SETsquared Bath Innovation Centre News

GradInvest 2021 is now live! Graduates from this coming Summer and up to three years previous can apply for a place to pitch for up to £250k.

The event is a fantastic opportunity to hone your pitching skills, gain feedback from real investors, SETsquared programme managers, experienced entrepreneurs and mentors and to promote your business to a wider network.

You’ll have the opportunity to pitch your ideas in front of an audience of over 100 early-stage investors, mentors, accelerators/incubators, policy makers and significant strategic partners.

The West of England has a growing digital sector and growing demand for specialist digital skills to drive recovery and growth, close the skills gap and fill vacancies.

The new £2M Digital Skills Investment Programme is a key part of West of England Combined Authority’s Recovery Plan. The programme will support:

• Basic digital skills and access – to build capacity to increase access and take-up;

• Medium to high-level digital skills – to build on skills interventions and assets in the region to create a multi-partner approach to deliver short, innovative, bespoke training courses addressing digital skills gaps.

“The support from DBAH was absolutely invaluable for my team and I and I’d highly recommend anyone starting out on their business journey to take advantage of business support programmes such as the DBAH.”

The DBAH is a business support programme which is fully funded through the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF). The support is bespoke and tailored to your business need. Learn more about the programme and apply to participate in the programme via the online registration form, https://www.dbah.org/.

Woolly Shepherd have worked with a diverse range of customers ensuring that venues such as restaurants and schools have the best acoustics by using the right products for the relevant environment.

Woolly Shepherd initially applied for business consultation support through the funded ERDF programme, the Sustainable Technologies Business Acceleration Hub - a business support programme for innovating sustainable companies in the West of England. Following an initial meeting it became apparent that Woolly Shepherd were requiring help on a life cycle assessment (LCA)*.

In celebration of Global Entrepreneur Week last November, NatWest Business launched a new competition #GEW10K where they showed new businesses, start-ups and entrepreneurs how to write a 60-second pitch, with the chance to take home £10,000!

Hundreds of people took part and entered their 60 second pitches so we’re delighted to find out that two of our students have made it through to the final!

The government-backed Start Up Loans scheme has partnered with world-renowned distance-learning provider The Open University to give its customers – and other small business owners across the UK – the opportunity to take free Open University business learning courses.

The Quarterly Investment Briefing is an event run by TechSPARK for investors to network, share and learn. The next opportunity to raise investment is being held via Hopin on Thursday 3rd December 2020 so make sure you submit your one-pager by COP 30th November.

Investment opportunities and one pagers added to their platform will be shared by the event host verbally and circulated via their password-protected website to c. 300+ investors and enablers of investment (lawyers, accountants etc.) who have expressed interest in the region and investment opportunities here.

Participating lenders in the Bounce Back Loan Scheme (BBLS) are now able to offer smaller businesses across the UK a ‘top-up’ to their existing Bounce Back Loan if they originally borrowed less than the maximum amount available to them.

The Bounce Back Loan top-up will be available from several large lenders, with other lenders anticipated to make the top-up available in due course.

Innovate UK as part of UK Research and Innovation, is investing up to £191 million to fund both single and collaborative research and development projects via the Sustainable Innovation Fund over the next two years. The aim of these competitions is to help all sectors of the UK rebuild after the effects of COVID-19.

Currently the Sustainable Innovation Fund is funding 1,103 projects, 1069 UK businesses and totalling over £130 million in support across the UK.

The University of Bath Innovation Centre is partnering with the Bath Digital Festival to offer a fun-packed online programme for the entire family this week, Tuesday 20 October to Saturday 24 October.

From the comfort of a screen, festival goers can learn to code, join an interactive workshop on artificial intelligence, join a masterclass in social media marketing or check out the latest tech.

Our Entrepreneurs in Residence at SETsquared Bath are each hosting their own event at BDF 2020

This is the first year that Mayden Academy has earned a place in the top 50 rankings for their coding course the Full Stack Track, entering straight into a top 10 position. It is one of only two UK-owned bootcamps to make the list. The achievement reflects consistently high standards of success, with only bootcamps with excellent alumni satisfaction (rated at least 4 out of 5 stars) being shortlisted.