Kashflow and Prince’s Trust

I do commend you to read Kashflow turns down approach from former Sage Chairman on AccountingWeb. I’ve been involved in this in a number of ways and could have written this story myself several months ago but I don’t breach confidences in that way!

Kashflow is a super little company founded with financial help and mentoring from the Prince’s Trust. Duane Jackson, its founder, has had a pretty troubled background – exactly the kind of person that the Prince’s Trust attempts to help. Think Sage on SaaS on very small businesses and you get Kashflow. Duane and Kashflow have been featured at a number of Prince’s Trust Technology Leadership Group (where I was one of the founders and now its Chairman) events. Lord Young, who has done so much to help our group, became a mentor and investor in Kashflow. Alistair Darling suggested that he sells a copy to the Treasury as they clearly needed to get cashflow under control (Yep, this was as close as Darling got to a joke – except it turned out to be true and therefore wasn’t very funny). Jackson got several name checks by Prince Charles at the Windsor Castle bash on 2nd July. Duane managed to get his product under the nose of Bill Gates (see Bill Gates praises Kashflow founder) at another Prince’s Trust event where we’d invited Michael Jackson (ex-Chairman of Sage and Chairman of Elderstreet) . How many small startups get that kind of exposure?

Anyway, as a direct result of this, it looks as if Michael Jackson offered to buy Kashflow for £1m to act as the heart of a new SaaS venture he was planning. Jackson turned him down.

I’m sure that this will not be the last time I report on Kashflow. Jackson has become a great ambassador for what the Prince’s Trust can do. Maybe he’ll share some of the gains when he eventually sells?