Changes to the Entrepreneurship Institute's Accelerator will bring future King's ventures closer to investment.
The King's 20 Accelerator, launched in 2016, supports the 20 best ventures each year where there is a King's student, staff member or alumni amongst the founding team. Support across 12 months includes access to space, knowledge, experts in residence and investment.
Now supporting its seventh cohort, King's20 ventures have raised more than £60m in investment and created more than 900 new jobs. The Accelerator runs from October to the following September each year with the call for applicants opening each April. The Entrepreneurship Institute intends to change the timing of the Accelerator to better optimise ventures' chances of becoming investment ready in time for tax efficient investment schemes each year.
Applications for cohort eight will be delayed from opening in April 2023 to opening in early 2024 and the programme will be moved from October 2023 – September 2024 to June 2024 – May 2025. All cohorts will then run June to May each year, with ventures approaching investment readiness in time for the second half of the tax year when more tax-incentivised investing happens.
Our new timeline will favourably enable King's entrepreneurs to scale their endeavours and leverage greater opportunities within the investment space, more successfully and earlier than ever before. 2024 will also see the launch of a bespoke online programme, designed to support idea development through a series of recorded content and workshops - Watch this space!
Our King's20 portfolio to date has raised over £60.1m in equity investment, resulting in 56% successfully closing fundraising rounds since the inception of the programme. The investment landscape, at times, is challenging to navigate and highly dependent on timescales and being opportunistic with incentives amongst the eco-system. We want to ensure our ventures are fundraising at the best time to scale and that means aligning our programme with the investment landscape, not the academic year. Whilst this is a break from tradition, we know it will bring further benefits to our future King's20 cohorts."– Julie Devonshire OBE
If you have a business or have validated the need for a solution to a world-wide problem, register your interest for the King's20 Accelerator and be the first to know about our programmes and application dates for 2024.
If you have an idea with potential, you can still take advantage of these activities:
- Idea Feedback sessions: 1:1 support and advice from a member of the Entrepreneurship Institute team on a business idea.
- Women Entrepreneurs Network: open to all students, staff and alumni at King's, increasing your exposure to entrepreneurial skills, knowledge sharing and community.
- Idea Factory: This will run twice a year from 2024.
- Enterprise Award: a year-long learning journey exploring the 7 skills of an Entrepreneurial Mindset.
- Events and workshops: including, our 'How to' series, King's Entrepreneurship Week (February 2023) and London Venture Crawl (March 2023).
