Simon Dolan believes that all the best business ideas can be distilled into a few sentences. "My whole philosophy is that you don't need business plans—most businesses start from a small idea," says the serial entrepreneur and investor.

This is the thinking behind his latest venture, offering budding entrepreneurs the opportunity to speed-pitch for investment, Dragons' Den style, through Twitter. Dolan has earmarked £1m to invest in small businesses that can pitch a great idea in 140 characters or less.

"I thought that if you could put an idea up in 140 characters that made any semblance of sense then that would be something pretty cool," he says. "You're not going to be able to gather all your due diligence but you can come up with whether you've got a germ of an idea."

Dolan will then take the best ideas forward before making a decision on which one will be a good investment. As the founder of SJD Accountancy and employment services firm Contractor Umbrella, he is able to offer a wealth of start-up advice. "As well as finance, I'm good at distilling things down into their component parts. People tend to over-complicate things these days," he says.

Dolan believes that most start-ups go wrong because they do things the wrong way round, setting up the front end of the business before they even have a customer. "Before you know it they've spent the start-up funds they need to set up the business," he says. "Once you've set them on the right way and you've got decent people involved it [the business] can go on and do its own thing."