Real Business

13:40: "I know this room is full of entrepreneurs because you're all so unruly!" says Stelios as he takes to the stage.

Stelios admits that he woke up feeling depressed: "I'm getting old," he moans. "I realised I'm the same age as the PM of the UK."

Stelios is here to talk about giving back to society. He refers to the three Es: education (providing scholarships); entrepreneurship (awards for disabled entrepreneurs and grants for joint ventures between Greek and Turkish Cypriots); and the environment ("I admit that I've money through polluting the world and yes, I feel guilty about it").

13:55: Next up, Michael Jackson, founder of Elderstreet, on creating Britain's future entrepreneurs.

Jackson says very few successful businesses were started by a great idea or by a particularly clever person. They were run, instead, by people willing to take risks and seize the day.

He points to Sage. It wasn't started by a tech whiz but by a former printer, David Goldman. His business has been chugging along. Attending the PCW Show at Olympia in London, Goldman saw Alan Sugar's Amstrad 8256 in action, and recognised a massive opportunity. He returned to Newcastle-Upon-Tyne to build accounting software for the machine and then started selling the product for £99 a pop. "The success of that piece of software was extraordinary," recalls Jackson, one of the original  Sage investors. "I remember walking into the offices and not being able to get through the door; there were mailbags full of cheques for £99 blocking my way. The company's turnover just went up and up."

His second example of carpe diem is late entrepreneur Chris Dawes. "I first met him at his fancy offices in Putney. He turned up in motorbike leathers, puffing a huge Havana cigar. Chris was running a business selling hardware to British telcos and was turning over about £10m a year. Sensing a demand for network management software, he sold that business and invested every single penny in setting up Micromuse. It soon became the leading supplier in 'service-level management software'. The business exploded. It started turning over hundreds of thousands of pounds, millions, tens of millions, then hundreds of millions, spreading to 50 countries. He  cornered a market most did not even know existed. He moved its headquarters to San Francisco, relocating his whole family. At its peak, it had a market cap of £9bn.

14:15: Nicholas Neveling, mid-market editor of our sister title Real Deals, joins Jackson on stage and invites professor Russel Griggs of the CBI's SME Council, Nigel Hammond of Vespa Capital and Ed Cottrell of Investec (the headline sponsor of this year's Entrepreneurs' Summit) to take part in a panel discussion on the financing required for tomorrow's high-growth businesses.