Make it happen and grow your big idea to launch your own business or venture

Launch your venture

Get support to develop an existing project, business or start-up into a more viable project or service that can continue to expand and grow.

Graduate support

Warwick Enterprise provides support to graduates from the University of Warwick to launch their own start-up venture or social enterprise. We have two offers; a Graduate Enterprise Support Package and a 6-month Graduate Enterprise Incubator Programme.

We talked to Alexander McLeod, Graduate Enterprise Officer, about the support we offer to alumni of the university. If you want to set up your own business, we offer support at every stage of your journey.

Watch the interview below:

Read the interview below:

So my name is Alexander McLeod, I work for a unit called Warwick Enterprise and I look after graduate entrepreneurship at the University of Warwick. That basically means that if you’re an alumni of the university and you want to start your own business, and you’d like the university to support you… you come to me.

So, we have two programs of support – one’s called the Basic Package and then the second program of support is a structured Incubator Program.

The basic package of support is a bespoke program, no schedule, when you can engage with us, you can. You have access to all of our non-structured support – one to ones with me, you can access some networking sessions, you can participate in other activities in the broader Warwick Innovation District, you have access to the Warwick Innovation Network and you have opportunities to engage with other entrepreneurs.

The second program support we have is our six-month Incubator Program – which is a structured program of support, structured in that there’s a time limit – you have 6 months to go from idea or concept to validating your business model or refining and confirming the business case. That is a six-month program which offers both non-financial and financial support – the non-financial support is a lot of mentorship and coaching from me, access to other mentors and coaches in the broader Warwick Innovation District. The financial support that we make available is a £2,500 grant, which you have to use for product development and again that goes hand in hand with the process that we take you through.

So, it’s all about developing your idea, developing a minimum viable product, or a prototype, or a version one of the service that you want to take to market, taking that into market and testing it, so doing some product market testing and then refining and firming up the business case. So, at the end of the 6 months you know that your idea has legs, that it’s viable, it’s scalable and that, if you need to secure investment, there are opportunities for you to try and secure the investment.

So, you come on this program and we focus on making sure that you are financially sustainable. We try and get you to generate cash flow.

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