THE old Beatles song With a Little Help From My Friends may be a bit of a hippy throwback but it’s fast becoming an anthem for modern-day entrepreneurs.

Among them is Steph Croft-Simon from Headington, who is looking for lots of new online friends to help raise £100,000 for her ethical food-bar firm Nom Foods.

The 27-year-old has now gone live with a crowdfunding bid on crowdcube.com and said she has made a conscious choice to use the internet site because it fitted with her ethos. She has already raised more than £25,000 offering investors cases of Nom bars and T-shirts.

She explained: “I like the idea of lots and lots of people becoming involved and buying into my brand.

“And for investors, crowdfunding is becoming a popular way of having a piece of something that interests you.”

She added: “It’s at the stage where I need to really push the business and reach the goals I want to and I’m convinced crowdfunding is the only way to achieve it.”

Stuart Crook, a partner with Oxford based accountants Wellers, reports his firm is seeing a growing number of business people who want to raise cash via crowdfunding.

He said: “Through crowdfunding, an entrepreneur can pitch to a larger crowd which allows them access to finance more easily than in the past. With those bigger audiences, the likelihood of people putting in £1,000 here and there is far greater and it soon mounts up.”

To protect investors and their reputation, crowdfunding sites have a number of hoops for entrepreneurs to jump through before they can send their offer live.

It has taken Ms Croft-Simon four months to put together the pitch, including a business plan and video.

In 2013 she quit her sociology teacher role at d’Overbroeck’s to concentrate on her firm, based at Boundary Business Park, Garsington.

She said: “You have to do due diligence and provide data to back up all claims you make because Crowdcube have a team of lawyers who go over it all with a fine tooth comb.”

The pitch will last 45 days, during which time she can increase her offer or keep it the same, but not decrease it. If the target amount is not reached within that set period, she will receive nothing.

As for investors, in return for parting with their cash, they will be offered shares in her Garsington-based firm, a life-long discount and/or free food bars.

Using their cash, She plans to scale-up the business by take on more staff, launch new products and building on the success she has already had.

She believes investors will be swayed not just by what she says is a sound financial bet but also by her ethical stance as the food bars she produces are organic, dairy-free, vegan and use only Fair Trade ingredients.The Nom bars are already sold by online grocery retailer Ocado and are now stocked in 380 Holland & Barrett health food shops.