Just 12 months ago Alastair Cameron, Recruitment Business Manager was facing redundancy. Rather than get despondent and downbeat about the challenging employment market, he instead decided to try and create his own job and future.

After successfully applying for funding from Arts Council NI, he set about creating a new platform to bring fellow self starting individuals together. That platform has now been revealed to the world. Startacus the self start society has just been launched!

The Startacus platform aims to inspire, support and motivate people across the UK and Ireland to fully realise their self start potential. Startacus will be bringing together a community of self starters who can help and support each other and it will be a place where this community will find the tools and resources that they need to properly flourish. In the autumn, Startacus will be developing further when it will allow its’ members to add projects and collaborate together on turning those projects into actual reality.

Explaining the thinking behind Startacus, Alastair Cameron, explained:

“ When faced with redundancy and wanting to create my own job, I felt that there was a massive gulf between having that initial eureka moment and taking the next step to becoming self employed. I recognized that I wasn’t alone in not knowing where to go next. I wanted to create something that would help other people in my position.

I felt too that existing platforms aimed at self starters all tend to focus on those who have purely financial motivations for doing their own thing. Whilst of course this is not a bad thing, there are many people who want to simply follow their passions and who are instead motivated by being creative, using their talents and following their dreams. I wanted to create a platform that was all inclusive - where the independent creative and the more business focused self starter could come together, to connect, create and collaborate.”

The Arts Council’s Creative Industries Innovation Fund is providing seed funding for local companies to plug skills gaps and encourage growth within this important sector.

David McConnell, Creative industries Development Fund Officer at the Arts Council, commented:

“Startacus is an original idea from two young entrepreneurs who want to create business support for other creative start-ups. The Creative Industries are one of the fastest growing sectors of the economy. We already have the resources and talent here and if we continue to support local companies in developing their ideas, Northern Ireland will be much better equipped to compete at the forefront of the global market.”

There is a train of thought that society is broken, that the economy will continue to shrink and that good jobs will become harder to find and even harder to keep. But Startacus does not accept this philosophy or this mindset and believes with the launch of their self starter platform they are helping potential self starters everywhere get that little bit closer to doing their own thing!

Take a look at the Startacus site and join too if you think you are a self starter as well!