain and the team at Enterprise UK that I thought that the idea “had legs”, I could not have imagined how far it might run.  Nor that the world’s best-known entrepreneur, Sir Richard Branson would, five years later, be encouraging young people to take part.

Today Tenner has been adopted by the excellent charity Young Enterprise, which operates across thousands of schools.  Success, they say, has many parents.  As someone with a smudged and sometimes illegible signature on the birth certificate, it is inspiring and reassuring to see Tenner in the hands of an organisation which, I know, will provide a safe and loving home.

I know that you will join me in wishing Tenner well.  Bon Voyage, as our French cousins might say.

But this is not adieu.  Nor is it even au revoir.  Because I’m looking forward to helping the team at Young Enterprise in the months and years to come, in any way I can.

My hope for Tenner is that it helps people to see that there are many paths to success. That they do not have to conform to someone else’s view of how things ‘should’ be done.  That they can express themselves, have huge amounts of fun, experience the thrill of things ‘going wrong’ and then ‘going right’. All within a relatively ‘safe’ environment, in a short space of time, at a young age.  It’s about the rush of starting something, making something, proving someone right, proving someone wrong.  Discovering something about yourself which makes you feel massively more alive.  And then, when the month is done, following those clues, to do whatever you want to do.

How far does a tenner go these days?  We shall see.