AUB and Dorset Business Angels join forces to get the region’s creative student businesses investment-ready
Chief Finance and Operating Officer Mehjabeen Patrick on Arts University Bournemouth and Dorset Business Angels plans to work closely, and why she believes the region is sitting on investable talent that just needs the right support to get pitch-ready
Arts University Bournemouth (AUB) and Dorset Business Angels (DBA) are working on building a new collaboration designed to help creative student and graduate businesses in the region become genuinely investment-ready, bridging the gap between AUB’s Innovation Studio and DBA’s network of local angel investors.
The collaboration is being driven by Mehjabeen Patrick, AUB’s Chief Finance and Operating Officer, who has also recently joined Dorset Business Angels as a member and angel investor in her own right.
A new member with a lot to offer
Mehjabeen brings 25 years of finance and investment experience to DBA, built across banking, not-for-profits and the creative industries. She’s not new to angel investing either, she’s backed a couple of companies with her own money, with her most recent investment made this April, and she currently sits on the investment committee for the Social Tech Venture Fund and British Design Fund and chairs the investment advisory committee for City fund run by the Bristol and Bath Regional Council.
That mix of hands-on investing experience and deep knowledge of how creative businesses actually work makes her well placed to help DBA spot opportunities in a sector that investors often misunderstand and, as Chief Finance and Operating Officer at AUB, to help build the bridge between the university’s students and DBA’s network in the first place.
“I’ve got a good network of prolific angel investors around me and a real interest in investing, because of my background setting up funds, running funds, and backing companies,” she says. “Joining DBA means I can be a bit more active, keep an eye on what’s coming through, and see where I can get more involved.”
DBA’s Chairman, Don McQueen, welcomed her involvement. “Mehjabeen brings exactly the kind of experience we love to see in our membership, a genuine track record as an investor, combined with a deep understanding of how creative businesses actually work,” he said. “Having her at AUB as well means we’ve now got a real ally inside one of the region’s leading universities, helping us reach founders earlier and helping them get investment-ready. We’re delighted to welcome her.”
Getting the region’s businesses investor-ready
The idea for closer working came out of conversations Mehjabeen had with DBA’s Peter Eales and fellow investors as they looked at what’s holding the region’s founders back from securing investment.
“There’s a huge amount of energy and ambition in the businesses coming through this region, that’s never been the issue,” says Peter Eales, Managing Director of DBA. “The challenge has always been getting them investor-ready. The ideas and the plans are there; what we need is to help founders shape them into pitches our investors can back. That’s exactly why this work with AUB matters so much to us.”
Mehjabeen’s answer isn’t to rush AUB’s student ventures straight in front of investors, it’s to build the groundwork first.
Building an investor readiness pathway
“We don’t think all our businesses are ready to be put in front of investors yet,” Mehjabeen explains. “I think the most productive role we can play right now is to develop an investor readiness pathway together.”
In practice, that could mean DBA investors running masterclasses for AUB students, reviewing early-stage pitches, and hosting mock pitching sessions to help founders sharpen their story before they ever step into a room with real investors.
“It’s about starting early, and really bringing investors in to see what’s actually happening on the ground with these students,” she says. “There are some really good ideas here.”
The businesses coming through AUB
Those ideas are increasingly technology-led. AUB’s Innovation Studio already supports student and graduate ventures using facilities most universities simply don’t have, including motion capture and virtual production technology, laser cutting, and Hollow Box, an interactive virtual avatar system now installed at Dorset Museum.
Mehjabeen expects this kind of technology-enabled business, spanning film production, product design and cross-sector ventures using creative tech in fields like healthcare and sport, to be of particular interest to DBA’s investors, alongside AUB’s strong pipeline of illustration, design and agency start-ups.
AUB has already tasked Innovation Studio with picking up the conversation with DBA directly, with a first joint event now in the pipeline.
Why creative businesses get overlooked and why that’s wrong
Mehjabeen’s confidence in what AUB has coming through is backed by a career-long argument: that creative businesses are too often written off by investors for the wrong reasons.
“Creative companies are rich in intellectual property. They have talent, they have audience relationships, they understand their customers,” she says. “But they’re light on the kind of tangible assets: buildings, equipment, patents that a lot of investors instinctively look for. So they get seen as risky, when the evidence actually shows the opposite is often true.”
It’s a case she made throughout her 17 years at Creative UK, during which research she carried out showed that creative businesses are, in many cases, no riskier, and sometimes less risky, than start-ups in other sectors.
An unconventional career path
Mehjabeen’s route to AUB has been anything but conventional: a senior banking career at Pakistan’s first women-run bank, an MBA at the University of Exeter, and 17 years at Creative UK, where she rose to Chief Finance and Investment Officer and built a fund that backed more than a thousand creative businesses. She joined AUB just over two years ago and has since helped steady the university’s finances while pushing forward its Strategy 2030+ ambition to become a genuinely entrepreneurial university.
Where students can start right now
Mehjabeen wants to encourage AUB students, graduates and academics to make use of DBA’s dedicated University Entrepreneurs page in the meantime, at dorsetbusinessangels.co.uk/university-entrepreneurs. It lays out, in plain terms, what “investment-ready” actually looks like, from having a clear cap table and shareholders’ agreement in place, to pulling together a proper pitch deck, business plan and three-year financial model. It’s also refreshingly honest about why funding often gets turned down, whether that’s incomplete paperwork or unrealistic numbers, and it points founders who aren’t quite there yet toward further support, with a direct email address for anyone who wants to start the conversation early.
What’s next
The collaboration is still in its early stages, but the direction is clear.
“Bringing AUB’s credibility and Dorset Business Angels’ credibility together is exactly what this region needs,” Mehjabeen says. “There’s real talent here. We just need to help it get investment-ready.”