Five questions for... Edward Holroyd Pearce, co-founder, Virtual Internships

What does your firm do?

We match candidates with companies looking for remote interns. This allows students and recent graduates to gain exposure to businesses, and valuable remote-working skills, while reducing the logistical and financial costs associated with doing an internship in an office.

What's been your company's greatest achievement so far?

We hit our ambitious three-month sales targets, and have more than 30 people signed up for the programme, with a tiny marketing spend.

What has been your biggest challenge?

It's still early days in remote working, so explaining the benefits of the programme to candidates and also to businesses does take some time. But we are getting better and better at articulating them, and businesses have been very excited to take us up on the service.

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What are your plans for hitting your targets?

We have used our first-phase investment of £70,000 to prove the concept and have received some great feedback. Before the end of the year we are going to raise further funds to allow us to invest in scalability through technology. We have already identified great marketing outlets, so if we can deliver the technological improvements, we will scale up our targets.

What's the one piece of advice you'd give fellow entrepreneurs?

Be ready for the whole range of different situations and skills required to start a business. Passion and conviction for your product or service are essential. But recognise that you'll need to find ways to deal with bureaucracy, finance, hiring and so on. If there are parts you don't enjoy, then be honest with yourself and find people with complementary skills or other coping mechanisms.