Mob +44 780 145 6092
Location Stirlingshire, Scotland
Email info@2in10.com or
Click Here to email Alastair direct
Web www.2in10.com
Alastair Balfour is an experienced entrepreneur with a track record of five start-ups since 1984, Alastair has strong non-executive and advisory experience on six boards. He has excellent contacts throughout the Scottish entrepreneurial, financial and advisory sectors as well as particular communication skills as a former journalist.
Training as a journalist with The Scotsman in Edinburgh, Alastair became an industrial reporter (1966-78), joining the Daily Record as economics correspondent (1978-81) before working at the new Sunday Standard as business editor then assistant editor, and being made redundant with the paper's closure in 1983.
In 1984 he co-founded Scottish Business Insider magazine with Ray Perman, as editor from 1986-90, then editorial director, publishing director and finally managing director of Insider Group (1993-99). In that time he launched Northwest Business Insider into Manchester, created Insider's successful events business and launched Insider Custom Publishing, the market-leader in contract publishing in Scotland.
Alastair served five years as chairman of Newsco Publishing, the Manchester-based company that acquired Northwest Business Insider, from 1992-97. This 3i-backed business was subsequently sold in 2000 for £4.1m to Regional Independent Media. He left Insider Group in October 1999 with its £3m sale to the Scottish Daily Record and Sunday Mail Ltd, and entered the private investment and non-exec market.
Since then Alastair has experienced the highs and lows of the entrepreneurial scene, including two business failures (Boondoggle and Vestech). In 2001, in partnership with three experienced entrepreneurs, he launched The Company Creators specialising in strategy and business plan development for start-ups and high-growth companies and helps raise funds. He is chairman of the company and has worked on more than 15 of its projects. In its first three years TC2 helped 56 high-growth ventures including over 20 start-ups. Over £15m of funding has been raised between equity and debt.
2in10 is his latest venture, co-founded at the end of 2004 with David Farquhar. Alastair was a cofounder of The Entrepreneurial Exchange, the Scottish entrepreneurs movement which has made a major difference in encouraging a more enterprising culture in Scotland.
Until 2004 he was a member of the Scottish Advisory Board of Xansa plc (formerly FI Group), the quoted IT systems group. He remains a member of the University of Strathclyde Business School Council.
After leaving Insider Group Alastair co-wrote Working from Home for Dorling Kindersley, the latest in their series of Small Business Guides, which has sold internationally since its launch in June 2001. For 14 years he wrote a weekly business column, ‘Inside View' which surfaced in the Glasgow Herald in 1988, moved to The Scotsman from 1996 and was last seen in Business AM.
