The New Enterprise Competition’s (NEC) award-winning Growth Support Programme (GSP) is open for applications.
The NEC is a year-long programme that offers you the chance to build your dream business, taking it from an idea scrawled onto a pub napkin, all the way up to a sustainable, successful, and profitable business.
What does it all mean?
After the initial Ideas and subsequent Development Stage, the final Growth Stage begins. It’s the highest point of the competition, where you will be competing for up to £20,000 in funding for your business.
The Ideation fund is a 7-weekexperimental learning programme, (running between the 2 November- 14 December), which provides applicants with specialist training, support and funding for founders who want to explore and test out an early-stage start-up idea.This programme is sponsored by The Bristol Grid.
The New Enterprise Competition drew to a close this year at our celebration event. Route Zero were crowned the winners of the Growth stage, winning £10,000 plus 12-months incubation at SETSquared.
RouteZero was founded by Computer Science graduate Albie-Baker Smith and his co-founder Dan Brown with a mission of stopping catastrophic climate change through their platform which helps individuals and organisations switch out high-emission travel for greener journeys.
“The UK has just experienced its hottest temperatures on record, and winning the competition provides us with the opportunity to attack one of the UK’s highest emission sources: travel. We’d like to say a massive thank you to the New Enterprise Competition and the University of Bristol for catalysing RouteZero’s potential. The investment allows us to accelerate our work with customers and deliver them journeys that are Green, Anywhere, Anyway.”
The Ideas stage for the New Enterprise Competition is open for applications for another week. For the opportunity to test out your idea by pitching to us and to win up to £200 in equity free funding, what have you got to lose?
We caught up with Shabaj, who created the Success Program, a sports journaling app, which was awarded funding from the Ideas stage of the Competition last year.
In a nutshell, what is your start-up idea and where did the idea come from?
I’m working on a sports journaling app that allows individuals to track their weightlifting performance and provides customers with a quantitative measure of how their training programme is impacting their performance. Having our customers reflect on what they achieved on their last workout allows them to compete against themselves from one workout to the next.
The aim of the game is progression, but how can you know if you are progressing if you aren’t tracking your results?
I’m not the strongest person in the gym, by far. Often, if I push myself more than I am physically capable of and I get an injury. I got tired of repeating the same mistake and started to record my workouts in a notebook. However, I got fed up with flicking through the pages to find what weights, reps and sets I should do. I also lost more pens in the gym than most students do in three years at university. So I decided to build an app to think and carry less in the gym.
Have you always been interested in entrepreneurship? What inspired you to get into it?
I let my curiosity direct where I put my attention- which has its own set of pros and cons! My journey into entrepreneurship is more self-centred than most. From the projects I worked on, I always had a personal connection with problem I was trying to solve. Since I couldn’t find a product or service that met my needs, I would find out how I can create my own solution. If I have that problem, someone else might too.
As students, we put a lot of pressure on ourselves to succeed.
The job market is extremely competitive, and often, recruiters already expect you to have work experience when you graduate. So, many of us spend the holidays searching for vacation schemes and internships, myself included. During this winter vacation, I was looking for opportunities to boost my CV when I stumbled across the SME Internship Scheme. It was truly the perfect opportunity because you are able to gain some experience working remotely whilst also getting paid for it.
Hi, my name is Tom. Just before my graduation, I reached out to Beaufort Chancery in hopes of building my professional experience through the SME Internship Scheme.
With £200 up for grabs which can go towards supporting you and developing your start-up, what’s to loose? In case you need any more convincing as to why you should submit an application, here are our top three reasons why you should apply.
The accelerator comprises of ten workshops which include everything you need to know when starting up, including understanding your customer and pitching your idea. On completing the programme, you’ll also receive an endorsement badge and you’ll have constant opportunities to enhance your network. Apply to take part in the accelerator today as attending these workshops will help you feel ready for you pitch for the competition!
The Start-up Accelerator is a series of events put on by the Basecamp Enterprise team which are taking part between October and December with the aim of equipping you with an enterprising skillset. This skillset will help you become more employable as well as equipping founders with the start-up knowledge needed for developing their start-up.
‘’What is an Enterprise skillset?’’
You may hear that phrase and think it just applies to those who wish to set up a business. That may not be within your career plans but enterprise skills are still very important.
Enterprise skills may also be called ‘employability skills’ or ‘soft skills’ and these types of skills are always sought after by employers, yet many candidates overlook their importance. Skills that make up an Enterprise skillset may include the ability to make strategic decisions, working independently and problem solving. (more…)
The New Enterprise Competition (NEC) drew to a close last month at our online celebration event where Peequal were crowned the winners of the Growth stage winning £15,000 in funding.
The UK’s first women’s urinal showcased their first prototype at Bristol Comedy Gardens at the beginning of the month and following the news of their win, have been making headlines across the UK, gaining 60 million views of their business since winning the competition:
Co-founder Hazel McShane said: ‘’Winning the competition has given us the opportunity to follow our dream for pee-equality. I want to give a massive shout out to the New Enterprise Competition and Basecamp team who have shown us support and encouragement from day one. The funding and recognition has lit the fire beneath PEEQUAL and we are now so excited to get our PEEQUAL urinals out there to free the pee.”(more…)
New for Summer 2021! The Foundership scheme is opento students and recent graduates who want to explore their start-up ideas. Formerly the Enternship scheme, the Basecamp Enterprise team have revamped the programme for this year, givingstudent entrepreneurs the opportunity to explore their options over Summer break.
The four-week scheme equips founders with £1,000 funding, ringfenced networking and workshop opportunities, and allows you to work from the comfort of your own home.
Sound like something you may be interested in? Here is what you can get out of the scheme this Summer:
Goal setting-
On submitting an application, we will ask you to set out what you would like to achieve over the four weeks. This could vary between wanting to undertake some research on your target market to building a prototype. Setting out what you intend to do will mean you can hold yourself accountable, it will motivate you to strive to succeed and will help you break down your overarching goals into tangible, achievable chunks. Successful applicants will submit a weekly report to Basecamp outlining what they achieved each week.(more…)
