Learn - Unlearn - Relearn

With the onset of Covid-19, March was a month of contingency planning particularly from an event hosting point of view. Thanks to technology and the SETsquared team working hard behind the scenes the Business Acceleration Hubs 2-day Entrepreneur’s Programme in April went ahead in the new virtual format.

The fully funded Entrepreneurship Programmes focus on the key elements of early stage business growth. Open to businesses from across the West of England innovating in Sustainable Tech, Digital Innovation and Advanced Engineering, who have primarily been operating for under 12 months.

The agenda was revised and rather than covering the content over 2-days the modules were split out into 4 hour blocks hosted over 3 afternoons. The sessions still very much focusing on interaction, peer to peer feedback and mentoring.

The course ran on the 1st, 2nd and 3rd April and 7 delegates joined expert trainers and mentors.

The first afternoon started with introductions - the obvious system testing and setting the scene.

Over the following three afternoons the expert speakers and coaches from each sector ran the course which covered a wide variety of subjects from business model design, customer insight, prototyping the business model and finance / investor perspectives.

With the ability to screen share and utilise breakout rooms, participants were able to interact with mentors and their fellow innovators.

The final afternoon saw participants present their business model canvass to a panel of experts and for the 1-2-1 speed mentoring sessions - an invaluable part of the workshop and the chance to provide precise and constructive feedback to each company.

The sessions were sometimes intense, but provided lots of interaction. The final roundup gave time for everyone to reflect and feedback on the previous three afternoon sessions.

Thank you to all participants for joining the new style workshop programme - we are all adapting and learning new skills!

Our next, free to attend, virtual Entrepreneur’s Programme is running on 29th & 30th June 2020, please register your interest by clicking the button below. The Business Acceleration Growth Hub Programme is funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF)

Learn more and register your place

Read the below participant feedback:

“This weekend has given me a well-needed break to reflect upon the 3-day SETsquared Business Acceleration Workshop I attended (virtually) last week.
It was a brilliant learning experience that has given me plenty to work and develop upon across the coming months and beyond!
I am now more excited than ever to continue working with LUIS EVITT and SOCIAL 90 to build upon the partnership we have built with FortitudeSEO.
Special thanks to Brian Prescott who provided some extremely honest and needed feedback.
Massive thanks also to Keith Dixon, Tim Doidge, Karina Moore, Pete Keevill, Karen Brooks, Serena Giaminardi and the rest of the SETsquared Partnership team who did extremely well in making the first digital workshop so useful under the tricky circumstances.”

— Henry Purchase, FortitudeSEO

“Extremely productive afternoon for Engineer2Engineer on the 1st day of the ‘virtual’ Business Acceleration Growth Hub workshop ran by SETsquared Partnership with 5 other exciting start-ups in the technology sector. I am slowly but surely getting the hang of zoom meetings! As an entrepreneur it’s very important to Learn. Unlearn. Relearn.

Main takeaway from today was:
- Prototyping and refining the solution is a constant iteration
- Don’t build something nobody wants
- Value added can be functional, social, or emotional
- Have a good understanding of your customer lifetime value
- Be able to differentiate between your customers and users
- Building a business will never be easy

Thank you to all the advisors in residence and coordinators for a fantastic and valuable session!”

— Ilham Said, Engineer2Engineer

Success at the new style 'virtual' Entrepreneur's Programme