Welcome OX1 Incubator has 3 missions: provide a platform for building start-ups at university; nurture aspiring entrepreneurial talent; and raise awareness of entrepreneurship as a career path. In order to fulfill our missions, we founded Oxford’s first start-up incubator programme designed by student entrepreneurs, for student entrepreneurs, which does not take equity or IP. We support student entrepreneurs who wish to develop a start-up from an ideas-stage to being ready for the first round of funding. Oxford University has a huge talent pool of alumni and students engaged in entrepreneurial activities. By encouraging students to turn their talents to entrepreneurship, supported by mentors and our strong support network, we are providing a platform for a new generation of start-ups, built out of interdisciplinary collaboration and a desire to drive positive change. We are building tomorrow today. We are a start-up within ourselves, and as we grow, so too do our goals and ambitions. Our first cohort focused on better understanding the needs of students, testing and honing our programme, and building our core team. Our second cohort has been about growing our OX1 Incubator community, refining our programme, and anchoring our place in the Oxford entrepreneurial network. By building on Oxford’s university- and college-
level knowledge capital with alumni networks, investors, entrepreneurs and industry experts, we are harnessing and nurturing the talents of future entrepreneurs. In the past year, we have seen OX1 Incubator’s impact going from strength to strength: our Demo Day grants and attendance increased year-on-year, with engagement from a diverse community of undergraduate, Masters, DPhil and MBA students. We have welcomed our second cohort of six skilled start-up teams to OX1 Incubator, who are grappling with big challenges like the shift to online learning, disease diagnostics and democratising legal technology – you can find out more about them on pages 11-26. This cohort included a marked increase in female founders: over 65% of the teams included women, compared to around 40% in the first cohort; we are determined to build on this in the future. There is a clear demand for efficient, accessible support systems at Oxford which cater to the needs of students who want to found successful startups. We fulfilled our missions in the first two cohorts. In our next cohort, we will target postgraduates and start to seek sponsorship and investment from early-stage ventures and angel investors. We are ready to build on our successes, learn from the challenges we faced, and better serve the needs of early-stage student entrepreneurs at the University of Oxford.
“…we are providing a platform for a new generation of start-ups, built out of interdisciplinary collaboration and a desire to drive positive change. We are building tomorrow today.” www.ox1incubator.com | f @ox1incubator
in @ox1incubator
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