Impact Report 2020–2021 Launch into the Entrepreneurship Institute’s Impact Report charting our 2020-21 journey, a year of brilliant ideas, start-up success and loads of entrepreneurial spirit!
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1. About Us 2. Message from the Director 3. Timeline of 2020-21 4. What we learned this year 5. Sustainability 6. Community 7. Diversity & Inclusion 8. Belonging and Micro-communities 9. Entrepreneurial Skills Virtual Venture Crawl ...........................................................
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Entrepreneurial Summer Internships .....................................
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Enterprise Award ..................................................................
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Entrepreneurial Skills on the Curriculum ............................... 34 10. Developing Ideas Idea Factory ..........................................................................
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Women Entrepreneurs Network ............................................
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Women Entrepreneurs Retreat ..............................................
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11. Starting and Scaling Ventures Bright Sparks ........................................................................
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King’s20 Cohort V ................................................................
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Case Study: Sojo ................................................................... 46 Case Study: Hard Yards ......................................................... 47 Demo Day 2021 ..................................................................... 48 Start Up Visas ........................................................................ 50 12. Neuroscience of Entrepreneurship
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About us We believe that everyone can be entrepreneurial, and that entrepreneurial people can help make the world a better place by solving problems, creating a healthier, smarter, more equal and sustainable future. The Entrepreneurship Institute’s role is to help all students, staff and alumni to develop an entrepreneurial mindset of their own, supporting whatever career or future they have in mind. We nurture the most innovative and resilient entrepreneurial minds from the King’s community with the skills they need to help imagine and design a better future, whether that’s within government, NGOs, corporate organisations or start-ups.
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Message from the Director This was a year that saw many of our long-established systems fundamentally challenged, a year that called on our entrepreneurial spirits and disruptive thinking to develop new ways of doing things.
of the King’s20 Accelerator, which achieved gender parity amongst the founders. I am confident that the infrastructure we have built around inclusive entrepreneurship will allow us to sustain this success.
20/21 challenged us all, but despite this, at the Entrepreneurship Institute, we pulled together, adapted and adjusted to the various challenges and new normals that were presented. We mastered the transition to online delivery, increasing access to our programmes and content, and whilst we continue to grapple with uncertainty, we’ve retained a hybrid approach so that we’re able to reach and upskill as many people as possible.
My thanks go out to the Entrepreneurship Institute team, who have not only steadied the ship, but with all of the challenges this year, made the boat go even faster. Their energy, resilience and agility has made this year the success that it has been.
During the year we reached a significant milestone; we celebrated 100 ventures that have come through the King’s20 Accelerator. Amongst these 100 ventures, they have created 404 new jobs for our economy, whilst solving problems across healthcare, education, society and sustainability.
We hope you enjoy reading our 20/21 impact report. Julie Devonshire OBE Director Entrepreneurship Institute
As our Women Entrepreneurs Network went from strength to strength, I was thrilled to see these efforts reflected in the last two cohorts 5
Timeline of 2020-2021
September First-ever digital Welcome Week, reaching 1350 students across 11 events.
April The Virtual Women Entrepreneurs Network Retreat attended by 44 women entrepreneurs.
October Enterprise Award launched with a record 380 sign ups.
May Nine King’s entrepreneurs made it to the semi-finals of the Mayor’s Entrepreneur competition.
November Celebrated 5 years and 100 ventures on the King’s20 Accelerator with Bright Sparks: 100 entrepreneurial answers to some of the world’s most pressing challenges. February Idea Factory launches People’s Choice award, attracting over 6000 votes in one week for the finalists.
June Silver Green Impact accreditation awarded by NUS to the Institute for its work on Sustainability. July Digital Demo Day 21 celebrated our King’s20 ventures on Hopin with founder, Johnny Boufarhat.
March David Walsh Awards recognised entrepreneurial resilience and recovery - £25,000 awarded to seven of the King’s20 ventures to empower them to create a positive impact and fuel their businesses. Virtual Venture Crawl – Another pandemic pivot, Venture Crawl went virtual this year and connected 750 students from 18 universities with the global London’s start-up and enterprise ecosystem.
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Silver Green Impact accreditation
Idea Factory
David Walsh Awards 100 Ventures
Mayor’s Entrepreneur Competition
Demo Day 2021 7
What we learned this year
We need to change people’s minds about who entrepreneurs are This year, YouGov polling showed that a majority see entrepreneurs as male and middle-class. However, on the ground, we are actively working to change that by identifying and removing some of the barriers that exist in entrepreneurship, especially relating to gender. Since inception, 40% of our King’s20 ventures have been founded by women. The polling also showed that entrepreneurship carries with it a stigma of ego and personal, financial gain or fame. Yet a survey of our 100 ventures found that a majority said that solving problems and driving change were at the heart of their endeavours. And yet, the same YouGov poll reports that entrepreneurs can help strengthen economies. A majority of respondents suggested that entrepreneurs are important to helping economies grow (69%) and to recovering from recessions (63%). Clearly, there is optimism that entrepreneurial mindsets can support society in the face of crises. Being entrepreneurial, not an entrepreneur
Entrepreneurial Mindset framework, which we believe will empower people to be more creative problem-solvers no matter what their career ambitions. Despite this, we found that a common barrier to participation was not having a start-up idea, so, it seems that the message isn’t hitting home the way we need it to. Going forward, we will turn up the dial on our engagement activities to better understand what it means to be entrepreneurial in a diversity of contexts, so that we can create content and opportunities that our audiences can relate to. Elevating student voices The inclusion of student voices is essential to promote our message that everyone can be entrepreneurial. Student ambassadors have previously been a key part of our engagement strategy. However, since reviewing impact on our programmes and their employability, we will develop a means of providing students with more meaningful work that directly contributes to their skills development. Taking the best bits of online into our future
Our key message is that everyone can be entrepreneurial. In addition to venture support, we’ve developed the Seven Skills of an
Delivering our programmes digitally was an inevitable part of this year – from workshops to events to community-building. We were able to adapt quickly and while we all
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suffered from screen-fatigue, we found that online delivery also had a very accessible upside. By delivering informational content (e.g. lecture style information) online and making the recordings available, we were able to reach and benefit audiences who had previously struggled to attend these in-person. It’s about creating inspiring and welcoming spaces, wherever they are While we commit to championing a hybrid model of digital and on-campus delivery work, we know that we need to invest in building peoples’ skills and confidence to be part of, and contribute to, a community, regardless of where that is. We can create a space that’s fun and interactive, but we need to do more to enable our community to turn up with a willingness to participate and contribute to a community feeling or even organically evolve their own. Drilling down into our diversity You can’t know what you don’t measure, and that includes people! This was the first year we measured our diversity and protected characteristics, beyond gender, consistently
across all our programmes and have been able to paint a fuller, more nuanced picture of who is engaging with us, and at what level. Publishing this data is just the first step in our journey. We want to drill down into this data, working with the University’s Equality, Diversity and Inclusion team, to identify the barriers that underrepresented groups experience in their entrepreneurial skills development, and work to create greater access. Levelling up on our Operations The pandemic has highlighted the importance of operational processes in the world and how we do our work. Like most other organisations we had to rethink and refocus on the importance of processes that supported everyone to do their best both remotely and in-person. While we’ve been hard at work for the past few years ensuring that everything from planning, strategy, branding, finance and HR were all as finely tuned as possible, the migration to online and hybrid working, and therefore the need for even greater internal communications, has seen us take it up another gear.
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It has been inspiring and deeply reassuring to see colleagues, start-up founders and our entrepreneurial community step-up to take action on Sustainability. In just 2 years, we have moved from a small pilot event, to becoming a Sustainability leader in the way we deliver enterprise education across the Institute. This makes me very happy! Katherine Horsham, Operations Manager and Sustainability Lead
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Sustainability
Sustainability cuts across every single function of the Entrepreneurship Institute. We accelerated our work relating to sustainability despite the pandemic to achieve the Silver Accreditation from NUS Green Impact. We achieved this because of our rapid adoption of online working, the general health of our day-to-day Operations, a strong commitment within our team and the support of four student Sustainability Champions.
We continued our work to address gender inequality within entrepreneurship and started work on a new project to widen participation more generally in the ecosystem. We forged a stronger relationship with the King’s Sustainability Team, helping them generate disruptive ideas and leveraged paid volunteering time to apply an entrepreneurial approach to tackle street homelessness in London.
Since the last report, we successfully integrated sustainability into how we develop entrepreneurial skills and start-ups. All our core programmes issued a call-to-action to their communities, and shared tools, advice and inspiration to generate action:
Commitments were made this year to continue with a digital-first approach to delivery and home-working post-restrictions to reduce our carbon footprint as a department. We also conducted a review of our purchasing to hardwire more sustainable choices into the products we procure.
• We secured interviews with the CEOs of Iceland and Mercato Metropolitano for Venture Crawl and discussed their sustainability priorities and efforts • We upskilled Idea Factory teams on how to align their ideas with the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) through workshops, and mapped the finalists against the goals
In terms of our own commitments to the UN’s SDGs, they remain the same as last year, and we have worked to map the goals onto all our 100 ventures. We continue to use the UN SDGs as a framework to demonstrate how being entrepreneurial can contribute to a healthier, smarter, more equal and sustainable future.
• We screened King’s20 applicants on their sustainability ambitions as part of selection for the Accelerator, and delivered a Sustainability Workshop Series.
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King’s20 Ventures by SDG
1. No Poverty
Here are how our King’s20 ventures contribute to the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Note: some ventures contribute to multiple SDGs.
3. Good Health and Well-being
4. Quality Education
46 8. Decent Work and Economic Growth
5. Gender Equality
13. Climate Action
43 14. Life Below Water
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10. Reduced Inequality
22 15. Life on Land
1 11. Sustainable Cities and Communities
30 16. Peace and Justice Strong Institutions
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2 7. Affordable and Clean Energy
6. Clean Water and Sanitation
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24 9. Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure
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2. Zero Hunger
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2 12. Responsible Consumption and Production
19 17. Partnerships for the Goals
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Our community in numbers
9315 Newsletter subscribers
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participants for PhD Entrepreneurial Mindset Training
644 Investors
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Entrepreneurial Engineering students
18,168
82
Idea Factory applications
249
followers on social media
applications for our Entrepreneurial Internships
140
participants for Venture Crawl
141
participants for Enterprise Award
888 16
members of the Women Entrepreneurs Network
members of the Start-Up Visa community
192 applications for King’s20
Community While the year was anything but quiet, with our well as the micro-communities within them), our regular programming still going ahead full steam, Accelerator and our investor network. Since we we took this year as an opportunity to reflect started four years ago, the size of this commuon and advance our community engagement nity has more than doubled, and we’re seeing efforts. steady increases in awareness and engagement year on year. Creating communities for entrepreneurship has been a strategic priority for the Institute for the We invested in new infrastructure that would past three years, and our efforts seem to have support and sustain our community engagepaid off, with many of our community organment. Some of the steps we took this year ising strategies translating directly into a new included developing a visual identity that repredigital context. sented the dynamic energy and spirit of our community, making us identifiable and relatable Our community is defined as those who we to our community. reach through social media, our newsletter, our curricular and co-curricular programmes (as
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Diversity & Inclusion
Diversity is a key driver of innovation. Diversity of experiences, backgrounds, characteristics, lifestyles, perspectives, talents and more underpin the development of new and disruptive ideas that drive change and progress. This year, we standardised our Equal Opportunity data monitoring with all programmes, allowing us, for the first time, to see who is part of our community. For benchmarking purposes, we have used the overall King’s student profile from the King’s EDI Annual Report and the Alone Together: Entrepreneurship and Diversity in the UK report to better understand the context of our data. While the data suggests that we are reaching a diverse community of students across King’s, we have much more work to do. There are aspects of the human experience that need further research and attention, for example, LGBTQ+ and intersectional experiences in entrepreneurship. While participation in our programmes by black community members is higher than or on par with King’s and national averages, that by no means suggests that this is an acceptable number, and greater work needs to be done to ensure that entrepreneurship is an equal opportunity endeavour. Going forward, we will be working closely with the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion team to help design interventions that can build on the work we have already started with the Women Entrepreneurs Network.
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FIGURE 1.0
Gender in the sector and at King’s Participation from women is very high and that we are reporting above average for entrepreneurs and King’s overall is encouraging. It should be noted that the King’s20 was 50:50 at shortlisting but was affected by a withdrawal due to visa issues. Alone Together Report
0
25
50
25
50
75
100%
25
0
25
50
75
100%
50
75
100%
Idea Factory
75
100%
Enterprise Award
0
Women
King’s College London Overall
King’s20 Accelerator applications
0
Men and other
0
25
Women Entrepreneurs Network Retreat
50
75
100%
0
25
50
75
100%
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FIGURE 2.0
Disability in the sector and at King’s We have worked to make our programmes as accessible as possible (for example making all recordings available online during the pandemic), however we know we have more work to do, especially around disability as we move to more hybrid forms of delivery. Alone Together Report
0
25
50
25
50
75
100%
18
25
0
25
50
75
100%
50
75
100%
Idea Factory
75
100%
Enterprise Award
0
No disability declared
King’s College London Overall
King’s20 Accelerator applications
0
Declared a disability
0
25
Women Entrepreneurs Network Retreat
50
75
100%
0
25
EI IMPACT REPORT
50
75
100%
FIGURE 3.0
Ethnicity in the sector and at King’s There is a clear ethnicity gap in UK entrepreneurship, and while our data is encouraging, there is more work to do.
Alone Together Report
White
Chinese
Mixed & Other
Black
Arab
Prefer not to say
Asian
Latin American
Non UK Domicile
King’s College London Overall 100%
100%
75
75
50
50
25
25
0
0
King’s20 Accelerator applications
Idea Factory 100%
100%
75
75
50
50
25
25
0
0
Enterprise Award
Women Entrepreneurs Network Retreat 100%
100%
75
75
50
50
25
25
0
0
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Belonging & Micro-Communities We know that feelings of belonging to a community have direct correlations with university retention and success, which is why community development across the Entrepreneurship Institute, and the fostering of micro-communities within our programmes is one of our strategic priorities. We also know that creating communities facilitates impactful peer-to-peer support within them, and that programmes with more regular contact (King’s20 Accelerator) are likely to show higher levels of belonging than those that are more light-touch (Enterprise Award).
mattered to others within the community. As anticipated, delivering programmes online during the pandemic did lead to lower levels of engagement, but we were able, in many instances, to keep scores relating to community and belonging stable, which suggests our adaptations went some way to maintaining connections.
It was important for us this year – especially in a year with so few opportunities to meet and connect face-to-face – to really understand what it is like to be part of our community, and how the effects of the pandemic bear on feelings of belonging. We used a standardised set of questions to ask our audiences how connected and how understood they felt, as well as how much they felt they
The pandemic highlighted the importance of community mobilisation as a skill and the need to develop digital practices as well as the need to empower our audiences to see themselves as part of a community and to understand their role in making it a strong one. This led us to develop a new Community Charter that positioned everyone as a Community Mobiliser, and to start designing new Community Inductions to share tools and experiential learning around what it means to be one – whether in-person or online.
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Enterprise Award We knew that opportunities to network with other participants were limited given the fully-online delivery of the Award. Participants were assigned random groups of 10 to encourage engagement and support, but in most instances, communication dropped off after a few weeks. In the year ahead, buddy groups will be assigned by an entrepreneurial skill that each participant has chosen to develop to maximise networking and usefulness of the groups. Idea Factory The nature and timeline of Idea Factory means that the Semi-Final Bootcamp is the very first point we bring our shortlisted semi-finalist teams together with very little opportunity to come together as a community – and of course it was all online. Despite this, all teams were incredibly supportive and encouraging of each other through the competition. King’s20 Accelerator The King’s20 community worked hard to stay connected during the pandemic, with many of our entrepreneurs also working full-time, balancing caring responsibilities or working as frontline medical staff. We facilitated a digital weekly ‘All Hands’ and empowered them to lead on peer-to-peer initiatives such as accountability groups, interactive socials and group crits.
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FIGURE 1.0
Community and belonging in our micro-communities This is the first year we have consistently measured feelings of connection and belonging within our micro-communities, which we worked hard to foster despite working remotely and online.
Enterprise Award
Idea Factory
How connected do you feel to people within the Entrepreneurship Institute community? 2.4/5
How well do people within the Entrepreneurship Institute community understand you as a person? 3/5
How well do people within the Entrepreneurship Institute community understand you as a person? 2.6/5
How connected do you feel to people within the Entrepreneurship Institute community? 2.5/5
How much do you matter to others within the Entrepreneurship Institute community? 2.4/5
How much do you matter to others within the Entrepreneurship Institute community? 3/5
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FIGURE 2.0
Comparison between the King’s20 Accelerator and the Entrepreneurship Institute These graphs show that despite being an almost entirely remote cohort, the Kings’20 community felt connected to each other and the staff at the Entrepreneurship Institute.
Entrepreneurship Institute King’s20 Accelerator
Your Overall sense of belonging?
3.63/5
4.31/5
How well do you feel the following people in the Entrepreneurship Institute community understand you as a person? 3.86/5
3.52/5
How connected do you feel to the following people in the Entrepreneurship Institute community? 3.97/5
3.69/5
How much do you feel you matter to the following people within the Entrepreneurship Institute community? 4/5
3.31/5
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Entrepreneurial Skills Over the past year, despite the changes we had to make to adapt to the pandemic, we saw a continued uplift in our audiences participating in our co-curricular offerings with Enterprise Award completions increasing by over 50%. Whilst we’re pleased to see these co-curricular programmes grow, we have also had the opportunity to take our message - entrepreneurial skills are relevant and important for anyone and everyone - into a new era as we begin to deliver skills training as part of the curriculum at King’s. Partnering with faculties and departments like Engineering and Dentistry to deliver training on the curriculum, we’re able to make entrepreneurial skills and thinking structurally unavoidable for students who may not have otherwise sought this out. This has been a great opportunity to learn how to work alongside academics before we begin to deliver new credit bearing modules to Undergraduate and Masters students in 2022/23.
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Results from our entrepreneurial skills programmes, 2020-2021 This is also the first year in which we have been able to tangibly measure skill development across multiple programmes using the Seven Skills framework. Over 542 participants took part in our entrepreneurial skills programmes last year, and we reported:
pre-programme survey post-programme survey
Getting it Done: Confidence in prioritising workload; maintaining motivation, accountability and focus; leaning into new challenges knowing progress is made by tackling the tasks which stretch us.
Think Lean: Confidence in testing ideas to gain objective feedback; making incremental improvements on an idea rather than aiming for perfection immediately; and considering the conservation of resources by designing out waste.
Enterprise Award
Enterprise Award 77.3%
55% 86%
Entrepreneurial Summer Internships
67% Entrepreneurial Summer Internships
62.9%
52% 80%
PhD Entrepreneurial Mindset training
62.5% PhD Entrepreneurial Mindset training
60%
51.75%
71.33%
62.1%
Compel: Confidence in constructing and delivering a presentation and pitching; confidence in leadership style and articulating a clear vision with persuasiveness.
Validation: Confidence in understanding about the problem before jumping into solutions; designing objective questions to gain unbiased feedback; generating traction as proof of need
Enterprise Award
Enterprise Award 67%
52.2% 81.28%
Entrepreneurial Summer Internships
74.33% Entrepreneurial Summer Internships
63.2%
75%
73.33% PhD Entrepreneurial Mindset training
83.33% PhD Entrepreneurial Mindset training
46.69%
48% 62.1%
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58.6%
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Disrupt: Confidence analysing a particular context and spotting opportunities for change; challenging how things are done; and designing solutions that respond to today’s global challenges.
Build Teams: Confidence seeking out opportunities to engage with people from different backgrounds; cultivating a positive and inclusive culture; dealing with conflict between others.
Enterprise Award
Enterprise Award 64%
82.2% 72%
93.33%
Entrepreneurial Summer Internships
Entrepreneurial Summer Internships
59.71%
79.64%
71.66%
90%
PhD Entrepreneurial Mindset training
PhD Entrepreneurial Mindset training
60%
62.6%
67.45%
72%
Be Resilient: Confidence stepping outside your comfort zone; keeping an objective mindset for greater clarity; fostering personal and professional networks for guidance and support. Enterprise Award 69.33% 73.33% Entrepreneurial Summer Internships 83.33% 80% PhD Entrepreneurial Mindset training 64.8% 72.66%
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It’s been so eye-opening exploring different career paths and networking with other incredible students and alumni from around the globe. Despite the events being online this year, it was such a fun experience and felt like a day to immerse myself in the world of entrepreneurship and innovation to see people’s dedication, hunger, drive and get inspired. I’m always excited to see emerging entrepreneurial talent coming out of our universities and I can’t wait to put all this knowledge into action and see where it leads! Priya Pillaipakkam Madapusi, Computer Science student
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Virtual Venture Crawl
In any other year, Venture Crawl involves shepherding groups of students onto iconic red London buses across London’s entrepreneurial ecosystem to learn investor insights and the secrets of start-up success. But as we know, this year was like no other, and in the spirit of entrepreneurial resilience, Venture Crawl pivoted and was held as a digital entrepreneurial festival.
Operations highlight To make the Virtual Venture Crawl a success, we pulled together a new microsite that allowed increased access and engagement for hundreds of students. Talk about thinking lean!
The experience was designed to connect to realworld businesses and venture capital firms, be inspired by the UK’s vibrant entrepreneurial ecosystem, and gain skills in self-confidence, creative thinking, resilience and leadership. The event saw over 750 students from 18 universities attend live workshops, meet like-minded peers at networking events and participate in an end-of-day pitch-off. Pivoting to digital meant that the organisers curated a hub of inspirational content from some of the UK’s most interesting entrepreneurs and innovators, including Ben Francis (founder of GymShark), Richard Walker (CEO of Iceland), Emma Watkinson (co-founder of SilkFred), Aron Gelbard (co-founder and CEO of Bloom & Wild), Giles Humpries (co-founder of Mindful Chef) as well as Venture Capital firms such as Octopus Ventures and innovation hubs like Plexal.
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Entrepreneurial Summer Internships
Each year, through a partnership with Santander and the King’s Business School, we offer current students the opportunity to intern for 12 weeks over the summer with some of our ventures on the King’s20 Accelerator.
Supported by the King’s Careers and Employability service, the internships were designed to increase access to entrepreneurship to students from underrepresented backgrounds.
The internships provide students with firsthand experience of working in a start-up environment, skills in resilience, team building and thinking lean, as well as practical knowledge in business planning, sales and digital marketing, and product development.
69% disclosed that they were from a Widening Participation background
To encourage focus on “building teams” this year, the ventures led the full recruitment process with support from the Institute. We advertised 13 different roles, ensuring students with relevant skills applied for specific roles, including two roles to support our work at the Institute. For the second year our internship programme was run fully digitally, allowing international students to fully engage as well. We offered 5 week internships for the first time, hosting two cohorts over the summer. At least three interns were hired on a more permanent basis by the ventures they interned for
249 applications 13 interns 75 to interview
38% identified as BIPOC
8% were mature learners
15% had parents/carers who had never been to university
Operations highlight We received 68 applications to work as an Operations Intern at the Institute, so drawing on our previous experience with student ambassadors, we decided to re-launch our engagement activity by creating a smaller pool of Operations Superstars who can support during busy periods through meaningful work that directly contributes to their skills development.
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Enterprise Award Enterprise Award is a year-long, co-curricular programme which is designed to take students through the Seven Skills of an Entrepreneurial Mindset to enhance their employability and career ambitions. The programme encourages participants to take the opportunity to explore and discover the world of entrepreneurship and the London start-up eco-system by attending events and workshops. We also strongly believe in fostering community and promoting opportunities for participants to buddy up and work in groups. The award contributes to each student’s Higher Education Achievement Report, which can be showcased to employers.
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This year, we had 380 students sign up to participate and 141 of those went on to complete the Award, a 50% increase from last year. • Average 4.67/5 strongly agreed with the statement “Through taking part in Enterprise Award, I have a better understanding of the Seven Skills of an Entrepreneurial Mindset” • Average 4.69/5 strongly agreed with the statement “Through taking part in Enterprise Award, I have developed one or more Skills of an Entrepreneurial Mindset” • Average 4.06/5 strongly agreed with the statement “Through taking part in Enterprise Award, I have improved my future employability prospects”
EI IMPACT REPORT
Even though I have done a lot of Awards, the Enterprise Award really stands out for two reasons. First, because it offers a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to actually develop a business idea in the real world, whilst being guided through the process, over the course of a year. And with the safety of knowing that even if it fails, you will have learned a lot and gotten an Award on your HEAR. This is truly unique opportunity, that would not be available to me in any other way. Second, because of the dedication of the team behind it. I received so many enthusiastic emails, week after week, consistently throughout the whole programme. We were informed of many opportunities on a regular basis. The team seemed so genuinely dedicated to the project, and believing in its power to generate ideas, that this acted as a source of motivation and even, inspiration. I think that this Award gave me the confidence and support to take my idea and turn it into reality. Ioanna Bagia, 3rd Year Politics, Philosophy & Law LL.B.
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Entrepreneurial Skills on the King’s Curriculum
As we work towards our vision of giving everyone in the King’s community the opportunity to develop their entrepreneurial mindset, we need to move beyond just working in a co-curricular fashion to embedding applied learning in entrepreneurship in the curriculum, and reaching students who may not immediately see the relevance or importance of developing a set of becoming more entrepreneurial skills. In 2020-2021 we delivered:
This year has been a great learning opportunity in working with different faculties and departments as we’ve also begun developing modules and programmes that will begin in September 2022. For the first time, we will be delivering credit-bearing curricular content. This year has marked a step change in our approach to delivering skills as we move away from waiting for people to find us to taking our message out to where our audience organically are, resulting in us being able to hugely scale up the number of people that become more entrepreneurial and potentially more employable with us.
• Disruptive Thinking workshop to 180 first year Dentistry students • A series of skills workshops for a cohort of 38 Engineering students to support their practical project work • Entrepreneurial Mindset Training for 28 PhD students It was fantastic to see the students understanding the benefit this training could have to their future careers. As one PhD Student wrote “My advice to anyone thinking of doing this… just do it! Even if you never want to go into business – this course just teaches you life skills and prepares you for any professional situation in a fun and creative way while you learn so much valuable information.”
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Developing Ideas Given the impact of the pandemic we had some additional challenges this year in adapting our start-up pipeline, as both Idea Factory and the Women Entrepreneurs Network have previously had a large in-person presence. We wanted to ensure that we were not only moving support digital, but also finding new opportunities to find and support high potential ventures. It’s been fantastic to see so many more founders interacting with the Institute from all around the world that were not previously able to participate in person. Additionally, we’re incredibly proud of the work we have put in to ensuring that entrepreneurship is a space for everyone to feel welcome. Having
now come to our third year of the Women Entrepreneurs Network, we have seen so many fantastic women-led ventures achieving success as part of Idea Factory, securing places on the King’s 20. It’s incredibly important at the early stages of a venture to validate ideas and test assumption, hence our focus on this during Idea Factory. It’s been incredibly encouraging to see the impact of this focus, with the number of ventures progressing from the competition into the King’s20 year-on-year; a total of seven previous Idea Factory winners, finalists and semi-finalists making it on to the latest cohort.
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Idea Factory
Idea Factory is King’s College London’s flagship idea generation competition. The competition empowers budding entrepreneurs within the King’s community by showcasing their new ideas, which have the potential to grow into worthy and successful businesses. Participants take part in supporting workshops to give them the skills to generate and pitch ideas with clarity and enthusiasm. This year saw 83 competition submissions from across the King’s community, and a fully-online delivery model enabled us to offer even more support to semi-finalist and finalist teams: from live pitch feedback from their peers and 1:1s with our Pitch Coach before the Pitch Off, to additional sessions with our in-house Experts, post-competition. Our inaugural People’s Choice Awards garnered 6300+ votes, and the winners received an additional £2K in the total prize pot. “It was an absolutely amazing experience. From “Overall great and very educational. The stepthe very start to the results being announced by-step process and available workshops helped during the live pitch off it was a rollercoaster of greatly in forming our idea and taking it to learning and emotions. I personally have grown the next stage. We wouldn’t have been able to by building on my pitching skills and creating a submit the application without all the support captivating pitch deck but I have also had the and guidance provided. The workshops on idea opportunity to meet such wonderful people who validation and the 1:1 sessions I think proved are all working on such innovative ideas. All most useful. I feel like I’ve left Idea Factory with in all it was extremely rewarding and I’d do it renewed drive to pursue our idea and hopefully again in a heartbeat!” take the next step as an entrepreneur.” Nitya Dintakurti, coolZEN
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Aysha Nasir, Of Colour
EI IMPACT REPORT
Upskilling in Idea Factory 2020-2021 These graphs show the upskilling that took place across this year’s Idea Factory, particularly across idea validation and pitching.
78% said that they were more knowledgeable about validation and thinking lean because of the workshops.
78%
88% agree or strongly agree they have a better understanding of the problem they were trying to solve, and the customer that they aimed to serve.
84% agree or strongly agree they have a better understanding of how to test and validate a business idea
88%
84%
100% agree or strongly agree their pitching skills have improved as a result of Idea Factory
78% agree or strongly agree that Idea Factory gave me a clearer understanding of the next steps I need to take to move my idea forward
100%
78%
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Women Entrepreneurs Network The Women Entrepreneurs Network aims to achieve gender parity across the Entrepreneurship Institute’s activities, with a key aim to build gender parity, sustainably, into the King’s20 Accelerator.
nity succeed and grow despite Covid and rapid digitalisation of engagement. We consistently met our KPI of gender parity on the King’s20 and have grown our digital community to nearly 900 women... so far.
The programme is open to all female-identifying We identified the three contributors to the and non-binary students, staff and alumni at network’s success as community, the Annual King’s and increases their exposure to entrepre- Retreat and addressing confidence, allowing the neurial skills, knowledge-sharing and communi- women we support to continue to disrupt. ty-building. The first 3-year cycle of the Women Entrepreneurs Network has come to an end, making this a year of reflection and results, seeing a commu-
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Women Entrepreneurs Retreat Each year, we hold a two- or three-day Women Entrepreneurs Retreat, designed to help entrepreneurs increase their customer base and traction by deepening their knowledge of sustainable disruption, pitching and monetisation strategies. Sessions are delivered in line with the Seven Skills of Entrepreneurial Mindset and provide practical, actionable skills as well as values-focused exercises to give each attendee a plan and resources to leave with continued business momentum. The Retreat has been key to achieving our KPI of gender parity on the King’s20. This year, not only did we achieve gender parity but, for the
first time, 55% of applications were women-led. “Thank you for organising such an amazing retreat! Every session was truly invaluable. I almost felt like I was part of a mini accelerator” Ishani Behl “I think if I hadn’t gone on that Retreat, I would have been floundering. Now I know what I want to do” Dr Rachel Parker “It’s not only got me out of a rut, it propelled me on, gave me enthusiasm to keep going with this. It’s also given me the skills and knowledge and contacts to actually do it” Dr Fay Minty.
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Starting & Scaling Ventures
Limited interaction with customers, repurposing services, powerful pivots, and delayed funding rounds – entrepreneurial resilience amongst the King’s20 community has never been so predominant. Our King’s20 Accelerator shifted to the new digital way of working, beginning with a virtual welcome to the 20 highest potential companies across the King’s ecosystem. Our community leaped at the challenge of building meaningful connections online, which saw the introduction of peer-led accountability groups, designed to fuel relationships amongst ventures of varying stages and sectors. Historically, it was our belief that our sense of belonging amongst the King’s20 was due to our physical space. However, with dedication and determination from the team, the King’s20 proved that they could create meaningful relationships without the aid of a physical space. Going forward, we’re passionate about making the King’s20 Accelerator accessible to all regardless of physical location, and we will be offering a ‘hybrid’ King’s20 programme for the next academic year. In collaboration with the IP & Licensing team, we’ll also be exploring how we can support ventures from research programmes at King’s.
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Bright Sparks: 100 entrepreneurial answers to some of the world’s most pressing challenges This year marked a celebration of the 100 innovative ventures developed over the past five years by King’s students, staff and alumni through the Entrepreneurship Institute’s King’s20 Accelerator. In the campaign, we highlighted our ventures’ contributions to healthcare, education, and society as well as sustainability, and looked ahead to what the next generation of ventures might achieve. Since 2016, our 100 King’s20 ventures have collectively generated:
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£29,339,472 revenue £39,448,222 investment £5,297,546 grants 665 people employed
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King’s20 Cohort V King’s20 Accelerator is our flagship programme supporting the 20 brightest and highest-potential ventures from King’s. Ventures can be at any stage of their development and the Accelerator is open to all King’s students, staff and alumni. During their year with us, they receive an estimated £60,000 of support which includes access to a co-working space in our beautiful, Central London office space, weekly coaching from eight Experts-in-Residence, access to a network of investors and partners, access to funded interns, access to grant funding opportunities, free accounting, £10,000 of cloud computing credits, as well as support in building leadership, resilience and an entrepreneurial mindset.
£180,000 revenue £750,000 investment £500,000
grants
28 people employed
This year we received 192 applications for Cohort V, from which we selected the 20 highest-potential ventures. By the end of the 12-month programme, the cohort had collectively generated:
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Case study: Sojo
Josephine Philips (BSc Philosophy and Physics, the Santander X Entrepreneurship Awards pitch 2021) made her first mark in sustainable fashion competition receiving £50,000 in equity-free on Depop, selling pre-loved and second-hand funding plus £25,000 in business support. clothes through the app. Her next idea, Sojo – a Deliveroo-style service for clothing alterations – After nine months as a direct-to-consumer app, was a natural follow-up. The idea was supported Sojo is pivoting to a busines-to-business model, by the Entrepreneurship Institute, initially as building on partnerships with Ganni, vintage one of the winners of Idea Factory in 2020 and clothes dealer Beyond Retro and, UK charity then through the King’s20 Accelerator in 2020- shop chain Traid. 21. ‘Everyone at the Entrepreneurship Institute is there to help and support you – they want you to succeed,’ says Josephine. ‘They know what it takes for a venture to be successful and they’re there to coach you through the steps. ‘To enter into a space like that with my idea has been really wonderful.’ Developing the idea into a product, Sojo tapped into a niche market in which consumers increasingly want to alter and repair their clothes but available solutions take too much time and effort. Simultaneously, local seamsters want more business but struggle to tap into the younger generation. Since being on King’s20, Sojo has soared from strength to strength, securing £300,000 in pre-seed investment (counting Depop’s founder Simon Beckerman as an investor), and winning
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EI IMPACT REPORT
Case study: Hard Yards
Hard Yards is a performance-driven sports accessories venture, creating innovative sportswear that helps athletes at any level, in any sport, unlock their full potential. They specifically focus on the neglected and unseen areas of the game to give back margins for those willing to go the distance. Their team combines years of sports engineering, advanced material science, and new product innovation to bring a fresh approach to the sportswear industry. Since joining Cohort V, the team at Hard Yards has agreed three partnership agreements with professional organisations; Leicester Riders (one of the UK’s most successful Basketball teams), Northamptonshire County Cricket Club (two-time winners of the T20 Blast) and the Professional Cricketers Association. They have also partnered with Pro:Direct and One Hockey, who both retail their products in their specialist outlets. Their products have been worn at The Olympics by some of the Men’s Team GB Hockey team, in first-class cricket by members of the Welsh Fire and the U19 New Zealand internationals.
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Demo Day 2021 While the global pandemic has changed the world as we know it, we affirmed our commitment to showcasing the best and brightest entrepreneurial talent coming through our Accelerator, to investors. We did this through an innovative Digital Demo Day. Over 250 investors, students and staff attended the King’s Entrepreneurship Institute’s annual Demo Day via the all-in-one event management platform, Hopin, where 15 of our innovative King’s20 start-ups showcased their ideas to potential investors. This year’s keynote speech was given by Johnny Boufarhat, the founder and CEO of Hopin. “I encourage the next generation of entrepreneurs to always stay true to their core mission and values while allowing for the flexibility to be nimble so they can always adjust to the rapidly-changing world we live in” Johnny Boufarhat, founder and CEO of Hopin
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Start-Up Visas
The Start-Up visa is a 2-year visa route for early-stage, but high potential, entrepreneurs who are starting a business in the UK for the first time. Businesses must be innovative, viable and scalable, with potential to contribute to the UK economy. The Entrepreneurship Institute acts as an endorsing body on behalf of the Home Office. In October 2020 we brought our visa holders together as a micro-community for the first time, giving them a monthly forum and online platform to provide business updates and challenges, share skills and expertise, as well as their personal experience as visas whilst establishing their early-stage start-up. “Since the start of my visa with the Entrepreneurship Institute, my business has developed into a stronger and more efficient structure. This visa enabled to access the support that I needed, as well as having a place to come for advice and to share ideas. It has definitely helped me grow faster, personally and professionally.” Mariia Kashchenko, Founder of The Art Unit
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Neuroscience of Entrepreneurship
The Neuroscience of Entrepreneurship is a research project that sets out to answer two questions: what happens in your brain when you are being entrepreneurial, and how can you make this happen more. Education systems around the world support people to become more entrepreneurial in the interests of innovation, problem-solving and economic progress. Through our research we aim to discover more about the neuroscience of entrepreneurship and how education systems could be developed to support more people to become increasingly entrepreneurial.
beginning in early 2022, through which we hope to explore the neural correlations between disruptive and creative thinking. The uniqueness of this research is demonstrated by the ongoing interest from other universities – with Cambridge Judge Business School using the EBC for their EnterpriseTECH cohort, inviting our PhD student and Neuroscientist in Residence, Emily Clements, to speak there and to take part in the programme herself. Moreover, Emily has translated her research to non-specialist audience in 4 different podcasts this year.
Despite set-backs of testing in-person due to the pandemic, this year has moved us towards understanding the personality, skillset and cognition of entrepreneurs, through analysis of over 800 participants from the Entrepreneurial Brain Challenge (EBC). The dataset is rich and allows for many future directions. For example, a King’s Undergraduate Research Fund project was carried out by an undergraduate student this summer, revealing differences between trait and cognitive components of impulsivity in entrepreneurs. Whilst the full set of 12 cognitive tests have been used to predict entrepreneurial status using machine learning approaches, the analysis undertaken this year informs the tasks and design of the MRI scans
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King’s College London Entrepreneurship Institute @Innovatekings @kingsentrepreneurship @kingsentrepreneurship @kingsentrepreneurship 52
EI IMPACT REPORT