Introduction

"Wow. What a year 2020 has been. This impact report has made us sit back and reflect – something that has felt like a luxury given the pace of world events this year. Our world as we knew it was put on pause, brutally broken and divided, as the pandemic set off a chain reaction that highlighted serious cracks in the make-up of our society. We are living in a world where racial equity and equality still need to be fought for, where the protection of our climate and communities still needs to be campaigned for, where access to employment, income and health security isn’t a universal right. On an individual level, for many people this year has brought extreme anxiety, loneliness, loss, excessive pressures of home, family, childcare, whilst working remotely, and a deep-seated fear of the unknown.

The world has changed: both public and private sector institutions are changing, how we educate people is changing, the way we work is changing, and our belief systems are evolving. This year has been one filled with loss and grief for many but has also served as an opportunity to press reset: to speak up and right past wrongs, to advocate for change, and to use whatever platforms we have to enforce change. This year has given us a window of opportunity to build back together, and better. We are committed to this change at the Foundry. Our commitment is to nurturing students with the core entrepreneurial and technologybased skills they will need to thrive in our future workforce, and to support market needs. We are firmly focused on building strong communities and resources through our accelerator to support early-stage ventures that are solving some of our world’s biggest problems. To date we have had 15,600 engagements with our activities and skills and training initiatives, and our ventures have raised over £40 million in capital and been valued in excess of £100m, having created 146+ jobs in less than three years. They’re working tirelessly in areas such as climate change and energy, health equity and data security.

This community of entrepreneurs and students gives us optimism for our future. They are inclusive, resilient, compassionate and empathetic, focused on taking the harder path and forging a clear road people to support the pandemic for others behind them. They want to response and recovery, and by change the way business is done and making a call to volunteers to provide ensure all business is societally intellectual capital, time and expertise focused whilst being commercially to those startups. As you’ll see successful. We are aware that we are throughout this report, we were incredibly fortunate to be placed blown away by the strength of our within one of the best universities in community, the resilience of our the world, a place that has access to entrepreneurs, the dedication from world-leading multi-disciplinary our students, and the immense intellectual capital, talent and contribution from external partners networks. This platform brings with it and individuals with time, expertise the opportunity to make change, and and funding. Having just celebrated that includes our foundational our third birthday in October 2020, principle of democratising access to the strength and backing we have entrepreneurship and widening from our community, from you, in access to our opportunities. this short span of time has permitted the impact you will go on to read. We As Higher Education institutions, we are still at a nascent stage in our own have a unique and vital role to play in journey, but your continued belief in continually evolving to support us and our work has already led to us recovery from the pandemic, and positively impacting real lives, ensure economic and societal systems and processes. Thank you. prosperity. We have partnered with We’re grateful to have you all on this charities to extend our learning ride with us and we look forward to initiatives to those beyond Oxford’s growing together and continuing to doors, and we aim to expand these do our part." opportunities as we continue to grow. We have supported the creation of Oxford’s first scholarship for Black students from disadvantaged backgrounds, and we are pleased to share that this academic year we are launching 20 Student Entrepreneurial Fellowships for students from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic backgrounds, creating paid placements with selected high-growth startups within our portfolio, alongside access to networks, resources, platforms and learning. We are committed to seeing a more inclusive leadership community in our Ana Bakshi workforce as well as success and growth for founders of all backgrounds. Executive Director, Oxford Foundry, University of Oxford As you’ll see in this 2019-2020 impact report, a lot has been going on! In addition to our primary focus, we wanted to ensure that we could play a small part in supporting the heroic efforts of so many people, including our front-line workers, researchers and scientists, carers, transport workers and more. This was done in two ways: firstly by supporting the exponential scaling of our portfolio ventures who were responding to the pandemic itself, and secondly by creating a startup programme accelerating existing businesses that were focused on pandemic recovery. We did this through re-purposing 100% of OXFO team time a week ahead of our first lockdown; raising a startup grant runway fund; pulling together an international taskforce of incredible