On Wednesday 13 March 2024, Brunel University London travelled once again around London visiting the best workplaces and innovation hubs that the city has to offer. We heard from inspiring entrepreneurs and discovered London’s entrepreneurial eco-system all in one day!
In collaboration with 14 other London universities, we took 35 Brunel students on a unique route around London, providing an unmissable opportunity to connect to real-world businesses, be inspired by the UK’s vibrant entrepreneurial ecosystem, and gain networking skills whilst developing other core transferable entrepreneurial skills.
The 10-hour event included a packed programme of tours, live demos, visits and talks at some of London's most innovative hotspots.
Our day started at Digital Catapult, where students had breakfast and networked before getting immersed into the world of advanced digital technology. Digital Catapult brings together industry leaders, researchers and startups to accelerate digital technology adoption to benefit the UK – breaking down barriers, de-risking innovation, opening up markets and responsibly shaping the products, services and experiences of the future. After learning more about what they do and hearing all about its impact on UK businesses - our attendees then got the chance to take part in live demonstrations, trialling the tech for themselves.
We then travelled by foot to our next stop - the British Library, where we visited the Business and IP Centre which supports small business owners, entrepreneurs, inventors and anyone with a business idea. It was great to hear all about the support they provide through offering insights and access to free resources, training and events – they exist to help budding entrepreneurs start or develop a successful business which our attendees loved hearing about.
It was then time to walk to our third stop of the day Red Bull UK, where students began by touring the space, having lunch and networking some more before hearing from recent Brunel graduate entrepreneur Sean Hayes, the founder of More Connection Co. Sean shared his entrepreneurial journey and insights to date to inspire our budding entrepreneurs.
A member of the Red Bull UK team, Amelia Bell then joined us to provide an overview about Red Bull’s entrepreneurial activities – including an overview of the Red Bull Basement competition which will be opening again for applications this summer (and won previously in 2020 by Brunel student entrepreneurs at the time, Joanna Power and Paramveer Bhachu, the founders of Lylo. Since graduating from Brunel, Joanna and Paramveer continue to work on growing Lylo and has achieved incredible things with their start-up.
After Red Bull UK, we took a walk over to our next stop where we explored Somerset House Exchange, a beautiful co-working space for creatives. Joined there by Brunel graduate entrepreneur Jeffrey Oyinlola (founder of Pick Up The Mic and Programme Administrator – Black Business Incubator at Somerset House) as well as Emmanuel Tchombe founder of Loop Music, we heard about their outstanding entrepreneurial activities too.
Our group then made our way over to the final stop of the London Venture Crawl, taking place at Kings College London where an inter-university live pitch-off competition took place between the 14 participating London universities, where hundreds of like-minded attendees taking part in Venture Crawl 2024 came together to support their university representative.
Current PhD student Christopher D’Souza represented Brunel University London with an excellent 90-second pitch sharing his business idea ProPrep. Christopher went on to be crowned the ‘London Venture Crawl 2024 Pitch-off Winner’ - the second year on the trot Brunel has won the Venture Crawl pitch-off. Congratulations Christopher!
It was fantastic to see final year Business and Management student entrepreneur Simone Panella get the opportunity to re-share his winning 90-second pitch from last year’s event where he was crowned ‘London Venture Crawl 2023 Pitch-off Winner’ as well as got the chance to join the judging panel at this year’s pitch-off.
