IQuBit and Social Enterprise Update…
anticipated UniPreneur 2 event
on 29th Nov. This event came
back bigger, better and slightly
quicker. Following last year's
seven day event, this year saw
24 entrepreneurs attempt to
start a digital business in just
three days.
Since our last update in July, we
have welcomed the new
president for Manchester
Entrepreneurs, Tom McCann to
IQuBit. We were sorry to see
Fahim Sachedina leave
Manchester but we're sure that
Tom will be exceptional in his
new role.
We have also welcomed a new
member to the Advisory Panel,
Michelle Sherwood. Michelle is a
Partner and IT Contracts
Specialist Lawyer from
Shoosmiths and is also the
National Head of IT Legal Team
& Head of Commercial
Manchester. Michelle has very
kindly agreed to sit on the
advisory panel for IQuBit
alongside our other talented
experts and she
will also be assisting us in
providing further mentoring
opportunities for our digital
accelerator tenants.
We've also had our first cluster
of successful businesses graduate
from IQuBit including
Kaffeination, PieBoy Clothing
and ZenGuard.
Manchester Business School
student start-up, Zenguard, has
recently received six figure
investment funding from
company builder, Project A
Ventures. This follows a move to
the investor-backed Axel
Springer Plug and Play Business
Accelerator in Berlin earlier
this year. (Further information
on Zenguard can be found on
page 17.)
With the new academic year
well underway, we opened this
year's round of IQuBit
applications at the highly
Entrepreneurs were put into
teams of three on the Friday and
hit the ground running with
brainstorming, planning, getting
feedback on their ideas,
understanding business models
and finding one for their idea,
talks from the mentors, and
preparing a basic plan for
building the site.
On Saturday, the teams started
to build, test and launch their
websites, trying out various
forms of outsourcing. On
Sunday, after much coffee and
two sleepless nights, teams
began marketing and testing
their websites using everything
from Google Adwords and
Facebook Adverts to
Infographics and traditional
marketing methods. Teams also
tested their websites and got
feedback from real customers
using tools like UserTesting.
Six teams pitched their
businesses to a panel of industry
experts with the aim of
obtaining feedback to develop
them over the following two
weeks. On the day, the winner
of the best entrepreneur/nontech was recent graduate Sean
Jadoon and the best
developer/tech was IT/Computer
Science student Bogdan Stoian.
Both were awarded a Kindle
and £25 gift voucher, as a
reward for their fantastic
contribution over the weekend.
The six businesses will be
reviewed over the Christmas
period and the most exceptional
business will be awarded space
in IQuBit free for six months.
Visit the IQuBit webpages to
find out who the lucky winner
will be. We look forward to
receiving lots of exciting
applications to IQuBit over the
next year and wish everyone the
best of luck when applying.
For more information please
click here or contact
ellie.sagar@umip.com.
Social Enterprise Update…
supporting social entrepreneurs
within their institutions through
the announcement of a further
round of funding. The University
is delighted to announce that it
has been successful in securing
this next phase of funding from
the UnLtd HE Support
Programme alongside 58 other
Higher Education Institutions
across the UK.
Last year, the University
successfully led a pioneering
program to place social
entrepreneurship at the heart of
its culture and infrastructure.
Through its programme delivery
team, consisting of UMI3 and
Manchester Enterprise Centre
(MEC), over £59,000 was
awarded to 27 social
entrepreneurs made up of staff,
students and recent graduates
from the University.
8
In recognition of the delivery
team's endeavours to find, fund
and support social
entrepreneurs, they were
presented with the Outstanding
HEI Supporting Social
Entrepreneurship Award by
UnLtd and HEFCE at the UnLtd
National Conference in July.
UnLtd and HEFCE are continuing
to support Higher Education
Institutions in identifying and
UMIP and MEC have match
funded this award to provide
investment to social
entrepreneurs for the 2014
competition. Last year staff and
academics played a key role in
our social enterprise agenda and
this model is an excellent way to
create impact from their
research. This new funding
opportunity will help maintain
the momentum of social
enterprise activity and build an
effective eco-system to support
social entrepreneurs throughout
the campus.
The UMIP Social Enterprise
Competition is now open. If you
are a member of staff or an
academic at the University and
have an idea for a social
enterprise we would like to
hear from you. To read more
and find out how to apply,
please click here.
Student social entrepreneurs will
be able to apply for funding via
MEC's Venture Out and Venture
Further Competitions. You can
find out more here.
Social Enterprise
Case Studies…
Overleaf, we highlight two
examples of social entrepreneurs
whose ideas have been further
developed following their
success in our UMIP Social
Enterprise Award Programme.
