1. Biz Network APRIL 2022 1-36.qxp_Chamberlink 31/03/2022 12:39 Page 30
KATE’S TOP TIPS FOR YOUNG ENTREPRENEURS NETWORKING IS IMPORTANT I try to push myself outside my comfort zone and just chat to anyone in the room, although it’s so much easier if you can get a warm introduction. I’m terrible at remembering people’s names so I’ve learned to take business cards from everyone and write a note about what we talked about.
YOUR NEXT LINKEDIN CONNECTION COULD BE YOUR NEXT BIG OPPORTUNITY Connect with everyone you can on LinkedIn. There’s people I’ve connected with and didn’t fully realise who they were until later on. When I needed my first 3D printer, I looked through my LinkedIn contacts and found someone who made them. They put me in touch with Create Education, which lent them to schools and was willing to let me use one in return for some PR.
WORKSHOPS CAN GIVE YOU INVALUABLE SKILLS AND KNOWLEDGE Get involved with whatever enterprise network is available to you at universities or elsewhere as many will offer free masterclasses on the basics of running a business. You’ll learn about key aspects such as market research and it puts you in a room with like-minded people to bounce off ideas.
TAKE ADVANTAGE OF GENERATION NEXT MEMBERSHIP It’s really nice having a network of other young people at the same stage as you in running a business or in your career. When you’re first starting, you have no idea what to do, so being able to talk to people in a similar situation and ask questions about how they did their first set of accounts can be invaluable.
In 2016, she spent a year on placement at Cambridge-based technology innovation consultancy Sagentia Innovation, where she worked on developing products ranging from eyeliners and hairbrushes to robotic kitchen aids and medical devices for major brand clients. Having found medical devices projects the most rewarding – “they actually have a real impact on the person you’re designing them for, rather than just making something slightly better to what’s already out there for consumers” – it provided inspiration when searching for dissertation project ideas. Kate explains: “A family friend had a two-yearold daughter called Zoey who was born missing part of her left arm from below the elbow. “I got chatting to the mum about prosthetics and whether she was interested in them. They just seemed really hard to come by for kids and, especially if you don’t have a car, it can be difficult to get to and from appointments.” Having learned how to use a 3D printer on her placement, she decided to investigate whether additive manufacturing – to give the production 30
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process its formal name – could be used to create a prosthetic. Further research discovered someone else had already done this but the reason it wasn’t already on the market was because children grew out of prosthetics very quickly.
‘I wanted to design a 3Dprinted prosthetic for kids that could be adjusted and grow with them’ “One of the major issues was that nothing was customisable, so I wanted to design a 3D-printed prosthetic for kids that could be adjusted and grow with them,” she says. Up until this point, Kate hadn’t considered even the possibility of starting a business, but recognised its best use case in the real world would be as a company that could aim to one day supply the NHS. At her undergraduate degree show in 2018, a
lecturer with responsibility for enterprise suggested she should do just this. He introduced her to a Paralympic athlete to test it out, connected her with a business mentor and, within three weeks, the business that would become known as ExpHand Prosthetics was established. “I’d gone from having no idea about business to having my own company in no time at all,” says Kate. EXTERNAL VALIDATION CAN be important to any aspiring entrepreneur and Kate has had it in abundance. Her first awards success came at the University of Nottingham’s Ingenuity19 student innovation competition in April 2019, where she won £18,500 in funding by a variety of businesses including Experian, which named her its Entrepreneur of the Year. In total, she picked up five awards. “I remember thinking my life has just changed right here,” recalls Kate. This was during her final year of university,