This month we held our annual summer showcase at Walcot Cafe in Bath and it was a lively and celebratory affair. We even rolled out the red carpet for our guests and enjoyed prosecco and delicious canapés throughout the evening.

In the last 12 months SETsquared Bath has supported around 90 start up and scale up companies as well as run enterprise education programmes for over 150 student entrepreneurs - so it was definitely time for a celebration!

Guests included SETsquared founders, companies and mentors, VIPs from the University of Bath, Bath Spa University and Bath college, WECA, B&NES council, Bristol SETsquared and Engineshed as well as our friends and associates from the local business community.

SETsquared Bath Centre Manager, Rosie Bennett, opened the evening by introducing the University of Bath Vice Chancellor Professor Ian White. The Vice Chancellor welcomed guests and reiterated the University’s commitment to supporting the local enterprise economy - both through partnerships and research collaborations, as well as providing business support and workspace to startup and scale up companies at the Innovation Centre.

The second part of the speeches was an introduction to a selection of SETsquared Bath’s members who are each at different stages with their start up businesses. Nia Simpson of Compact Cane represented the 2018 cohort of University of Bath Graduate Innovation Award winners and Wesley Essink of Gen3D spoke from the perspective of being a university spin out and a resident company at the Innovation Centre.

Alberto Casonato from 3DMS shared the collaborative journey of TOKA - a joint project with Professor Richie Gill and researcher Alisdair McLeod from the Centre of Orthopaedic Biomechanics (University of Bath), and consultant orthopaedic surgeons Andrew Toms and Vipul Mandalia from Exeter’s Princess Elizabeth Orthopaedic Centre.

‘It takes an entrepreneur to start a business but it’s the support of the city and the region that will be instrumental in helping that business reach its potential as a national and global player’ ~Nick East, Zynstra

Finally Nick East the founder of long-standing Bath SETsquared member company Zynstra spoke about the challenges of going from being a startup in a 2 person office to being a scale up company ‘taking on America’ and creating 65 jobs in Bath. Nick highlighted how valuable it is for growth companies in Bath to have such a supportive business, enterprise and investment network saying that ‘ ‘It takes an entrepreneur to start a business but it’s the support of the city and the region that will be instrumental in helping that business reach its potential as a national and global player’ .

SETsquared Bath summer showcase 2019!

‘It takes an entrepreneur to start a business but it’s the support of the city and the region that will be instrumental in helping that business reach its potential as a national and global player’ ~Nick East, Zynstra

Thanks to all of our members, mentors, university colleagues and associates for helping make it a fantastic evening!