Start-up Salon – Inspiring the next generation of entrepreneurs at Warwick 

My name is Mevan Peiris, I’m an MSc student on the Innovation and Entrepreneurship course offered by WMG, Warwick. So the Start-up Salon was an idea to kind of supplement the core curriculum learning that you’re going through on your course, with some extracurricular learning as well, to create an opportunity and a space for serendipity. Things that you don’t really expect, to meet people that you don’t probably expect to meet. To make new connections, to share ideas. You’ll probably meet your next investor, you probably meet your co-founder, and make your ideas come to life over the period of time.

It’s a pivot around an external or internal resource who’ll share their knowledge, but it’s also meant to be a discussion, where we each add value and learn from each other. So this is completely open to absolutely anybody from the university. If you have a business idea, or you’re hoping to work in a business, or you’re even coming from a background of a technical expertise, where you’re hoping to build something, this is a space to come and connect, to hear people, create products and services which are better suited for consumers, and to know how to better build them, how to better market them, how to better sell them.

Hackathons, we might have a 48-hour hackathon where we come up with and test the ideas to MVP stage, and try to see how we can use different collaborative methods to bring out different skills from people who are coming from diverse backgrounds.