A small business accelerator launched five years ago has created more than 250 jobs and generated millions of dollars in investment.

Ignite Bermuda was established in 2019 by KPMG and New Venture Holdings and has grown to take over two floors of space on Wesley Street, in Hamilton, which was donated by Argus. Its first cohort started in May that year.

According to Ignite’s executive director, Sean Reel, the scheme has been an overwhelming success with every cohort two or three times oversubscribed.

Mr Reel said every business was tracked after leaving Ignite and that he had calculated it had helped to create more than 250 jobs.

“It’s a huge milestone,” he said. “We track all the people who have been through the programme.

“We know how much revenue they’ve created and we know what the increase in jobs was during the programme and after the programme.”

Mr Reel also tracks the success rate of the businesses that come through Ignite and he believes they outperform other similar schemes around the world.

“For each cohort, we measure how many of them survive two years afterwards and in Bermuda more than 75 per cent survive.

“Typically, if they didn’t come through Ignite or they were in another territory, 75 per cent of them would fail in that two year period.

“I’ve looked at this across the world. I’ve looked at the data for conversion success rates. The numbers here are the highest conversion rate.”

Mr Reel believes part of the reason behind the high conversion rate was because Bermudians have traditionally worked more than one job to survive.

As a result, they were used to a culture of being able to “balance as many hats and spin as many plates as possible”.

“In a lot of other cultures that is not as evident and the failure rate is much higher.”

He added: “We’ve also got probably the highest level of female entrepreneurs as well. In most other territories around the world, it’s predominantly males.”

Mr Reel praised those who had volunteered to help or sponsor the programme, including Argus, KPMG and Centennial, saying Ignite could not have achieved its impact without their help.

Just over five years ago, Ignite set up a sister company called the Bermuda Investor Community Limited, a regulated business which has “all the approvals of the Bermuda Monetary Authority to raise capital”.

“We connect the high-net-worth individuals of Bermuda with young entrepreneurs and we’ve now helped to secure more than $6 million in equity investment,” said Mr Reel.

Originally based on one floor, the space has expanded with the addition of a second floor where some businesses that have gone through the programme are now based.

It is a subsidised space and Mr Reel added: “We’ve saved businesses $750,000 by creating a co-working space.”

“We’re going do a big party when we've got to $1 million saved for local entrepreneurs.”

Ignite now employs three other full-time staff helping to provide more services and releasing Mr Reel to focus on future initiatives such as clearing roadblocks preventing small businesses from thriving.

He pointed out one example, saying: “We started with an exercise with one of the banks and did a bank opening day with nine or ten entrepreneurs and we took them through the banking process.”

Mr Reel said not only did the entrepreneurs get a better understanding of the requirements, but so did the bank which realised its forms could be improved.

“We are working with the banks to try and make that whole process easier.”

He believes that 65 per cent of the jobs in Bermuda within two years “will be the jobs that are created through entrepreneurial means, not through international business”

Asked why and he said: “I think the advances in artificial intelligence and the cost pressures on businesses to merge and to downsize.”

Mr Reel added: “It’s all about jobs. Jobs and diversity for Bermuda, that’s our mission.”