D/srupt Issue 5

magazine for innovators & entrepreneurs

The Entrepreneurs' Pledge

Meet the Imperial startup founders pledging to support the next generation of innovators and entrepreneurs through the first philanthropic giving initiative of its kind in the UK.

In this issue

A new era for Imperial Imperial’s new President, Professor Hugh Brady, shares why he thinks Imperial is leading the way in innovation and entrepreneurship.

The future of fashion

Meet the Imperial teams combatting the detrimental effects of the fashion industry on our planet.

Eight future trends you need to know now

Level up with advice from bestselling author Bernard Marr.

Black & Found Hear from the host of the Imperial podcast amplifying the voices of Black founders.

Hello

Welcome to the fifth (yes, fifth!) issue of D/srupt magazine.

Over the past five years, we’ve showcased the incredible entrepreneurial ecosystem here at Imperial College London. In that time, we’ve seen the spaces, support and ambition of our innovators and founders grow exponentially. Our White City Campus has expanded, we now have over 150 external experts and mentors supporting over 370 student and staff startups, and our partnerships have gone global – from China to Africa.

As you can see on our front cover, we’re celebrating our inaugural Imperial Entrepreneurs’ Pledgers. The Imperial Entreprenuers' Pledge is the first philanthropic giving initiative of its kind in the UK. Find out why our pledgers want to give back to the next generation of Imperial entrepreneurs on page 16

This issue also marks the beginning of a new era for Imperial. We say goodbye to Professor Alice Gast as President of the College. Alice has been a huge champion of innovation and entrepreneurship at Imperial. Her support for women’s entrepreneurship in particular led to the development of WE Innovate – a worldleading programme for women-led startups which has supported 450 women over the last eight years. In August 2022, Professor Hugh Brady joined Imperial as the new President and D/srupt was lucky enough to be one of the first to speak with him about entrepreneurship and why Imperial is leading the charge in global innovation (see page 06).

Elsewhere in this issue, you can read about how Imperial startups are changing the future of fashion (page 34), learn how to use visual storytelling to communicate your idea (page 42) and read more about Magdrive hitching a lift on a SpaceX rocket (page 26).

Jennifer Mills, Editor of D/srupt,

Welcoming the new Imperial President, Professor Hugh Brady

It’s been an eventful start to the academic year for Professor Hugh Brady who, on 1 August 2022, became the 17th President of Imperial College London. Professor Brady is the first medic to lead Imperial, relocating from the University of Bristol where he was Vice-Chancellor and President. We spoke to Professor Brady about his decision to join Imperial, views on innovation and entrepreneurship at the university, and plans for the future.

“I’ve admired Imperial for many decades. It’s recognised as a global ‘top ten’ and is one of the world’s greatest research-intensive universities, focusing not just on excellence in research but on how that excellence can be applied for the betterment of humanity and the planet. As a university, it knows how to apply that research, innovation, science and engineering to make our world a better place. For me, there’s no more exciting role at this particular time in my career.”

Get in touch:

D/srupt is brought to you by: Imperial’s Enterprise Division

We would love to hear your feedback. Please get in touch if you have content suggestions, would like more copies or are interested in commercial opportunities.

Editor: Jennifer Mills jennifer.mills@imperial.ac.uk

Published October 2022

IMPERIAL WINS INCUBATOR OF THE YEAR 2022

Imperial’s White City Incubator has won the Incubator/ Accelerator/Coworking Space of the Year 2022 at the West London Business Awards! In 2023, the incubator will be moving to White City’s Scale Space to support an even greater number of startups.

IMPERIAL NAMED BEST UNIVERSITY IN EUROPE FOR ENTREPRENEURS, TOPPING FORBES

Imperial was named in City AM as the best university in Europe and fifth best worldwide for prospective entrepreneurs, with 17 students or graduates on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list.

London was also named the best city in the world to be a young entrepreneur, ahead of New York, San Francisco and Moscow, with 115 Forbes 30 Under 30s calling the city home.

COMPETITION CLEANUP

What a year 2022 has been for Imperialfounded teams! Congratulations to the following startups for their successes across the globe:

• Koalaa wins ‘Top design’ in the category of Industrial and Life Sciences Design/ Aids/Prosthetics at the European Product Design Awards.

• Banoo Indonesia wins the NEOM Food For Future Award.

• Clear claims first place in the L’Oréal Beauty Tech For Good Challenge.

• Ecofye is nominated by the Web Summit for the 2022 Earthshot prize.

• Deploy comes second in the Santander X Global Awards.

• Sukoon Care wins the Institute of Global Health Innovation’s Health Innovation Prize.

• The Tyre Collective and AMPHITEX by Amphibio win the Terra Carta Design Lab.

• Saltyco is named winner of the 2022 Global Change Award from the H&M Foundation.

IMPERIAL FOUNDERS JOIN

FELLOWSHIP

Four of 12 Royal Academy of Engineering Enterprise Fellowships have been awarded to Imperial founders. Congratulations to Will Dubin (ManholeMetrics), Gavin White (About:Energy), Maxwell Munford (OSSTEC) and Maria Leiloglou (GLOW).

REACH FOR THE TECHSTARS

It’s been a big year for PennyChain (formerly Savium) since winning the Digital and Fintech track of the Venture Catalyst Challenge 2021. The team was accepted onto the NatWest Entrepreneur Accelerator, raising a pre-seed round of £50,000. The company has also made the Techstars ‘22 cohort, with Co-Founder Yin Noe named on the Financial Times 50 Most Inspiring Women in Tech list.

White

AMAZON LAUNCHPAD SUCCESS

Instagram: @OmniPetFood

Out of 1,200 applications, Cleannest and Omni are two of 12 startups selected for the first-ever Amazon Launchpad Sustainabity Accelerator.

IMPERIAL DOMINATES MAYOR’S ENTREPRENEUR COMPETITION

Three of the five winning teams at this year’s Mayor’s Entrepreneur Competition were Imperial teams: Team Repair, Paige and Kitt Medical. The 25 finalists (nine of which were from Imperial) pitched their ideas in front of a panel of celebrity judges and a live audience, where the five Mayor’s Entrepreneurs for 2022 were chosen. Each of the five winning teams received £20,000 to develop their businesses, along with expert mentoring from staff at City Hall. Well done to all the finalists and the winners. Same again next year!

UNITY

OVER £120 MILLION INVESTMENT RAISED BY IMPERIAL STARTUPS

Last year (2021–22), Imperial teams attracted over £120 million in investments and grants. Well done to everyone who’s raised funds this year. Here are just a few...

• Recycleye raised £3.5 million to help solve the world’s waste epidemic.

• £25 million raised for Gravity Sketch’s 3D design tool used by Adidas and Volkswagen.

• $16 million raised for SLAMcore for mapping and navigating for autonomous machines.

• £1.5 million invested in Cheesecake Energy’s green energy storage.

• Charco Neurotech raised $6.5 million for its wearable-device which aids people living with Parkinson’s.

• ApTap received a £250,000 Innovate UK grant to help consumers take control of their bills.

• Puraffinity obtained a £1.5 million grant from Innovate UK to develop targeted materials for water treatment.

• Breathe Battery Technologies raised £1.5 million for its advanced battery management software.

• WeWALK received £1.7 million from UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) as part of the UKRI Healthy Ageing Challenge.

• Petit Pli crowdfunded over £870,000 for its clothes that grow.

• Notpla raised €11.7 million to develop packaging made from seaweed.

• Bonnet secured a $5.5 million investment to expand its EV charge point network.

• BladeBUG received a €150,000 grant from the Robotics for Inspection & Maintenance network.

• Humanising Autonomy raised over $11 million to change how machines understand humans.

THE ENTERPRISE LAB LAUNCHES

CONNECTING ACCRA

Members of the Imperial Enterprise Lab team went to the University of Ghana and Impact Hub Accra to launch a new entrepreneurship programme called ‘Connecting Accra’. The initiative is being developed as part of the British Council’s Innovation for African Universities project to foster the culture of innovation and entrepreneurship within universities, and facilitate the development of skills required to build industries, companies, products and services.

Members of the Imperial Enterprise Lab team meet colleagues from the University of Ghana and Impact Hub Accra

Instagram: @KittMedical

Welcoming the new Imperial President, Professor Hugh Brady

Selly Shafira, this year’s WE Innovate winner and co-founder of Banoo, speaks with Imperial College London’s brand-new President, Professor Hugh Brady, in one of his first interviews since taking on his new role.

Welcoming

Imperial President, Professor Hugh Brady

“What a privilege it is for me to manage a wonderfully creative and successful community that applies its research discoveries to solving the big global issues of our time.”

It’s been an eventful start to the academic year for Professor Hugh Brady who, on 1 August 2022, became the 17th President of Imperial College London. Professor Brady is the first medic to lead Imperial, relocating from the University of Bristol where he was Vice-Chancellor and President. Here Banoo’s Selly Shafira asks Professor Brady about his decision to join Imperial, views on innovation and entrepreneurship at the university, and plans for the future.

What attracted you to work at Imperial College London?

I’ve admired Imperial for many decades. It’s recognised as a global ‘top ten’ and is one of the world’s greatest researchintensive universities, focusing not just on excellence in research but on how that excellence can be applied for the betterment of humanity and the planet. As a university, it knows how to apply that research, innovation, science and engineering to make our world a better place. For me, there’s no more exciting role at this particular time in my career.

What do you admire about Imperial’s focus on innovation and entrepreneurship?

I think the job of a university president is to create an environment where both students and staff can realise their full potential. In many universities, this principally applies to education and research, but Imperial thinks about innovation and entrepreneurship in new, exciting and ambitious ways and is at the vanguard of that international thinking. Imperial has mainstreamed innovation and entrepreneurship into the student experience and not all universities have done that. It’s a university that’s redefining the value of universities to societies, to economies, and to nations.

What does it take to be a successful entrepreneur?

That’s the age-old question, isn’t it? How much of it is nature and how much is nurture? In most cases, of course, it’s probably a combination of the two, but I think what a university can do – and Imperial has set its sights on this – is recognise that everybody has an entrepreneurial gene or streak within them. Imperial thinks in a very proactive way about how it can unleash and empower that entrepreneurial streak in its students and staff.

Once that streak is identified, it’s about how to support them, and how to give them access to business angels, networks and finance. It’s also about ensuring students learn from the mistakes of others so they don’t make the same ones themselves. And it’s about recognising that students must have the freedom to innovate, to create their own companies and to fail in many cases.

The ecosystem is very important. It’s about having the right support available at the right time, depending on the students’ needs and their stage in the creative process – and having a menu of fantastic support on the shelf to help them succeed.

How can Imperial and other higher education institutions incentivise inventors to turn their good inventions into successful innovations?

There are some inventors who have changed the world and needed no help, but I think most successful inventors have had the good judgment to learn from others about developing their ideas and bringing them to market. Imperial can really help with this and is giving students an environment to think about their entrepreneurial potential. It’s helping students understand the principles and pathways to successful commercialisation.

Understanding and learning from others’ experiences of success is so important, as is understanding the pitfalls and ways to avoid them. Imperial is getting it right because it knows not to stifle the natural innovative potential of students but to be there, ready to support them, as necessary. That’s the right approach and it’s very exciting.

What do you see as the main opportunities and challenges for today’s innovators and entrepreneurs?

It’s a challenging time for everybody in society – most recently with the looming recession and spiralling inflation.

About Selly Shafira

Selly co-founded Banoo – an Imperial startup providing Internet of Things water-quality technology to fish farmers – in 2020 while a student on Imperial College Business School’s MSc Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Management course. In June 2022, the startup won the top prize of £15,000 on Imperial Enterprise Lab’s WE Innovate women’s entrepreneurship programme.

Having said that, humanity has probably never been as entrepreneurial as it has been over the past two years during COVID-19. The pandemic probably fast-forwarded universities by about a decade in terms of digital innovation and applications.

So, yes, there are challenges out there, but there’s also more openness to new ideas and more opportunities for digital entrepreneurship than ever before. Coupled with that, we’re thinking about our planet and climate change and how we mitigate that in ways we’ve never done before. And that raises so many new opportunities in terms of the approaches and technologies we need to manage the risk to our planet.

The same applies in medicine. Ten years ago, the pandemic would have killed many more millions of people. The advances in vaccine development over the past decade have not only saved the lives of so many but also position us well to fight off the next pandemic. They have the potential to transform the treatment of so many other major diseases too, such as cancer. So, while the challenges are many and the general atmosphere is somewhat gloomy, I actually think the opportunities for young entrepreneurs are more numerous than ever before.

You’ve worked with a lot of people from different backgrounds in your years of experience. How important is diversity in innovation and entrepreneurship?

It’s hugely important. For many years now in academia there’s been a general consensus that an academic environment is much stronger if underpinned by multidisciplinarity and interdisciplinarity, because so many great discoveries come from the creative collisions at the interface of different disciplines. It’s so exciting to watch what happens when smart people come together to learn each other’s scientific languages and collaborate to solve problems.

We are also rapidly appreciating that gender, cultural, ethnic and other forms of diversity greatly enrich the quality and productivity of research and innovation environments, in addition to being the right thing to do in the wider societal context. I’m delighted that Imperial is prioritising equality, diversity and inclusion across the entire university and I look forward to working with colleagues to advance this important agenda.

What are your top tips to founders for getting the most out of meetings with their networks?

First, I should stress that I have never founded a company. However, with all meetings, it’s always good to have an idea in advance of what you want to get out of it. For some meetings, it might be technical advice. For others, it might be

Welcoming

Imperial President, Professor Hugh Brady

advice around the business development process, or venture funding, or finance, or asking an alumnus to open the door to his or her network. Meetings may also result in new mediumto long-term relationships which might be even more valuable in the long run.

It’s also important to have your antennae raised for surprising new ideas, suggestions or challenges that are made during the meeting. Sometimes it’s those serendipitous left-field discussions which can be the most exciting, as they take the discovery process in a different direction. Having an open mind for new directions and new ideas is really important.

You’ve been celebrated for your business mindset and extensive business network. How should entrepreneurs engage with more people and expand their networks?

Networking is such an important part of the entrepreneurial process. Young entrepreneurs must appreciate how important networks are and actively seek out ways to engage with others. Not all entrepreneurs are extroverts, so it can be difficult to walk into a room of people who may be older or from different backgrounds. I think having an appreciation of the value of networking and a willingness to engage, even though it might not come naturally, will pay off hugely.

Given your successful medical career, do you have any advice for Imperial founders who specifically want to bring new med-tech innovations to market?

One piece of advice is to get as close as possible to the practitioners who are working at the bedside, in the operating room and in the interventional radiology lab. So many of the most important medtech innovations have either been born out of or benefited from the experience and insights of practitioners.

What opportunities and ideas are you most excited about in the next five to ten years?

Imperial has a remarkable story – a global top 10 university despite being relatively young and not receiving the scale of government or philanthropic support that many of its US and Asian counterparts enjoy. It has a number of key differentiators, though, that serve it well – a focus on science, engineering, medicine and business; an impressive commitment to impact, innovation and entrepreneurship; and its location in one of the world’s greatest and most vibrant cities. With the development of the White City Campus, Imperial has a unique opportunity to position itself as a powerful catalyst at the heart of London’s, and indeed the UK’s, innovation ecosystem. This is a tremendously exciting prospect for an incoming President and I look forward to working with my new colleagues to maximise this opportunity.

What are your hopes for Imperial’s entrepreneurial ecosystem in your first year as President?

My focus during my first year will be to understand Imperial’s ambitions in innovation and entrepreneurship in more detail and work with colleagues to shape a strategy – a roadmap – for the next phase of Imperial’s development. We will be building on the huge achievements of those who have preceded us. Imperial has the potential to establish itself at the heart of one of the world’s most vibrant and successful deep tech innovation ecosystems – serving as both a key catalyst for the UK’s economic future and an international partner of choice for major research efforts tackling some of the greatest challenges facing humanity and our planet.

About Professor Hugh Brady

Across his academic career, Professor Brady has fulfilled roles at Harvard Medical School and the University of Toronto, and was the youngest-ever President of University College Dublin. He is a renowned global leader in science, engineering, medicine and business, and an international authority on the pathogenesis of renal inflammation and diabetic kidney disease. From 2009 to 2013, Professor Brady served on the Irish Government’s innovation taskforce with the aim of positioning Ireland as an international innovation hub and increasing innovation and entrepreneurship across the nation.

Welcoming

Imperial President, Professor Hugh Brady

Dotplot

The 2022 Venture Catalyst Challenge winners are enabling early breast cancer detection through an at-home device and app for easy and accessible breast health monitoring.

The problem Dotplot aims to address the lack of guidance that exists for helping women perform their breast self-checks. Breast cancer is now the leading cause of cancer incidence worldwide and one in seven women in the UK will be diagnosed with it during their lifetime. A key contributor is late detection, which is why checking your breasts regularly is vital. However, the existing demonstrations, tutorials and pamphlets provided to women all suggest different methods. The majority of the women we spoke with said they couldn’t interpret what they felt in their breasts and struggled to differentiate between lumps and normal breast tissue. In short, the current ways of performing self-checks involve considerable amounts of guesswork, hence deterring many women from doing them regularly.

The solution Dotplot solves this problem by offering women clear guidance as they perform their breast self-checks. It uses a handheld device that connects to an app to provide accurate monitoring of breast tissue composition. To use Dotplot, users are taken through a one-time onboarding process which includes entering details of their period cycle – if they have one – to offer the correct date for their self-check. They then build a personalised map of their torso by providing their bra size and breast shape, and using the device to rescale the baseline model.

Meet the team:

Shefali Bohra, Co-founder (Innovation Design Engineering 2022)

Debra Babalola, Co-founder (Innovation Design Engineering 2022)

Once set up, the app guides women through the self-check by showing them which areas they need to scan. Real-time feedback gives users assurance that they’ve checked over every region. Afterwards, they receive a report of their breast tissue, which can be sent to their GP. This can be compared to readings

to, helping us navigate technological development, providing scientific validation, and determining how Dotplot would fit into the medical device landscape.

Where are you now and where do you plan to be?

The Experts-in-Residence

encouraged us to think about all the components needed to build our business and provided useful insights in the areas we needed help with.

from previous and subsequent checks and the app will highlight any abnormalities developing in the tissue. Dotplot will encourage women to see their GP if abnormalities persist for three months. They will also be reminded to check their breasts once a month.

The idea was inspired by the diverse and ongoing projects relating to preventive and predictive medical technologies. We spoke to various departments within Imperial and found out that a lot of researchers are working with artificial intelligence and machine learning to build systems that aid remote medical monitoring. We also witnessed an increased need for this specific category of products during the pandemic. As students at the Dyson School of Design Engineering, we were always encouraged to engage with users throughout the development of a product and found that people were looking for better ways to monitor and communicate their conditions. As of now, communication mostly relies on descriptive methods

(i.e., explaining things in words). Through our research at Imperial, we found that visual aids can improve communication for both users and healthcare professionals, and this is a huge part of what we aim to offer with Dotplot.

Where did the idea originate?

One day our team was discussing different problems we had faced with monitoring our health. One of our co-founders, who is a female athlete, mentioned how she’d discovered an unusual knot in one of her breasts after a gym workout. She had approached a gynaecologist for a clinical breast exam, where a palpation test was performed, and was advised to monitor the knot using her own fingers for a few months. Fortunately, the knot self-resolved. Using this event as a starting point, we began investigating existing tools that routinely assist women in monitoring their breasts. To our surprise, there was a lack of at-home solutions for the early detection of breast cancer, and we were then determined to build

a tool that would address this need.

How did the team meet?

Our team met during our Master’s programme in Innovation Design Engineering. We were working on our group project and found that we had a collective interest in designing for healthcare, especially monitoring people’s health. We were also keen on developing solutions that promoted selfcare and remote monitoring.

Do you have any advisers?

If so, how did they get involved?

We have invaluable advisers who help to guide us in the process of building our company and product. They come from a range of specialisms including oncology, radiology, healthtech and software development, providing us with a range of insights on how best to tackle the challenges we encounter.

Many of them are people we have been able to get in touch with through our studies and exhibitions at Imperial and the Royal College of Art. Their support includes, but isn’t limited

Dotplot is in its initial stages of development and we are currently trying to support ourselves with grants and competition money for R&D of our minimum viable product. We also want to bring on board specific expertise to accelerate the development process. And we are working with the Imperial Venture Mentoring Services (IVMS) to figure out a strategic roadmap to commercialising Dotplot within the next three years.

What support have you had from Imperial?

Experts-in-Residence has given us access to so many specialists who were able to advise us on the specific stage of development we were at. It highlighted points that we may otherwise not have been aware of.

For example, the various funding options available to us, competitions that would be useful for us to apply to, and the different approaches we could take in developing our technology. The experts encouraged us to think about all the components needed to build our business and provided useful insights in the areas we needed help with.

In 2022 we were honoured to win the Grand Prize in the Venture Catalyst Challenge (VCC).

VCC condensed all the vital business-related information we needed into a seven-week period, which may have taken us several more weeks or months to organise by ourselves. It helped us to develop a business plan and business model, and we learned about the ideal ways to raise money for our venture.

Moreover, VCC accelerated our customer discovery and taught us how to be more strategic in our interviews and in collecting information from them. By the end of it we were extremely well practised in teasing out key and insightful information from the conversations we were having. The track heats were particularly great for highlighting areas of our venture that required further attention. For instance, clarifying which medical class our device would fall under and carefully considering our route to market. Upon completing VCC, we felt that Dotplot was no longer just a university project but was now a budding venture that we were extremely excited to keep developing.

Following our VCC win, we were put forward for the IVMS. We’ve only recently joined IVMS, but we’ve already gained so much from the service in the short time we’ve been involved. It has facilitated relationships with experts in our specific area of medical device development. We’ve been able to openly discuss where we are with the business and figure out which areas we’re struggling with. It’s been extremely helpful to hear from the mentors who can give industry perspectives on our work and who have experienced similar processes to the ones we‘re involved in. With their guidance, we are now establishing our strategic plan and mapping out key objectives for our work with Dotplot. This mentorship has greatly helped us prioritise where to direct our efforts. It’s also been a privilege to pitch to mentors alongside other founders – especially those who are further along with their development. We’ve been able to see how they’ve navigated challenges that we may soon face, which is helping us think ahead.

Around the same

time as joining IVMS, we also applied for the MedTech SuperConnector, which provides us with an environment where everyone within the cohort is specifically working towards commercialising their medtech invention/ discovery and finding the right market fit for it. It has masterclasses specific to medtech IP, licensing clinical trial setup and medical regulations. They have given us funds of up to £45,000 to develop our idea technically.

What’s been your biggest success so far?

Our biggest success so far would be winning the VCC through Imperial Enterprise Lab. The seven-week process was an unforgettable introduction to the startup world and a key step in learning how to think like entrepreneurs. It was also the very first competition we had entered, so to win it was surprising but massively encouraging. VCC truly accelerated our journey and taught us so much about what it takes to create a viable business. It was a privilege to meet with industry experts and to be competing alongside a fantastic cohort of entrepreneurs with worldchanging ideas. It is an experience that has shaped Dotplot’s beginning and is something we will always treasure.

What’s been the biggest challenge?

Apart from the technical hurdles, our biggest challenge was deciding whether to categorise Dotplot as a medtech or femtech product. After lengthy discussions and gathering perspectives from women and experts in different industries, we concluded that it should fall under medtech. A main reason was that for women to trust this product, we found that we needed to prove it was a reliable,

medically approved device. Also, in the future we aim to extend our technology to facilitate the early detection and monitoring of other cancers and diseases, including testicular cancer and soft tissue sarcoma.

What advice would you give an aspiring entrepreneur?

Our first bit of advice would be to find people who can advise and mentor you. One thing we have observed from working on Dotplot is that it takes much more than the founding team to build a business. Having a team of experts to support you can help to address your blind spots and focus your efforts on the right things. Secondly, discuss your idea with everyone and never underestimate the power of networking and reaching out to people. You’ll likely find that people are more willing to help than you’d imagine. Have conversations with entrepreneurs who inspire you or who have taken a similar path to the one you envision, where possible. By doing this, you learn about what did and didn’t work for them and can avoid making the same mistakes. It’s also useful to find people who hate your project and understand why they don’t like it. What are their apprehensions and what can you do to address these? And, finally, start where you are and build from there. Don’t feel like you need to know everything about your industry or about entrepreneurship before creating a business. What you know is probably more than enough to get going.

Two years in: The Bloomberg–Imperial Cleantech Pro Bono Programme

Can you imagine having a crack team of legal practitioners helping you with your startup for free? In 2021, five Imperial cleantech ventures didn’t have to imagine it; they got to experience it.

For six months, The Tyre Collective, Algreen, Treeconomy, Saltyco and Ichthion worked closely with practitioners from Bloomberg, Ropes & Gray and Willkie Farr & Gallagher, who were committed to helping them navigate the complicated legal and regulatory paths that startups must often tread.

In 2019, Mia Motiee and Mitesh Jagatia, Co-leads of the Bloomberg Legal and Compliance department’s Pro Bono initiative in EMEA, approached the Enterprise Lab about helping Imperial’s cleantech founders.

"Bloomberg, from the top down, has long been involved with environmental philanthropic initiatives,” notes Mia, Data Security Legal Counsel at Bloomberg. “Mitesh and I wanted to establish environmental action as one of the core pillars of Bloomberg’s Legal and Compliance Pro Bono Programme in EMEA. We struggled for months to find a programme that fit our needs and skill set. After many brainstorming and planning sessions, we designed and developed this programme from scratch. We were so fortunate that Mitesh had a contact at Imperial who introduced us to Victoria. Once the three of us met, our collective enthusiasm, determination and hard work really came together.”

“Bloomberg, along with our partnering law firms, is thrilled to assist inspirational Imperial ventures on their paths to help save the world from environmental catastrophe,” explains Mitesh, EMEA Media Counsel at Bloomberg. “It has been so rewarding to see them showcase their huge potential, such

as The Tyre Collective winning the inaugural Terra Carta Design Lab. The programme doubled in size in 2022, as we are now assisting ten cleantech ventures in this round and have brought on additional law firms to help. We fully intend for the programme to continue helping ever more cleantech ventures every year.”

So, what’s the best way to give yourself the best possible chance of gaining a place on the programme?

Just have an idea. Book an Idea Surgery via the Enterprise Lab website which will provide business coaching in a group setting. Go back for as many sessions as you need until the coach is happy with your progress and approves you for Experts-in-Residence. This programme gives you access to more than 75 experts in over 25 areas and provides approximately 1,200 hours of coaching a year.

Already on the Experts-inResidence service? Speak with relevant coaches to shape your idea further and map out any legal issues you may need help with. This will prepare you nicely to submit a thoughtful application in spring 2023

Check out other offerings, like the monthly masterclasses and programmes, which can help you develop your skills and the business you are working on so it becomes a compelling candidate for additional support.

Entrepreneurship essentials

Looking to gain new skills, be inspired or learn from others’ experiences? We’ve put together a list of books and podcasts that will give you some insights and knowledge to help you on your entrepreneurial journey.

How the Future Works: Leading Flexible Teams to Do the Best Work of Their Lives – Brian Elliott, Sheela Subramanian and Helen Kupp

The global pandemic was a catalyst for change in the workplace. Gone are the days of 9 to 5 and sardinelike commutes, and here to stay are video calls and remote working. This book offers a blueprint for using flexible work to unlock the potential of your people, from the leaders of Slack and Future Forum.

The Diary of a CEO podcast – Steven Bartlett

The super-successful Dragon shares his experience of being the ex-CEO of one of the UK’s fastestgrowing companies and interviews high-profile founders, innovators and business leaders about their experiences of getting to the top of their game.

The Right It –Alberto Savoia

The former Director of Engineering and Innovation Agitator (yes, that’s a real job title!) at Google gives insider tips on making sure you’re building the right product or service for your customers. Up to 90 per cent of business ideas fail, but yours doesn’t have to if you use this strategic approach to market research.

Black & Found podcast –Imperial College London

This Imperial College London podcast explores the entrepreneurial journeys and experiences of Black and mixed Black heritage founders. You can read more about the podcast on page 14

It’s About Damn Time: How to Turn Being Underestimated into Your Greatest Advantage –Arlan Hamilton and Rachel L. Nelson

From sleeping on the floor of San Francisco Airport to breaking into Silicon Valley, Arlan Hamilton tells her story of breaking barriers and using the power of being underestimated to get exactly where she wanted to be. Named one of the best books of the year by Fortune, this is sure to give you a double dose of inspiration and determination.

Speak! Become a Storytelling Hero in Five Acts – Stewart Bewley

So, we’ve got expert advice on visual storytelling on page 42, but what about conveying your idea or business when speaking? With a deeply practical and interactive approach, Stewart Bewley will be your guide as you unlock your voice to make a difference in the boardroom, when pitching or through the screen.

Unlearn: Let Go of Past Success to Achieve Extraordinary Results –Barry O’Reilly

There’s a learning curve to running a successful business. But when leaders rely on past achievements or get stuck using old thinking, they need to take a step back and unlearn. This innovative and actionable framework from executive coach Barry O’Reilly shows leaders how to break the cycle and strategise for the future.

The Soul of Startups: The Untold Stories of How Founders Affect Culture podcast – Sophie Theen

We all know how important creating a good company culture is (WeWork, BrewDog, we’re looking at you!).

Award-winning HR and diversity and inclusion professional Sophie Theen delves into the impact founders can have on the culture of their startup and the importance of creating an environment that allows their team to thrive, personally and professionally.

Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know – Adam Grant

Intelligence is usually seen as the secret to success, but Adam Grant explores the idea that the ability to rethink can be more important as it can give us the flexibility to adapt and understand the perspective of others.

Range: How Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World – David Epstein

We’ve all heard the theory that 10,000 hours of practice is what you need to excel in a particular field, whether it be sport, music or business, but David Epstein’s research turns this on its head. In his second book, he shows that, more often than not, generalists are the ones who excel.

Twice as Hard: Navigating Black Stereotypes and Creating Space for Success

– Opeyemi Sofoluke and Raphael Sofoluke

This book is an exploration of Black identity in the working world and a blueprint for success. Gather a wealth of experience from over 40 business professionals with advice and insights on building your network and creating space for personal growth.

Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days –Jake Knapp

A New York Times best seller, this is essential reading for anyone looking to innovate fast, whether that be testing a business idea or improving processes or products. This tried-and-tested approach takes just five days to go from concept to concrete evidence.

You can borrow all these books and more from the library in the Enterprise Lab co-working space.

Black & Found

Introducing the Imperial podcast amplifying the voices of Black and mixed Black heritage founders.

Black entrepreneurs receive just 0.24% of capital. Clearly, the startup scene for Black founders in the UK is bleak. Forbes research revealed that COVID-19 had a disproportionate financial impact on Black small businesses, with the path to recovery proving even harder. Black tech entrepreneurs in the UK say they have to rely on foreign investors to get their businesses off the ground. In June 2022, TechCrunch calculated that Black entrepreneurs saw a dramatic decrease in funding as investors continue to pull back (a decrease of over £600 million), despite the sector generating over £1.4 billion in the first half of 2021

Companies like Google and YouTube, however, are committed to ensuring Black entrepreneurs have platforms and are able to progress. The Black Founders Fund is a Google for Startups

initiative giving funding access to Black-founded startups in Europe. In 2022, it’s aiming to double 2021 investments (a whooping £6.5 million) by funding 40 Black-led startups. YouTube’s Black Voices Fund, initiated in 2020, is a multi-year commitment dedicated to highlighting and growing Black creators and Black music on the platform, and giving them access to resources to help them thrive.

Introducing Black & Found

Despite the implicit racial bias that prevents Black startups from excelling, there have been many that have flourished regardless. At the start of 2022, Imperial launched a new podcast called Black & Found, dedicated to hearing the voices and experiences of Black and Black mixed

heritage founders. It specifically recognises the achievements of past Black and Black mixed heritage Imperial alumni. Hosted by Bosede Ogunleye, Innovation and Entrepreneurship Manager at Imperial, the podcast explores the entrepreneurial journeys of individuals at different stages of the Imperial Enterprise ecosystem and beyond.

Although the podcast has only been running for four months, the quantity of people reached and the topics discussed have been genuinely inspiring. Bosede doesn’t shy away from any market, interviewing CEOs across a range of fields, from tutoring to technology. During each episode, Bosede chats with her guest about their link to Imperial, As they share details of their company’s founding story and exchange entrepreneurial gems.

Alberta Asafo-Asamoah

As a dynamic start to the series, we meet Alberta, dual founder of companies AlgebraInTheCity – an educational support organisation striving to close the attainment gap for students – and Vetemonde – an eCommerce platform that supports fashion and beauty brands across Africa. This episode explores the harsh realities and shockingly low capital figures of the Black startup scene. Alberta says: “We need to incorporate entrepreneurship into our syllabuses so people who are creatively driven, rather than academically driven, can explore it from an early age.”

Michelle Palmer

Since founding her award-winning technology and recruitment business, TheDifferenceEngine, Michelle has mentored individuals displaying entrepreneurial intent who hope to push their startups to the next level.

When asked what surprised her about her journey, Michelle says: “I was shocked by just how rewarding founding a business could be. It is an amazing alternative to a corporate career. There has never been a dull day … You need to be a lawyer, an accountant, a PR machine, a financier; there are so many facets to running a business, I never fail to learn on a daily basis.”

Nate Macabuag

After falling in love with design and technology at secondary school and studying Mechanical Engineering at Imperial, Nate discovered prosthetics. He is now the founder of Koalaa Prosthetics and was named in Forbes 30 Under 30. Nate’s conversation with Bosede is full of banter, and he says: “I never thought about starting up a company. Ever. There were people in my class who were traditionally entrepreneurial, hustling and looking for ideas and doing things. I was never like that. I just wanted a normal job where I design some cool things. But things started to converge!”

Meet the host: Bosede Ogunleye, Innovation & Entrepreneurship Manager, Imperial College London

Why did you start Black & Found?

I’ve always been inspired by the achievements and innovation of the Black heritage community. Equally, I’ve often been frustrated at the lack of recognition, opportunity and celebration of individuals of Black heritage within entrepreneurship and beyond. The figures back up my frustration, too, with just 0.24% of UK venture capital investment going to Black founders between 2009 and 2019. This represents a total of just 38 entrepreneurs –with only 0.02% of venture capital investment going to Black female founders. When I joined the Imperial Enterprise Lab, I was inspired to find a solution to amplify and bring to the fore the ‘hidden’ journeys of Black heritage founders, hence why ‘Black & Found’ was created!

What was the process of reaching out to Black alumni for your podcast like? The process has been heartwarming! Genuinely, most people I’ve reached out to

have been wildly enthusiastic about being a guest! I’ve actually been quite overwhelmed with people wanting to be on the podcast, which has been very encouraging.

What have you learned since starting Black & Found?

So much! I’ve learned that founders of Black heritage, though not a monolithic group, have a drive and determination to succeed, despite several structural barriers and damaging stereotypes in their way. I’ve learned how Black heritage founders are very international, with several of the podcast guests coming from the African diaspora and launching their ventures across international locations – so impressive! Black heritage founders are brave, resourceful and determined individuals!

What’s been your favourite episode so far? It’s impossible to choose! Honestly, I’ve loved them all!

What’s next for Black & Found?

Hopefully another series (watch this space!)

I’m hoping to branch out of Imperial a little, too – perhaps interviewing Black heritage founders from more varied backgrounds.

What would be your advice for aspiring Black entrepreneurs?

Utilise the power of networking. This includes connecting with those who look/come from the same background as you, as well as others outside of the Black heritage community. It’s so important to learn from the journeys of others – both their successes and failures.

Nana Nyantekyi

Nana, aka ‘Mr Worldwide’, completed his education across the UK and America through an Ivy League scholarship. He was able to join a startup company which exposed him to a flexible working schedule that “lit a fire” under him. RightTrack Sports was the first company he founded and combines his experiences on a sports scholarship in the US with his practical startup know-how. The company helps students find sports scholarships in American Universities. Nana is currently an entrepreneur-inresidence for technology-focused investment firm Marcho Partners and Co-Founder of Spiny.ai, which creates software solutions for digital publishing businesses.

Ezechi Britton MBE

Ezechi Britton MBE was founding Chief Technology Officer of Neyber, a UK based FinTech company that raised over £200 million and also founded Code Untapped to train the next generation of underrepresented technologists. Ezechi shares his journey from developer to CTO, Founder and investor, and how he is now supporting the next generation of startups and founders to build innovative companies.

Listen to the Black & Found podcast:

Giving back to the next generation

Imperial’s entrepreneurs don’t shy away from big problems and innovative solutions. They know that success is amplified when they pay it forward. That’s why Imperial has recently ventured into the world of pre-exit philanthropy.

Founders’ pledge programmes have been gaining ground at universities across the world in recent years as a way of engaging entrepreneurs at an early stage in their venture with the idea of giving, before they have capacity to give.

Entrepreneurs who are being supported by, or have received support from, a university programme are asked if they would like to make a promise – or a pledge – of future support to the university when they are able to. This may be when they experience a sale, float on the stock market or have other financial success.

What’s in it for the university? A founders’ pledge is a long-term strategy for bringing in philanthropic income to the university, with a natural emphasis on entrepreneurship support services. The initiative acts as a mix of alumni relations, ecosystem development and early-stage business support.

Growing numbers of Imperial students and alumni are starting and scaling successful ventures. Often this has been with early-stage support through College-funded activities such as the Enterprise Lab, Advanced Hackspace, White City Incubator, MedTech SuperConnector and many more. All these programmes and facilities provide support services, cash grants and one-to-one mentoring and coaching, free of charge and without expectation of equity or return.

The Imperial Entrepreneurs’ Pledge is an opportunity for alumni founders to recognise this support and ‘pay it forward’ by pledging to make a philanthropic gift to Imperial in the future.

The aim of this funding is to support the next generation of entrepreneurs and innovators as they take their first steps, often at a stage before anyone else will back them.

Whether it’s supporting a specific initiative, such as the Enterprise Lab or Advanced Hackspace, supporting a student who wouldn’t otherwise be able to attend university with a scholarship, or funding research on critical issues such as climate change or infectious diseases, the

£134M

Of investment generated by Imperial startups in 2020–21

£91M

raised by student founders alone.

gift could help support Imperial’s innovators and entrepreneurs and fund solutions to the world’s most pressing problems.

The founders’ pledge model has led to transformational gifts at other world-leading universities. Many universities in the United States use this model, which has seen the likes of one of the founders of Nextdoor, the social networking service for neighbourhoods, giving back to UC Berkeley.

UC Berkeley launched their Founders’ Pledge programme in 2013 and it has since grown to 370 members, with $35 million raised for the university. Outside of the United States, the University of Queensland launched a similar programme in 2020 and has since raised $100,000

Imperial is the first UK university to launch such a programme. Dr Sarah Flew, Deputy Director of Development at Imperial, was instrumental in bringing the Imperial Entrepreneurs’ Pledge to life: “I’ve been following the development of founders’ pledge pre-exit philanthropy programmes for years, such as those developed around the world by Dee Dee Mendoza at fantastic universities such as Dartmouth, Berkeley, Queensland

Meet the first wave of superhero founders pledging to support the entrepreneurial community through the first philanthropic initiative of its kind in the UK.

and Chicago, and I was always keen to start one at Imperial. Imperial has the most amazing founders and the most supportive entrepreneurial ecosystem, so it makes perfect sense to make it easy for our founders to pledge to support the next generation when they’re in a position to do so.”

Many student-founded businesses from Imperial go on to see phenomenal success. Imperial startups generated £134 million of investment in 2020–21, with £91 million raised by student founders alone.

These include $1 billion virtual reality company Improbable, founded by Imperial graduate Peter Lipka; Magic Pony Technology, founded by Rob Bishop and Zehan Wang, which was bought by Twitter for around $150 million; and AI company Tractable, founded by graduate Alex Dalyac, which has been valued at $1 billion.

Former President of Imperial College London, Professor Alice P. Gast, said: “Every year I am inspired by student-founded startups which have the potential to revolutionise industries, transform lives and tackle major societal challenges. We have created a rich network of support for their businesses that will persist long after their graduation.”

“The Imperial Entrepreneurs’ Pledge creates the structure for those founders who have benefited from this unique ecosystem to support those that follow them. The momentum it generates will have a lasting impact on innovation at Imperial and beyond.”

Imperial has a unique network of support for entrepreneurs at all stages. The Enterprise Lab provided almost £200,000 of grant funding to student startup businesses last year alone, along with mentoring,

training and access to investor networks.

Free facilities like Imperial College Advanced Hackspace (ICAH) give student inventors access to specialist manufacturing equipment and training to turn their ideas into breakthrough prototypes. Imperial students also own any IP they generate in the course of their studies at the College.

Any Imperial founder can make the Imperial Entrepreneurs’ Pledge, which is voluntary and non-binding, once they’ve graduated. Founders can choose how their gifts will support the College and many will support initiatives for future Imperial entrepreneurs. Once a founder makes the pledge, they become part of an exclusive community who have publicly signalled their intent to support future generations of innovators and entrepreneurs.

Find out more: www.imperial. ac.uk/ entrepreneurspledge

Watch the video:

The pledgers

Michael Moses Founder, Donaco

D

onaco, founded by Electrical and Electronic Engineering graduate Michael Moses, is aiming to help charities fundraise efficiently online and unlock digital growth.

Its mission is to connect supporters with causes they care about while helping their charity partners build a cohesive and scalable digital strategy. Data is the foundation of their work, helping them to launch highly relevant and scalable digital campaigns that result in increased reach and discovery of relevant supporters, better engagement for charity campaigns and maximum return on

investment on digital fundraising.

Donaco is building a data-driven platform to automate online donor acquisition across multiple channels. Leveraging data and AI, it will enable charities of all sizes to plan, launch and optimise digital campaigns in minutes, not weeks, while maximising performance and amplifying impact. Donaco works with charities to implement a cohesive and impactful digital marketing strategy, evaluating the charity’s current situation, identifying opportunities they could leverage and setting goals.

Once a founder makes the pledge, they become part of an exclusive community who have publicly signalled their intent to support future generations of innovators and entrepreneurs

Dr Olivia Ahn Co-founder of Planera

Planera, co-founded by Medicine graduate Dr Olivia Ahn and Innovation Design Engineering graduate Aaron Koshy, is developing the world’s first flushable sanitary pads.

At present, there is no sustainable route of disposal available for sanitary products. Plastic in sanitary pads goes to landfill, incinerators or ends in up waterways, causing huge damage to the environment. That’s why Planera is developing the first certified flushable and biodegradable sanitary pads, designed to disintegrate quickly in existing infrastructure when flushed, with a similar environmental impact to toilet paper.

Olivia and Aaron founded Planera in the penultimate year of their studies at Imperial, kick-started with the WE Innovate programme –the College’s flagship programme for startups with a woman founder.

After three years of research and development leading to flushability certification, Planera is now preparing to launch its products in the UK. How does it work?

The pad breaks down in two parts. First, with the hydraulic action of the toilet flush, the layers of the pad get pulled apart and can start making their way down the drain line.

Then, the 3mm cellulose fibres loosen and break apart. These steps ensure

that the pad will have disintegrated by the time it reaches the local municipal plant and can be treated along with toilet paper and sewage.

Planera’s pads take less than 30 days to degrade entirely and contain zero microplastics, in contrast to many conventional sanitary pads.

Olivia said: “Imperial Enterprise Lab has done an incredible job at supporting me and the startup. Firstly, of course, financially, but we’ve also had an incredible amount of exposure. I really wanted to sign the Imperial Entrepreneurs' Pledge because I’ve received so much support from Imperial, and especially the Enterprise Lab.”

Henrik Hagemann Co-founder and CEO, Puraffinity

Puraffinity, co-founded by Bioengineering graduate Henrik Hagemann and Biochemistry graduate Gabi Santosa, is a green technology company focused on designing smart materials for environmental applications.

Henrik and Gabi have developed a sustainable absorbent material that can selectively capture micro-pollutants including toxic ‘forever’ chemicals, pesticides and pharmaceuticals from wastewater. Their solution helps customers achieve their sustainability goals

and adhere to increasingly stringent wastewater regulations to protect their local ecosystem.

The team say they were inspired by nature’s capacity to make biomaterials and their concerns with the challenges that water shortages pose to our health and nature. This led them to focus on fixing nature’s threat of water shortage with inspiration from nature’s capacity to make targeted materials.

The team came together as a commercial entity for the Venture Catalyst Challenge in 2014, during which they formed CustoMem, now Puraffinity,

as a company. They then gathered enough traction to convince themselves to discard job and PhD offers and pursue a student-led startup instead.

Puraffinity is based at the College’s White City Campus and has recently moved from the Incubator to Scale Space to accelerate its growth.

Henrik said: “It all goes back to the Entrepreneurs' Pledge, which is about contributing something to the next generation.

I’m very grateful for the support we've received but also keen to put it to good use.”

Dr Kevin Koh Founder and CEO, Vivo Surgical

Vivo Surgical, founded by Biomedical

Engineering graduate Dr Kevin Koh, develops nextgeneration medical device solutions through the innovative applications of science and technology. Headquartered in Singapore, the company is currently developing the world’s first disposable robot for NOTES-based surgical procedures (endoscopic surgery), alongside two other complementary technologies that have since been commercialised as

Nate Macabuag Founder, Koalaa Prosthetics

Koalaa, founded by Mechanical Engineering graduate Nate Macabuag, is tackling problems in the prosthetics industry.

Current equipment is heavy and uncomfortable, as well as expensive. Koalaa’s solution is to develop less-expensive prosthetics that are soft and modular, and can be fitted to anyone in the world through a virtual clinic.

Koalaa’s prosthetic is an innovative type of prosthetic arm, designed for adults and children with below-elbow limb differences. Unlike traditional prosthetics, Koalaa prosthetics are lightweight and comfortable, and are designed to help individuals continue to do

the things they love, while also making everyday tasks easier.

The soft prosthetics are made from machinewashable fabric and easy to put on. Once in place, a range of different tool attachments can be fitted, depending on the task or hobby the wearer wants to do. That might include holding a pen or paintbrush, chopping vegetables, doing some gardening with a trowel, typing on a laptop, holding a wine glass or cutlery, sawing, skipping or going for a bike ride.

Additionally, when someone purchases a Koalaa soft prosthetic they automatically become part of the Koalaa community. They have their own ‘limb buddy’ assigned who can answer any questions they

may have and who will support them every step of the way.

Nate said: “Imperial is amazing at entrepreneurship in general in terms of helping people with ideas to pursue them and turn them into real-world solutions, and getting them out of the lab and into an actual company. It was just filled with people whose number one focus was to listen to your idea and figure out how to make it a success.

“The Entrepreneurs' Pledge is less about the monetary contributions and more about what that means for the future. I want to see students building the kinds of companies that I want to see in ten years.”

standalone devices.

The company’s first commercial product, KLARO™, is a novel in vivo surgical lighting device that delivers optimal illumination to surgical cavities from within. Since its market launch in 2019, the device is now distributed globally in over 25 countries across Europe and the Asia–Pacific. Recently, the company donated 500 KLARO™ units (equivalent to 2,000 hours of surgical lighting) to field hospitals in Ukraine to assist with the ongoing humanitarian crisis.

ENLYT™, the company’s other commercial product, is a portable, hand-held endoscope for imaging and diagnosis. Compact and highly versatile, the device is currently being trialled for national-level nose cancer screening in Southeast Asia by a regional ear, nose and throat hospital. It is also undergoing implementation into the emergency response workflows in a major European country as well as being evaluated for ward-based imaging of post-surgery patients.

Alex Bond Co-founder and CEO, FreshCheck

Founded by Imperial PhD alumni Dr John Simpson and Dr Alex Bond, FreshCheck creates intuitive tools for confirming hygiene in a range of markets, such as food, hospitality and healthcare. The latest product is a hygiene verification swab that samples surfaces. After collecting the sample, the swab is placed into the FreshCheck solution, which uses an iron-dye interaction to monitor hygiene. If the swab turns from blue to green, then the surface is contaminated with bacteria and must be cleaned again.

FreshCheck hopes to increase the prevalence and use of hygiene testing in hospitality, restaurants and catering, and to extend its use

to other markets. Though hygiene testing in the food industry is already commonplace, the market-standard technology is expensive and onerous to use.

Using versatile and adaptable chemistry, FreshCheck’s technology is a test that produces a colour change on contact with bacteria. It can be packaged in a variety of ways depending on use case. Where adenosine tri-phosphate (ATP) swab testing (the market standard) requires a costly reader device and professional training to operate and calibrate, FreshCheck’s technology is simple to use and instantly readable.

The company has also developed a companion app that enables auditable

hygiene record keeping, supporting businesses in ensuring safety and compliance with health standards. Making hygiene auditing simpler and more affordable will allow smaller food manufacturers access to large supermarkets to provide local food with a lower carbon footprint.

Alex said: “Imperial has supported me and FreshCheck for the entirety of FreshCheck’s existence. Imperial’s network, support and connections to other startups have all been fundamental.

“The whole reason we created a startup was to effect change and being able to encourage other people to do that is inspiring.”

Dr Theodora Kalentzi, Founder and Director, Medical Prime

Dr Theodora

Kalentzi is a Clinical Teaching Fellow in the Faculty of Medicine, Health Management MSc graduate, and founder and director of Medical Prime – a private clinic in the City of London offering specialist menopause care and GP services.

The clinic offers services on a wide range of health matters, with expertise in menopause and perimenopause. Its appointments range from 20 to 60 minutes

to give patients time to fully discuss their issues.

The team is led by Theodora, an experienced general practitioner and a British Menopause Society-accredited menopause specialist. She holds a Postgraduate Diploma in Obstetrics and Gynaecology and an Advanced Certificate in Menopause Care. She has held several senior healthcare management positions, including NHS Medical Director.

Entrepreneurship at Imperial

Access a worldleading ecosystem

Great ideas start with great people and, here at Imperial, we have them in abundance. Our community of innovative staff and students is passionate about turning ideas into impact and taking research and education out into the world for the benefit of society.

In February 2022, Imperial was named by City AM using Forbes 30 Under 30 data the best university in Europe for prospective entrepreneurs, and the fifth best worldwide,

and that is because of our unique mix of STEM expertise and a world-class entrepreneurial ecosystem. From idea exploration to competitions, workspaces to funding, and expert support to

Innovation and entrepreneurship centres

incubation, we have everything you need to start and scale your venture, as well as a thriving community of innovators and entrepreneurs from all corners of the College.

Imperial Enterprise Lab

Whether you want to test an idea, tackle a global challenge, develop new skills, start a business, or just meet interesting people, we are here to help. With competitions, skills seminars, hackathons, and expert mentors, we offer all the support you need to take your idea to the next level.

Imperial College Advanced Hackspace

The Advanced Hackspace at the White City Campus is Imperial’s world-class prototyping hub. Alongside our state-ofthe-art facilities, we are home to a lively community, offering advice, workshops, training programmes and grants to encourage innovation and experimentation.

Imperial White City Incubator

The White City Incubator helps science and technology businesses to survive and thrive. We are a community of talented and innovative entrepreneurs offering support, training and laboratory and office space to early-stage deep science startups.

Centre for Climate Change Innovation

A new centre for climate change innovation is an initiative of Imperial College London’s Grantham Institute and the Royal Institution to accelerate innovation of all forms that address the causes and effects of climate change.

Gandhi Centre for Inclusive Innovation

The Gandhi Centre seeks to act as a principal catalyst for linking innovation and entrepreneurship within, and between, companies and institutions globally. Our integrated and multidisciplinary approach, together with Imperial’s world-class expertise in applied research, provides a unique vehicle for corporate sector engagement – for undertaking research projects, executive education, corporate venturing and in the dissemination of nextgeneration innovation practices.

Institute for Deep Tech Entrepreneurship

We seek to understand and address the key barriers to the successful commercialisation of deep tech ventures. Building on Imperial’s strong research foundation, we strive to collaborate and support a thriving deep tech ecosystem across the UK and beyond.

Imperial-X

Imperial-X (I-X) provides a new co-located collaborative environment for research, education and entrepreneurship across artificial intelligence, data science and digital technologies, based at our White City Campus. It serves as a blueprint for the university of the future that is unencumbered by institutional and thematic silos, seeks impactful collaborations with industry and government, and delivers cross-cutting teaching programmes about and with digital technologies.

The Institute for Digital Molecular Design and Fabrication

DigiFAB is a unique institute dedicated to digital molecular design and fabrication. We capitalise on expertise and infrastructure already existing in the College, spanning molecular synthesis through to artificial intelligence, robotics, automation, sensor technologies and big data.

Scale Space

A scale-up community based at White City, we bring together the UK’s leading venture builders and universities to help innovative businesses scale.

Wicked Acceleration Labs

Imperial College Business School, in partnership with the Royal College of Art and leading industry players, has established Wicked Labs. We aim to address the world’s wicked problems by igniting and sustaining economic renewal through circular economy innovation, moonshot design and orchestration, corporate new-venture engagement and deep tech acceleration.

Imperial Enterprise Division

The Enterprise team helps businesses access the College’s resources, talent and expertise to address business and societal challenges. We support and encourage student entrepreneurship, and help academics find new ways to turn their expertise and research into benefits for society.

Institute of Global Health Innovation

The Institute of Global Health Innovation is a multidisciplinary team of pioneering people who break traditional research silos to tackle some of the greatest global health challenges facing the world today. Our approach is to identify, develop and implement evidence-based innovations, leading to sustainable improvements in health and care.

Head to the Entrepreneurship

Portal to find the right support for you:

Julian Ellis-Brown, CEO of Saltyco

Entrepreneur’s diary World Economic Forum, Davos, May 2022

By Julian Ellis-Brown, CEO of Saltyco

Founders of Deploy Tech, Saltyco and Treeconomy at the World Economic Forum

The opportunity for Saltyco to attend Davos, where the World Economic Forum is held each year, was a privilege. Not just because each hotel room in the quiet Swiss town will cost you at least £1,000 a night (we stayed a couple of hours outside of the town in an Airbnb) but because you get the feeling you’re at an event where real power for change can happen.

As you walk down the central promenade, the patisseries, cafes,

restaurants, ski shops, butchers and bakers have been replaced by every tech giant you could think of: Meta, Palantir, Salesforce, along with a remarkably large presence of crypto houses. For one week only, world leaders fly in and share tables with foundations and companies to try to collaborate on the year’s agreed agenda. Hopefully, through coming together, it will empower the advancement of a fairer, healthier and more sustainable planet.

Events like these showcase the power, innovation and willingness of a new generation of companies wanting to make a difference to the environmental catastrophe we are all facing

Saltyco joined as part of the Green Accelerator programme to pitch our startup to the packed room of investors in the Hotel Seehof. Adorning every wall were pictures of previous hotel attendees: ex-presidents, prime ministers and several of Bill Gates. Delayed from winter to late spring due to COVID-19, the event coincided with a heatwave so, despite the altitude, it was a very pleasant 26 degrees Celsius. This, combined with a lack

of ventilation, provided the room of around 100 people with a stark example of why we were all there–the planet is heating up.

The four-hour Green Accelerator event showcased a series of expert panels, one of which included Gerry Van Der Sluys, CEO of Business Creation, on whose generosity we were attending. Following these were the startup pitches which included three Imperial representatives: Treeconomy, a nature-based carbon removal company; Deploy, a rapidly deployed water storage technology for developing countries; and, finally, Saltyco. At Saltyco we make textiles such as BioPuff® from plants that heal damaged land via regenerative wetland agriculture. The pitches were engaging, inspiring and bookended by critical calls to action.

Two years in: the qLegal Externship Programme working with Imperial founders

Forty-nine qLegal 'externs' (Queen Mary University of London postgraduate law students) have provided over 1,300 hours and more than £100,000 of pro bono legal and commercial research to 40 Imperial startups.

Placed within a startup for one day a week for six months, qLegal externs have been busy helping out on tech, legal and commercial matters including:

• working on privacy policies, cookie policies and website terms and conditions;

The attending teams from Imperial made a herculean effort to be there, with a combined six flights cancelled and many more delayed, last-minute hotel transfers and very few hours’ sleep. Had it not been for the steadfast support and keen organisation of Victoria Entwistle, we never would have made it. Victoria is an Expert-in-Residence and mentor with the Imperial Venture Mentoring Service, and one of the many links to Imperial’s entrepreneurship ecosystem, which does an incredible job of supporting ventures such as our own.

Events like these showcase the power, innovation and willingness of a new generation of companies wanting to make a difference to the environmental catastrophe we are all facing. Hopefully with the right support and funding, and more events like these, we might just be able to stop it from happening.

• trademark searches in different jurisdictions to determine the availability of the trademark and identify any relevant previous registrations. Assessing feasibility of registration in said jurisdictions including possible costs, timeframes, need of a local attorney, scope of protection and best strategies to obtain registration;

• data protection compliance including researching and reviewing GDPR and the US equivalent (COPPA) and explaining the regulations the startup shall comply with in both jurisdictions;

• market research, competitor analysis, supporting product development and business model development;

• reviewing, annotating and explaining commercial contracts.

The beauty of the qLegal Externship Programme is that everyone wins. The law students placed have the chance to use their knowledge and experience for the good of others while developing their skills. Jessica Dhodakia, an extern at Stockhub, put it this way:

“My externship gave me the opportunity to look at how to help clients with legal matters by reducing legal jargon, and explaining terms and legal situations that clients may not have come across before. It has also allowed me to develop my client service skills when working in a business context.”

Jessica is not alone. The feedback from all participants has been positive since the programme started. David Choveaux, externship host at SPARTA Biodiscovery said:

“Camilo fitted in seamlessly and maintained a similar work ethic to the team. His communication was great and he updated us regularly on his progress. He attended to all tasks and the insight he provided was valuable in progressing our understanding of legal documents. It was a pleasure working with our extern and we’re following his progress in the course he has enrolled in for the year.”

Clemence Tanzi, qLegal teaching fellow and programme manager, believes that the success of the programme is down to the goals shared:

“qLegal and Imperial Enterprise Lab share the same aim to support enterprises and innovation. We are very pleased with the exciting startups we’ve gotten

to know and work with over the past two years, and love that several extern hosts have also sought one-to-one legal advice from our pro bono clinic.”

Want to give yourself the best possible chance of gaining a qLegal extern?

Register your interest for the next intake here:

Check out other offerings like Idea Surgeries (earlystage business coaching which can get you access to Experts-in-Residence) and monthly masterclasses and programmes at www. imperialenterpriselab.com.

All of these help you develop your skills and the business you are working on so it becomes a compelling candidate for additional support.

Magdrive

Magdrive will be hitching a lift on a SpaceX rocket this year to launch its next generation spacecraft propulsion system into orbit.

Meet the team:

Dr Thomas Clayson, Co-founder and CTO (MRes Physics 2014, PhD Plasma Physics 2018)

Mark Stokes, Cofounder and CEO (MSc Biomedical Engineering 2018)

Improved propulsion is also key to unlocking the next stage of humans in space.

The problem

Satellites need propulsion when in space to maintain their orbit and avoid collisions with other satellites or space debris.

As the volume of small satellites is increasing exponentially, potential collisions will become much more frequent.

Current electrical propulsion systems are no longer fit for purpose for obstacle avoidance, as they lack the thrust required to avoid last minute collisions. Similarly, chemical thrusters are too large to form part of a small satellite bus and are also inefficient in terms of their operating lifespan.

Simultaneously, there are novel business models and space missions which are held back by current limits of propulsion, such as satellite servicing, orbital assembly and asteroid mining. A breakthrough in propulsion is needed to enable this new era of space.

The Magdrive – an electrical propulsion system that is more than ten times as powerful as any other electrical system without compromising its efficiency – seeks to address these two key issues.

The solution

The Magdrive uses a unique pulsed power system to superheat its solid fuel to temperatures over one hundred times that of a rocket, forming a

plasma. This plasma is then confined and directed using electromagnets, and ejected as a high-velocity plasma exhaust, creating thrust.

This solution comes at the right time for the space era. We are at the inflection point and the number of spacecraft will rocket up (pun intended) enormously in the next few years. This sadly means that space debris will exponentially increase, leading to a dramatic rise in potential costly collisions. We need to improve on our propulsion capabilities to avoid this happening.

Improved propulsion is also key to unlocking the next stage of humans in space. Advanced missions in orbital assembly, servicing and manufacturing require a propulsion system that is fit for purpose; one that is powerful, efficient, small and nimble.

Where did the idea originate?

Dr Thomas Clayson completed his PhD in plasma laboratory astrophysics at Imperial in the Plasma Physics group, supervised by Dr Francisco Suzuki-Vidal and Professor Sergey Lebedev. His PhD and work in nuclear fusion enables him to apply his specialised knowledge of plasma physics to develop a unique, high-performing pulsed plasma thruster. He originally conceptualised an electrical launch rocket that could take a 25 per cent

payload to Saturn in three months. He presented his vision to Mark over dinner and agreed that, while the technology doesn’t yet exist to make this work, a lot can be initially developed for use on present day satellites, trialling the technology on a smaller scale first.

How did the team meet?

Tom and Mark met at Imperial. There was a networking event at Imperial College Business School and we connected over a mutual desire to start a business related to space. We kept throwing ideas at each other for the next six months, until Tom pitched his idea for a Saturn-bound electrical launch rocket. Mark suggested they dream slightly closer to home and apply the same principles to small satellites in low Earth orbit. Once we prove the technology is successful at this size, we can look to scale up the technology for manned space craft.

Do you have any advisers?

If so, how did they get involved?

We have been extremely fortunate to draw upon the support and guidance of our advisers. Dr Simon Bland and Dr Aaron Knoll are both at Imperial and advise us on plasma physics and spacecraft engineering, respectively. Michael Curtis-Rouse and Dr Chris Hobbs are both from the UK Satellite Applications Catapult and are very well respected in the space industry. Having them on board championing Magdrive and helping us with introductions is an invaluable asset.

Where are you now and where do you plan to be?

We have raised enough funds from a mixture of VCs and grants to get Magdrive to an in-orbit demonstration. This will prove the commercial viability of Magdrive to potential customers.

What’s been your biggest success so far?

We are proud to have grown to a team of 12 talented people who share our ambition to revolutionise the space industry. We’ve built an electrical propulsion development and testing lab. From the lab, we’ve built integrated prototypes to debug most of the technology. Our first space mission is launching in November 2022. It will be very exciting for us to watch our prototype go into orbit!

What's been the biggest challenge?

Focusing our idea on the issues faced by the space industry has been tricky, while still enabling those future goals. All technology takes longer than you expect to build, develop and test.

World events have also been challenging to our business. COVID-19 has led to a global microchip shortage. Brexit has created another level of bureaucracy for importing and exporting components and has contracted the talent pool we can recruit from.

What advice would you give an aspiring entrepreneur?

Talk to your customers and find out what issues they are facing. Look at the current solutions they are relying on. If the solutions can be improved, then start from there. And build prototypes!

If you only have a little money, build component or semi-functional prototypes –you will learn a lot with each prototype.

Get in touch:

www.

HOW TO … Design a strategy for your startup

By Milly Barker, Strategy Expert-in-Residence

Imeet a lot of people who, when I tell them what I do, tell me they have a great business idea, but don’t know how to start it. I say the same thing to each of them – you need to start with your strategy.

Clearly, as a strategist, I’m massively biased, but building a business is like any other journey – to get anywhere, you need to know where you’re going and you need

to start off in the right direction. Sure, you’ll very likely take some detours (no strategic plan survives contact with the outside world, especially the most carefully laid ones) and you may end

the journey before its original destination, but without a plan you’re not making progress –you’re just wandering around.

Start with your mission statement

Milly Barker is passionate about partnering with ambitious early-stage ventures, particularly women-led impact enterprises, to nurture ideas, provide structure and set challenging yet attainable goals across all areas of a business. Milly has 15 years’ experience as an expert in strategic design, planning and implementation, and is most passionate about professionalisation and change management in high-growth startups to the Series A investment stage.

You may call it your mission, your North Star, your ultimate goal; whatever name you give it, this is your endgame, your destination, your reason for all the hard work. Maybe you want to disrupt an industry to bring down the heartless incumbents or you want to build a new technology and change lives. Whatever your niche in the world, this is the verbalisation of your dream. Make it big, make it bold, push yourself and make it seemingly insurmountable. For example, if I were writing a mission statement for the work I do as an Expert-inResidence at the Imperial Enterprise Lab, I’d say something like: ‘Help every new founder achieve their dreams’. It’s a lofty goal, but we’re going to break it down.

Make it big, make it bold, push yourself

02 03 04 05 06

Define your strategy

If your mission statement is your final destination, your strategy is the vehicle you’re using to get there. It’s not the specific route or whether you’ll go left or right at a certain turning (those come later), it’s the rough method of transport you’re using to get there and that rough method sets a framework for future decisions. For example, if my ultimate goal, my mission, is to get to France from London, I can take the train or I can fly or I can hop on a ferry. These all get me there, but they’re different frameworks for travel. They get me to different places in the same country, and they help me make decisions later on – whether I will need to take liquids in quantities of less than 100ml, if I can read a book while I travel or if I need to worry about seasickness. Your strategy is more specific than your mission statement, but less specific than the objectives that come next. To continue my Expert-in-Residence example from above, if I want to help every new founder achieve their dreams, my strategy to do that is ‘to be an excellent Expert-in-Residence’.

Set your objectives

So far we’re operating in loose terms; we’ve got a destination and we know if we’re getting there by car or plane, but we have no milestones that tell us we’re on track to achieve our goal.

Objectives, while not as quantitative as key results, set the markers in the sand to tell us we’re on our way.

If you’ve ever ticked items off a long to-do list and felt a sense of satisfaction, you’ll love objectives. A lot of people I’ve worked with over the years have set piles of objectives, but what they’re often really looking at as objectives are actually tasks or project-based groupings of tasks. I suggest a company should generally have two objectives, usually a financial or sales-based one, and one related to the product or a customer satisfaction score; the former illustrating traction in the market and the latter illustrating quality.

In my Expert-in-Residence example, there’s no monetary gain for me, but if I want to help every new founder, I’m going to need to meet with a lot of them so, to show traction, my objective can be ‘to meet with as many founders as possible’. I don’t have a product to build but I do want to be giving good advice, so I can set something like ‘leave every founder feeling positive after our meetings’ to show quality.

Choose your key results

If your objectives are the markers of progress, the key results are the quantitative measures of this progress. They should always be quantitative measures so you can say without question that you’ve hit your objectives and are on course to deliver on your mission. They should take the form of ‘x to y by z’. So in our Expert-in-Residence example, I want to meet as many founders as possible, but how many is possible?

If I can do one session of meetings per quarter with five meetings per session, and there are four quarters in the year, my key result would be ‘to get from zero to 20 founder meetings within a year’. Each objective should have no more than two or three key results; anything more and you’re looking at metrics.

Set your metrics

Key results prove the achievement of objectives but they can take a while to accomplish. Metrics are the more micro markers along the journey that break down the bigger goal into smaller chunks. You’ll perhaps review your key results monthly, but your metrics weekly. In my example, if I want to meet 20 founders within a year, I need to ‘set up four sessions for calls’ or, if I can’t do one longer session, I need to be hitting ‘one session every 2.5 weeks’. I’m breaking the larger goal down into smaller parts to make it more achievable.

Scope your tasks

Metrics don’t improve by themselves. If I want to see my metrics improve so that I know I’m working towards my key results, I must break down the actions or tasks I need to complete to move the needle. In order to arrange ‘one session every 2.5 weeks’, I’d need to send an email to Imperial for each session, book the session into the diary and read the pre-work. All the tasks that go into that metric of delivering a particular number of sessions are broken down so I can tick them off one by one. By breaking it down to this micro level, I’ve illustrated the individual tasks I need to complete each day, and every day that I work on those tasks is taking me closer to my mission of helping every founder achieve their dreams.

We have over 75 Expertsin-Residence supporting Imperial’s startups.

Find out more here:

I’m breaking the larger goal down into smaller parts to make it more achievable.

Dama Health

Summer Accelerator 2021 winner, Dama Health, is revolutionising the way women are matched to their contraception.

The problem

Current contraceptive methods available to women globally often come with harmful side effects including blood clots, migraines, irregular bleeding, loss of libido and mental-health-related problems. This is well known and more frequently being spoken about in the media, press and medical journals as we become more educated around the topic. For example, you may have heard about the comparisons of the AstraZeneca vaccine and the contraceptive pill earlier in 2020? Studies highlighted that in the UK, blood clots occurred in people taking the AstraZeneca vaccine at a rate of roughly one in every 250,000, whereas blood clots caused by the pill are estimated to affect

one in every 1,000 women each year; data we have known about for years but that no-one really batted an eyelid to.

The current system for screening the risk of side effects or individual tolerability of side effects is rather poor, and comparable to a ‘trial-and-error’ approach. Public healthcare providers around the UK only have a limited 10- to 15-minute consultation time to prescribe contraception, where they must quickly screen for potential risk factors which are nuanced and easily missed without care. “We do not have enough information or time to truly understand what side effects are bothersome or acceptably tolerable to women during consultation times,” explains a consultant from the Royal Free Hospital.

Our research shows that, as a result, most UK contraceptive users struggle with bothersome side effects, serious adverse consequences and high levels of dissatisfaction with their contraception. Some women give up completely, which may lead to unintended pregnancies. Moreover, contraception is used beyond birth control, for example, to treat a number of women’s health conditions including menstrual disorders, polycystic ovary syndrome, adenomyosis and acne. In these cases, finding a suitable hormonal treatment is absolutely crucial for treating the underlying condition.

The trial-and-error approach to hormonal medications often continues throughout women’s reproductive journeys, from fertility treatments all the way to menopause. At Dama Health, we believe that women shouldn’t experiment with their bodies to randomly test different

Meet the team:

Elena Rueda, Cofounder and CEO (MSc Innovation, Entrepreneurship & Management 2020) Paulina Cecula, Co-founder and CPO (BSc Management 2020, MBBS 2022)

Our products are being developed with doctors and female health experts and are based on the latest scientific evidence. Our proprietary screening tests take into consideration the patient’s medical needs, personal preferences and previous experiences, as well as the different side effect profiles of hormonal contraceptives. Our genetic panel helps to take things one step further and identify potential risks and predispositions to personalise the recommendation even further. One example of this is by informing users and clinicians if they are at a higher risk of developing specific side effects or lower effectiveness of hormonal medication.

contraceptive options; instead, they should be able to make informed choices about their reproductive health. We are here to support women on that journey!

The solution

We believe that the future of women’s health will be personalised medicine. Dama Health is revolutionising the way women are matched to their contraception. We have created contraception matching tests that consist of digital and genetic screening to identify the most suitable contraception type and formulation for patients’ individual needs. The final product will use our digital screening test and at-home testing kit to gather pertinent data, such as medical history, personal preferences and genetic differences that can be incorporated into evidencebased and truly personalised recommendations of the most suitable contraception type and brand.

Where did the idea originate? Everyone on the team has experienced the problem Dama Health is tackling – either by seeing it in clinical practice or from personal experience. Our unique combination of skills and passion for the personalisation of female health meant we were very aligned when the founding team first met.

Elena grew up in the Netherlands where most girls were prescribed contraceptives from a very young age, with little to no guidance or education around the potential side effects associated with hormones. When she was older and started studying medical sciences at university, she looked back at this experience and started doing her own digging into the clinical research available around contraceptives. To her surprise, there really wasn’t much! This encouraged her to want to explore the topic further and compile the clinical data that was available to create her own decision-making tool, which she then started

sharing with close friends who would ask for advice. She realised that such a tool would only be as good as the research feeding into it, which unfortunately was not a lot. After reading about Dr Aaron Lazorwitz’s research, she reached out to him in 2020 to propose her business plan in the hope of working together to deliver updated science to women.

Paulina has experienced side effects of contraception herself and has seen many of her friends experiencing similar issues. During her clinical attachments at medical school, she discovered that finding the right contraception fit is not only a problem for women, but also for clinicians. She has observed contraception consultations being very rushed, with doctors struggling to explain various methods and establish what would be most suitable to an individual patient within the limited consultation time. Overall, appointments were far from the desired ‘shared decision-making’ scenarios that should be happening between doctors and patients. She worked on implementing an online contraceptive quiz and educational website in a GP clinic in 2019 and saw that the solution had the potential to improve outcomes and satisfaction for doctors and patients. As she progressed through medical school, graduated from Management and nurtured her passion for innovating healthcare, she developed a strong motivation to address this problem at scale.

Dr Aaron Lazorwitz is a practising obstetrician and gynecologist in the US and was astounded to find that the field of women’s health, and specifically contraception, was so far behind in applying personalised medicine principles that were revolutionising other areas of medicine. Like many of his

patients, he was frustrated that there was little to no guidance in the prescription of contraceptives for an individual woman and it was essentially only a hit-or-miss approach. This sparked Dr Lazorwitz’s interest in personalised medicine and kickstarted his research on uncovering genetic differences that could help explain why contraceptive methods affect individuals so differently. He hopes that this product will actualise his research into a tangible solution.

What inspired you to start a business?

We both studied a business degree at Imperial and were inspired by the entrepreneurial environment and incentives throughout Imperial’s programmes, and through the Imperial Enterprise Lab. The number of resources and support available inspired us to research the topic further, and gave us the confidence to go from idea to business plan. We also met so many incredible mentors and future colleagues through Imperial who have opened up incredible opportunities.

Medicine at Imperial exposed Paulina to incredible researchers and medical experts and the opportunities they presented. It was the environment of the business school, the healthtech community in London and her work with startups, however, that contributed to her passion for innovation in medicine and motivated her as an entrepreneur.

How did the team meet?

It was a mix of luck, intentional networking and a lot of alignment.

Elena reached out to Dr Lazorwitz in 2020 after reading he was recruiting for a clinical trial in the US. They organised a call where Elena proposed her business plan in the hope of working together to

commercialise his research and build something impactful together. Soon after, they started working together virtually, looking into possible product development opportunities and supply chain partners for the genetic test kits.

Although we were both studying at Imperial College Business School, we met through a common sidehustle – a job in healthtech content and copywriting.

At that time, Paulina was working for healthtech startups and thinking about whether to pursue the contraception project further. It’s not every day you come across people who are as passionate about the same problem as you and as aligned with your vision, despite coming from a different background. We also got along really well. Paulina soon joined the team and, after a few more months of working together, we formally registered the company.

We were very lucky to align so well in terms of our strengths and weaknesses, as well as on a personal level.

Do you have any advisers?

If so, how did they get involved?

We have an incredible group of mentors and advisers who are supporting us in various business areas. Elena has some amazing mentors from Merck KGaA and industry; Paulina has a network of mentors from her clinical practices, London’s healthtech communities and the NHS clinical entrepreneur programme; and Dr Lazorwitz has an incredible network of patients, doctors and researchers in the US.

Through Imperial, we have participated in the Summer Accelerator programme, Imperial Venture Mentoring Service and the WE Accelerate programme. Here we have met the majority of our current

advisers and mentors who are helping us with product development, regulation and financial planning.

Where are you now and where do you plan to be?

We have built our proprietary algorithm and beta web-app which is ready to be tested with beta users. Parallel to this, we are busy preparing for a funding round, speaking to clinics across the UK for pilot testing, recruiting for a tech/ data lead and advancing our genetics R&D in the US.

Are you raising funding?

If so, what is your fundraising target and what will you use the funds for?

We raised our first ever round of funding in Q1 2022. Our pre-seed round will help us grow our team, match grant funding, build our web-app, accelerate our clinical research and establish reputation.

What’s been your biggest success so far?

So much has happened in such a short space of time, but some of our greatest achievements have been successfully completing our pre-seed round, growing the team from two to over ten, successfully applying and being accepted into more than five accelerator and innovation programmes, publishing some of our research at the American Society for Reproductive Medicine Conference in 2021, and getting our first 100 beta tester sign ups!

What’s been the biggest challenge?

Coming from a science background, we often look for the truth or the ‘right’ answer to our challenges.

It’s quite a big shift to navigate a fast-paced space where there’s no real ‘right’ answer. Being first-time entrepreneurs, we are very open-minded and keen to hear feedback,

but it’s sometimes hard to distinguish between valuable advice and noise.

Moreover, as a biotech/ healthtech startup, we often find that the usual business frameworks do not apply easily to us, as we have to prove true clinical value, validate our solution from a regulatory point of view, and run research studies which can take longer –especially in the field of women’s health where there is a systemic lack of data on female bodies.

What advice would you give an aspiring entrepreneur?

Find people who are passionate about the same problem. It’s a difficult journey and having a team aligned on a bigger vision is one of the greatest strengths. Learn to separate your business idea from yourself – you are not your business and your business is not you. This will allow you to digest feedback and pivot faster if you’re required to do so. Cautiously step outside your safety zone – don’t be afraid to ask for help and make mistakes along the way. Be open with your team about your strengths and weaknesses – this will be crucial to building trust and delegating tasks effectively.

And, finally, create a business that you want to create – everyone may have an opinion about how to do things, but you are the one taking the risks and putting the time and effort into making it a working reality, so make sure it’s aligned with your beliefs.

Our world is rapidly changing and the pace of change has been accelerating. These eight trends provide business leaders with an accessible overview of the key movements transforming the way we do business.

Eight trends startup founders need to know now

By Bernard Marr

1. Your business has to have purpose

Behind any successful business is a strong sense of purpose; a purpose that people can genuinely connect to.

Customers are more likely to purchase from, recommend and protect a brand that they feel has a strong purpose.

Aim to deliver amazing things to customers and tackle the biggest challenges we face in the world.

2. Sustainability has to be woven into every aspect of your business

In today’s market, every business has to incorporate sustainability.

Across all kinds of sectors, companies are working to reduce plastic, decrease waste, track the environmental impact of their products and lower that impact.

Building a more sustainable business also increases brand recognition which, in turn, helps to attract and retain customers.

The majority of consumers are now beliefdriven and want to buy sustainable, eco-friendly and responsible products.

Finally, sustainability also attracts and retains top talent – critical to any company’s success.

3. Finding and keeping talent has to be a priority

The way we work is shifting, with more young people entering the workforce, more gig workers and more remote workers. Employers can now tap into a global talent pool.

With these trends comes a shift in both recruitment and the employee experience.

A willingness to learn new skills will be an increasingly important attribute in candidates.

Rather than seeking specific qualifications, certification or experience, employers must keep an open mind and embrace candidates who are passionate about continual learning.

Keep top talent by providing a positive employee experience in organisational culture, technology and the physical work environment.

Ultimately, every company must consider how this desire for smart anything and everything will impact their own product and service offerings.

Organisations need to rethink and redefine their business. Gone are the days of incremental tech upgrades; we’re entering an era of continuous and rapid evolution.

Want to learn more about the 25+ trends that are redefining organisations?

Check out Bernard’s new book, Business Trends In Practice: The 25+ Trends That Are Redefining Organizations – 2022 winner of the Business Book Awards Business Book of the Year.

Bernard Marr is an internationally recognised speaker and business strategist, a best-selling author and adviser to global companies and governments around the globe. He is a renowned futurist, writing regularly for Forbes on topics including artificial intelligence, big data and blockchain. For more information, visit: www.bernardmarr.com

8. There are new and innovative ways to fund your business

Many new funding and investment mechanisms are coming into play in the business finance space, so it’s well worth staying up to date on the latest developments in this field.

Building direct relationships with customers also allows companies to collect more reliable data on customers and markets.

In this blended work environment where humans and machines collaborate, skills such as empathy, creativity, leadership and communication will become critical for success.

It’s absolutely vital that employers reskill their workforce accordingly.

Thanks to trends like crowdfunding, initial coin offerings, tokenisation and special purpose acquisition companies, access to funding is becoming easier – and fairer.

That said, there are risks – particularly for investors. I expect we’ll see regulation tighten up around nontraditional financing in the coming years.

6. Finding the right balance between automation and human talent is critical to success

5. Building direct relationships with customers is key

With proper planning, organisations and employees can thrive in the robot revolution.

7. The metaverse offers huge opportunities for your business

4. AI will be a key technology, helping all companies succeed in the future Whether your organisation is a product-based business, a service provider or a mixture of the two, AI-driven technology will impact your product and service offerings.

Everything is becoming smarter – and this trend isn’t going to go away.

The growing direct-toconsumer trend has brands across all sectors finding new, direct routes to customers via online channels.

Whether you’re a product or service business, the subscription trend is now absolutely relevant to your business.

Customer demand for smarter, more personalised products and services is on the rise and customers are increasingly turning to subscriptions to meet their everyday needs.

There’s no doubt that automation will affect every industry, so business leaders must prepare their organisations – and their people – for the changing nature of work.

Understand what can and can’t be automated. The sheer range of tasks that intelligent machines can take on may surprise you.

Responsible automation means identifying the tasks that are better suited to machines so they can be automated, leaving humans to do the more complex, rewarding work.

In our experience economy, consumers prioritise experiences over the ownership of goods.

The metaverse and technology like augmented reality and virtual reality allow companies to create more immersive experiences and new services for their customers.

Organisations need to ask “How can we add even more value by turning this customer interaction into an experience?”.

An added benefit: providing a great customer experience is intertwined with increased employee satisfaction.

Organisations need to rethink and redefine their business. Gone are the days of incremental tech upgrades; we’re entering an era of continuous and rapid evolution.

Green is the new black

Three in five fast fashion garments end up in landfill within a year of purchase. High street stores are one of the biggest threats to the earth’s environment and also threaten human rights laws, with 93 per cent of brands not paying their garment workers a living wage. Joy Adeogun meets the Imperial entrepreneurs fixing fashion and showing us that green truly is the new black.

Although fashion and science may seem an unlikely match, if we look closely, science plays a huge role in influencing our latest trends and consumer habits. So, let’s map out the term ‘fast fashion’ and see why a vintage clothing revival is what the world needs.

Unwinding threads

London Fashion Week and our national guilty pleasure, Love Island, are two of many cultural events that influence our thirst for the newest trends, the most stylish outfits and the chicest looks. Missguided reported that after a contestant wore an item on screen in the Love Island 2018 series, sales increased by up to 500 per cent. This year, Love Island partnered with eBay to promote pre-loved clothes and accessories, demonstrating a cultural move towards sustainable fashion.

Our environment often takes the stress of our irresponsible shopping habits. A desire for supplying the latest fashion trends, cheaply and in vast quantities, has led to the fashion industry becoming one of the world’s major polluting industries. The industry is responsible for around 10 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions, 20 per cent of global water pollution and half a million tonnes of microfibres being

released into waterways annually, predominantly caused by the overproduction of clothing items to satisfy demands for ‘fast fashion’.

The term ‘fast fashion’ describes promises made by retailers to drastically reduce the time taken to get clothing from factories to shelves. Profit-driven retailers focus on processes at the lowest prices possible, often with a disregard for ethical humanitarian issues. We are reminded of the 2021 Primark supplier which allegedly locked its workers in a factory during protests in Myanmar.

Disposable fashion generates remarkable amounts of waste. There is a destructive cycle as consumers discard old clothes to keep up with the latest trends. So, let’s pause fast fashion, look at its longevity problems, and explore the eco-friendly solutions Imperial College London entrepreneurs are creating.

The problem with fashion

The fashion industry has an irreversible effect on the environment. It depletes the world of non-renewable resources, releases greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, and drains vast amounts of water and energy. It is estimated that the fashion industry is responsible for two to

Top tip:

£400 BILLION

Did you know that according to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, more than £400 billion of value is lost every year due to clothing underutilisation and the lack of recycling? Buy less, invest in sustainable quality and recycle. It may be called ‘fast fashion’ but your spending habits don’t have to be.

eight per cent of global CO2 emissions – greater than all international flights, maritime and shipping combined.Its water consumption statistics are even more shocking, with around 215 trillion litres of water consumed by the industry each year. Many of the key cotton-producing countries are under high water stress, including China, India, the US, Pakistan and Turkey.

Nadine Moustafa, a Research Postgraduate at Imperial’s Department of Chemical Engineering, was interviewed following her academic research into carbon capture and personal interest in the fashion industry.

Nadine said: “At the moment, there’s a lot of greenwashing in the industry. There are many companies vouching for things and trying to investigate loopholes about how they can market themselves as sustainable. Consumers are becoming more aware of this, and so that might change, but companies must justify their facts with research and reports.

“Vintage shopping is the way to get truly environmentally friendly options,” she says. “The good thing about vintage is that it promotes resale and

wearing pre-loved items. But we must overcome this strange, irrational mental block about wearing something someone else has already worn.”

Vintage: the old is the new new

The Sustainable Development Report 2021 tells us that fashion trends repeat every 20 to 30 years. Cue the low-rise jeans and bucket hats of the early noughties that have been top of the fashion wish list in 2022. As trends are revived, consumers are looking to get their hands on vintage clothing. Ironically, retailers respond by producing ‘vintage’ imitation garments.

The pandemic has had a lasting effect on fashion waste. During initial lockdowns, many people undertook clear-outs, and the UK public disposed of roughly 67 million pieces of clothing. While most stored their items to donate to charity, as many as 14 per cent of people disposed of their unwanted clothes in general rubbish headed for landfills or incinerators.

Scientific solutions

Although clothes are traditionally made from cotton and leather, our contemporary high street garments are increasingly likely to be made of materials derived from fossil-fuel-based crude oils, creating polysynthetic fibres like nylon and polyester. These materials do not biodegrade, meaning they are harmful to the environment. This is where Imperial's entrepreneurs are using cutting edge science and technology to create the future of fashion.

Sustainable textiles

Cotton is the most widely used natural fibre in the textile industry, with an estimated 27 million tonnes produced annually. The water footprint of cotton is large, requiring up to 10,000

Top tip:

71%

Did you know that 71% of people say shopping at a charity shop offers affordable options?

Go on, wear actual vintage! Check out charity shops in wealthier boroughs; you’ll find some steals!

litres of water to produce one kilogram of cotton, which equates to 2.6 per cent of global water usage. Materra is building climate-resilient farming systems to empower more sustainable cotton supply chains. The team, founded by three graduates from the Dyson School of Design Engineering, has “revolutionised the way cotton is grown through using both efficient and regenerative farming systems that radically improve the sustainability performance of the fibre,” according to Erik Karlsson, an investor in the business.

In early 2021, Materra – founded by Edward Brial, Edward Hill and John Bertolaso – set up its first industrial pilot in Gujarat – India’s largest cottongrowing region – with collaborators Fashion for Good, Arvind Limited, Kering, PVH Corp and H&M Group.

The Materra team is tackling issues of crop resistance head-on by deploying innovative technology

Petit Pli turns recycled plastic bottles into clothes that expand with the child who wears them

Materra is building climate-resilient farming systems

developed at Imperial.

In 2022, Materra announced a $4.5 million seed funding round to develop their technology and business proposition, driving sustainable solutions for the cotton farming sector, co-led by H&M Group and Invest FWD.

Growing garments

We all know how quickly children grow out of their clothing. In recent years, many new companies have popped up offering subscriptions and clothing hire to combat this issue. But an Imperial startup is going one step further –creating clothes that grow.

Petit Pli turns recycled plastic bottles into clothes that expand with the child who wears them, reducing water and carbon footprints, and the need to keep buying new clothes. The company’s circular design approach eliminates waste before, during and after use, with garments that grow up to seven sizes.

While a student on

SHADE highlights sustainable fashion across any shopping website. It lets you know if the product you’re browsing is from an unsustainable brand before it’s in your cart

Imperial’s Global Innovation Design course, Petit Pli founder Ryan Mario Yasin won the James Dyson Award, an international design prize that celebrates, encourages and inspires the next generation of design engineers. While starting off with childrenswear, the team has now branched into sustainable adult wear, such as clothes that grow for pregnant women.

Farm waste to fibres

Fibe is a sustainable alternative to traditional textiles such as cotton and polyester, made from potato harvest waste. Founded by Idan Gal-Shohet, Premal Gadhia, Pablo Durán Millán, David Prior Hope and Patrick Gonda – all students at Imperial’s Dyson School of Design Engineering –Fibe uses the world’s 250 million tonnes of potato harvest waste, which would otherwise be pulverised, incinerated and wasted each year.

Supported by Imperial Enterprise Lab, Imperial

College Advanced Hackspace and Climate Launchpad, Fibe has been shortlisted for the James Dyson Award 2022.

Empowering consumers

Although high street retailers are aware of increasing consumer demand for ethical clothing choices, many brands respond to this by greenwashing and falsely presenting products as environmentally friendly when they're not.

A team of Imperial graduates from Innovation Design Engineering – Sille Eva Bertelsen, Fatimah El-Rashid, Jenny Hu and Samurai L – have decided to ‘throw shade’ on these brands. Their anti-greenwashing browser extension called SHADE, part of the larger SHADY. CLUB works by displaying colour-coded emoticons showcasing sustainability ratings while a user shops online.

SHADE highlights sustainable fashion across

Top tip:

82%

Did you know that 82% of men would rather throw away used clothes than recycle them, compared to 69% of women?

The most eco-friendly piece of clothing you can wear is one you already have in your wardrobe!

any shopping website. It lets you know if the product you’re browsing is from an unsustainable brand before it’s in your cart and helps you find product lookalikes from the sustainable brands the team works with.

To dye for

Founded by recent Chemical Engineering PhD graduates Aida Rafat and Anton Firth, and Professor Jason Hallett, DyeRecycle's innovative technology paves a sustainable way for colouring clothing.

DyeRecycle provides a circular chemical technology to decolour textile waste and reuse old dyes. Its patentpending process takes in coloured textile waste and transfers the colour onto new material, decolourising the waste. The resulting white fibres are then more easily recycled and carry a higher value. DyeRecycle’s process also recycles the dyes, reducing the leaching of dyes and chemicals in the fabrics into landfill soil. The extracted dyes are robust

BioPuff®, a plant-based fibre fill material designed to keep wearers warm without harming the environment

93%

Top tip:

93% of brands surveyed by Fashion Checker aren’t paying garment workers a living wage. Be a smart shopper.

If it seems too cheap, it probably is.

and the shades and colours in the subsequent dyeing process can be carefully controlled and applied to a range of textured textiles.

DyeRecycle says that widespread use of its processes has the potential for an 85 per cent reduction in dyestuff use, a 65 per cent reduction in water footprint, 57 per cent lower cumulative energy demand and 70 per cent lower global warming.

Lab-grown fur Luxury fashion house Fendi, part of LVMH, wants a sustainable alternative to fur. Researchers from Imperial and Central Saint Martins are on the case.

Finding an integrative alternative to fur in the fashion industry means replicating the luxury qualities of the original material. If it feels fake, then it’s a failure. Professor Tom Ellis in the Department of Bioengineering at Imperial thinks he has part of the answer: use genes from fur-producing animals, such as fox and mink, to grow substitute hair fibres in the laboratory.

“In the last decade, our understanding of biological materials and how they are made by nature has increased dramatically,”

Professor Ellis explains.

“It’s now the perfect time to initiate the idea of designing fibres for fashion made sustainably from microbes.”

Puffers without the poultry

Saltyco is a materials science company that makes planet-positive textiles by healing damaged ecosystems through its innovative material supply chain. The team’s approach to regenerative agriculture focuses on three elements – restoration, context-led farming and steady growth – and involves partnerships with a community of farmers and conservation groups.

The team has developed BioPuff®, a plant-based fibre fill material designed to keep wearers warm without harming the environment. The team says that BioPuff® resembles down and is lightweight, warm and naturally water repellent, while also being biodegradable and cruelty free. Its cluster structure traps heat within small air pockets to retain warmth.

The team is comprised of four Imperial Innovation Design Engineering graduates – Julian EllisBrown, Nelly Taheri, Antonia Jara Contreras and Finlay Duncan.

In 2022, the team was

DyeRecycle's innovative technology paves a sustainable way for colouring clothing.

The lifecycle of a t-shirt

1 2 3 4 5

Harvesting cotton –it takes 3,000 litres of water to make a single cotton t-shirt.

Dyeing the fabric –20% of all freshwater pollution is made by textile treatment and dyeing. It releases harmful chemicals into waterways, leading to aquatic life toxicity.

Transportation –shipping accounts for an estimate of 2.5% of the world’s total CO2 emissions. That number could rise to as high as 17% by 2050

Buying from our stores –in 2019, spending on clothing reached an all-time high at approximately £58.7 billion.

Throw-away landfill

– 85% of textiles go to landfill each year rather than being recycled. New research from Oxfam reveals that the UK’s throw-away fashion culture sees 11 million items sent to landfill each week.

three times as many natural resources will be needed by 2050 compared to 2000 While retailers do seem to be realising the significance of sustainable clothing materials, there is plenty of work still to be done.

Science and fashion are perhaps a match made in heaven. There can be no doubt that recent and future scientific discoveries will play a significant role in changing our shopping habits. Not only improving our experience as consumers, but also for the betterment of our world.

named as a Global Change Award winner by the H&M Foundation. Clara Brook, Strategy Lead for the Global Change Awards at the H&M Foundation, said: “We’re certain there is a vast number of great ideas out there, but we know access to capital, know-how and business support is scarce,

and many great ideas never get to see the light of day. We want to find these ideas and give them the support needed to make a difference. With our previous Global Change Award winners, we’ve already seen it’s possible to influence and disrupt the fashion and textile industry.”

Fashion’s future

As for fashion’s future?

Sustainable alternatives are needed. The global middle class is set to increase to 5.5 billion people by 2030. If the fashion sector continues its current trajectory, its share of the carbon budget will increase to 26 per cent by 2050. This means that

This is an edited version of an Imperial Stories article. Read the original piece here:

There can be no doubt that recent and future scientific discoveries will play a significant role in changing our shopping habits.

Many minds make great medtech

When you think about medtech, what image comes to mind? Robotic surgery, bionic limbs, miniature implants helping us move, think or even feel?

CEO and Co-founder Lucy Jung was completing her Master’s in Innovation Design Engineering at Imperial. She was interested in the use of technology to improve the quality of life for those with long-term health conditions and, when she spoke to people with Parkinson’s, she noticed that many reported an improvement in symptoms from the use of massage chairs. Encouraged by this to research the area, she discovered the work of Professor Jean-Martin Charcot, from whom the company takes its name. Charco Neurotech is now developing wearable devices that help the movement of Parkinson’s patients through the production of vibration that stimulates the tactile sensory system.

Last year the company raised $10 million in seed funding which was the largest European round in 2021 for a health technology device. “I think Charco is really special in its level of patient-centricity,” says Jung. “We encourage all our team to spend as much time as they need working with patients because we believe it’s the most important insight for our company. We now have a community of

patients, families and carers behind us who constantly let us know what they need, what helps them and the problems they face. It’s invaluable.”

Alongside direct stimulation, the CUE1 device uses pulsed vibrations to provide cueing which helps people initiate or maintain movement. The device is paired with an app that can remind patients to take medication and enables the team to track symptoms. The aim is for the data to ultimately allow the company to identify different symptoms profiles and match these to specific patterns of stimulation, enabling more personalised approaches. “It’s a challenge,” says Jung, “but we really want to provide this tailored care for people with Parkinson’s, so we are modifying our business structure to a model that provides constant provision for individuals and can adapt to the ever-changing nature of their condition.”

Creating prosthetics that work with their owners

There are challenges to working in a patient-led and creative way, especially when walking the confined paths

Perhaps these are some of the more extreme associations, but they do reflect an underlying misperception about the sector – that medtech devices and diagnostics aim to supersede the human side of medicine, either by replacing parts of us or elements of the healthcare system.

In reality, this view is far from the truth, especially with the new generation of medtech where devices and diagnostics meet AI, machine learning and software to enable us to manage our own health, while being more connected to healthcare systems.

With these innovations, personalisation is the ultimate goal, and this can only be achieved by including patients and the public throughout the journey.

Bringing back smiles for people with Parkinson’s disease

Embedding patient and public involvement and engagement from the outset of an innovation requires time, resources and a large helping of curiosity, but it does bring clear benefits. The initial idea behind Charco Neurotech’s CUE1 device came from direct conversations with Parkinson’s patients when

“Although a one per cent improvement in symptoms may sound small, when people with Parkinson’s report that for them it feels like a miracle, then we need to realise that sometimes a small numerical shift can translate to much more in real lives.”

Lucy Jung, CEO and Co-founder, Charco Neurotech

minds make great medtech

of regulation, clinical trials and health economics that are essential to validating medtech. Companies have to be flexible enough to react to patient and user insight while also staying on track with their plans to get their product to market.

In legal terms, the wearable robotics startup Unhindr is a medtech device company, but they have consciously avoided the classic blue-green formal look adopted by many medtech brands and websites. Their logo depicts a person lifting their arms in joy and freedom, reflecting the company’s vision to enable amputees to live a life that is unhindered by their prosthetics. Unhindr has developed Roliner, an AI-adjusted, sock-like adaptive silicone wearable that goes inside the lower limb prosthetic. By applying a machine learning approach to the data collected by sensors within the liner, it can adapt to the body and understand the changing needs of its wearer throughout the day. Roliner aims to reduce the clinical dependency of amputees while improving their quality of life and comfort.

“We bring together a lot of different fields of expertise,” says CEO Ugur Tanriverdi who co-founded the company while completing his PhD in Bioengineering at Imperial. “Microfluidics, software, product design, engineering, clinical data, human factors … the list goes on. In essence, what we are trying to do is improve comfort and this is a highly subjective metric in terms of a person’s psychology, their day-to-day activities and how they interact with their device. This lived experience is essential to consider; for many amputees, their prosthetic is almost like a companion. They go everywhere with it, they decorate it, and I have even seen an amputee using

“If we had taken a purely engineering approach, then we may have produced a marvel that looks fantastic but probably not one that people would interact with.”

his prosthetic leg socket as a beer holder in a car.

So, we have all this human complexity that we have to fit within the legal and regulatory requirements of a medical device.”

An agile and adaptive accelerator

Both Unhindr and Charco Neurotech have been part of the MedTech SuperConnector (MTSC) –an accelerator working with eight institutes to enable early-career researchers (ECRs) to develop their medtech innovations. By working with entrepreneurs at an early stage, a large part of MTSC’s work is enabling them to maintain their passion and focus while meeting the regulatory challenges of innovating in the medtech sector.

One of the MTSC’s huge advantages is its fluidity: since the accelerator is not required to develop a standard programme of activities, it has the room to breathe and take stock so it can adjust its support to the needs of its cohorts.

“Our funding was inherently flexible in nature,” says Hiten Thakrar, Head of MTSC. “And that has enabled us to try new approaches, different infrastructures of support and learning content, and to bring in external players such as industry partners,

healthcare systems, mentors and advisers so we could experiment and really listen to our cohorts and their needs.”

MTSC has supported 85 ECRs from eight institutes and, so far, 14 spinouts have been formed and 17 patents filed. Some of these success stories are from institutes that had never commercialised a technology before, and the innovations are as diverse as the backgrounds of their creators. What they all share is putting people at the centre of their development. “Whether we are consumers or investors, patients or the public,” says Thakrar, “I think we all engage more with the story or narrative of what this means for people rather than the technology itself. Fortunately, we have a generation of medtech entrepreneurs who are doing just that.”

Find out more about the MedTech SuperConnector here:

in numbers

cohorts with 85 ECRs supported from 8 higher education institutes (49% /51% male to female gender split)

spinouts formed14

patents filed17 technologies progressed towards clinical and user trials

8 £17M+

raised in venture capital and grants

6 people employed in Ventures46+ pilot programmes and partnerships signed

25+ 1st

commercialisation of a technology venture for the Royal College of Music

Building on the learnings and successes of a threeyear multi-institutional approach to experimenting with the acceleration of medical technologies, MTSC has established a partnership with Imperial College Business School to lead in the co-creation of digital learning content, curriculum design and academic direction, helping to scale the MTSC impact. The next step for the MTSC is to scale this established model of medtech acceleration nationally, with the inclusion of an innovation seed fund and world-leading digital entrepreneurship learning content.

Ugur Tanriverdi, CEO and Co-founder, Unhindr

… Grow businessyourwith visual storytelling

By Natalia Talkowska, Imperial College London Storytelling Expert-in-Residence

Natalia Talkowska is the founder of Natalka Design: visual communications specialists delivering visual content, event live scribing and creative strategy.

Having established the company in 2012 in East London, Natalia now leads a 50+ team of strategic visual thinkers who have been helping companies achieve their business goals through visual communication. She has worked with FTSE 100 brands, tech giants and governments around the world.

Natalia is also the founder of Doodleledo, a creative doodle events company for teams, private groups and the public which has expanded to over 25 countries in a year.

Natalia is passionate about effective communication and problem solving via the illustrative power of visual storytelling. She is a six-time international TEDx speaker and a published illustrator, having featured in The Courier and Ackroyd’s Ark – Two by Two – a book by actor Sir Timothy Ackroyd.

Natalia has also launched two podcasts – DrawPod and #resisttheusual. She is a guest lecturer at University of the Arts London – Central Saint Martins and an Expert-in-Residence at Imperial College London.

Visuals have always been an important sensory tool. In fact, most people will process visual information 60,000 times faster than written or auditory data. This allows information to pass through teams more quickly and be understood more

easily, avoiding language barriers.

The fact that our brains are visually wired is substantiated by how we process and remember information. We absorb about 10 per cent of what we hear, 20 per cent of what

we read and an astounding 80 per cent of what we see. To back this up, consider how many memories you have that are purely visual.

Being visually minded doesn’t mean we should discount words entirely, though. The use of words

Show, don’t tell

There are many different types of visuals available to use when growing your business, including infographics, animations, GIFs; and more. You need to find what works best for you, your brand and your business.

One of the best ways to do this is to experiment

by using social media platforms like Instagram. Find a hashtag or trend that happens to be going viral. Hop on it in your own special way. And don't be afraid to play around with doodles by drawing on top of your images in a creative way. Whether you create with Adobe or free software

like Gimp or Canva, have a play around and see what you come up with.

Once you’ve found what works for you, be sure to stick to it. Experimentation when you have your rhythm is always good, but as the old saying goes, ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’.

combined with visuals allows people to recall up to 65 per cent of the information they see.

As the human attention span shrinks, it’s far easier to grab people’s attention. Current data shows that visual content in social

media is 40 times more likely than any other form of media to be shared.

Visuals really are becoming increasingly important in the online space.

Pack a visual punch

Infographics are the fourth most popular form of content on the internet and are a great way to highlight your business information in a creative, visual way. They are incredibly useful tools,

as you can take almost any form of data and represent it in small, bite-sized pieces.

Presenting written facts next to visuals will help reinforce the information and make it easier to remember. Why not

get creative? Yours could be a pie chart that looks like an actual pie or even a simple bar chart in the shape of an ascending rollercoaster to visually show the data increasing.

Get visually creative

Visuals are one of our oldest forms of communication and an incredibly versatile

form of communication that breaks down language barriers. These are just a

few neat ways you can use visuals to help grow your business.

If you’d like to learn more about Natalia and her business, check out:

Biolink with more on Natalka Design here: bio.link/natalkadesign Natalia’s Masterclass on visual storytelling in collaboration with mmhmm here: www.youtube.com/ ch?v=ON_1zybm3WQ&t= 10s

Natalka Design YouTube Channel for videos on business, inspiration, travel and creativity: www.youtube.com/user/ NatalkaDesign

We have over 75 expertsin-residence supporting Imperial’s startups. Find out more here:

Human beings are incredibly visual creatures. As hunter gatherers, we needed to be alert and visually minded in order to catch our prey and ensure we were not being hunted.

at the best

in

for Student