Volunteers

Joe Pocknell

Oxford Strategy Group, Director of Client Engagement, BA student in Economics & Management, Hertford College

Francesca Blase

BA Geography student, Hertford College

Karen Waserstein

MPhil graduate in Russian, Central European, East European and Eurasian Studies at St Antony's College

Sneha Ramshanker

Physics undergraduate at Pembroke College, current President of the Oxford Robotics and Additive Manufacturing Society (OxRAM)

As almost half of our OXFO portfolio “I knew that I wanted to contribute ventures refocused to tackle the effects to a health-related initiative tackling of the virus, they needed significantly the pandemic. iLoF needed help more runway– specifically access to with marketing, and as this is my more talent and funding – in order to core skillset I worked on their accelerate their product development marketing materials and their new and go-to-market plans. The Foundry website. Working with the founders, sent out a call for volunteers, receiving I learned a lot about running a over 180 responses within two weeks young company and managing the from students, alumni and people different aspects involved. The from local communities who were keen experience enabled me to identify to donate their time and skills to work my strengths, and this turned out to with the ventures to fight the be really helpful when interviewing pandemic. for jobs this summer, as I’ve had a “As an entrepreneurship centre clearer understanding of my value embedded in a university ecosystem, as a candidate.”— Karen one of our key strengths is our Waserstein, MPhil graduate in convening power. We were able to Russian, Central European, East rapidly mobilise the abundance of European and Eurasian Studies at St talent that Oxford has to offer, and find Antony’s College. the crucial extra skills and personnel that our ventures have needed at this Infogrid also worked with time. It is gratifying to see how many volunteers, this time to help identify people stepped up to offer their help, potential hardware partners for and to know that in a time of crisis, we their solution, "enabling us to get could connect them with the teams moving faster than would otherwise that most needed them.” have been possible." says founder Healthtech venture Ufonia took on Oxford University’s student societies several student volunteers to help were also keen to volunteer their them expand their autonomous members’ time and expertise to telemedicine solution so that it could support our ventures as part of the support the huge backlog of medical Action Plan. One such society is the appointments that have been Oxford Strategy Group (OSG), a cancelled due to the pandemic. Physics student-run management undergraduate at Pembroke College consultancy group that advises and President of the Oxford Robotics public and privately-listed and Additive Manufacturing Society companies, non-profits and (OxRAM), Sneha Ramshanker, governments on their strategy and volunteered with Ufonia and has since operations. As part of the been taken on as a paid intern. “Up partnership, 12 OSG members until now I’ve tended to work on AI worked on consulting projects for projects more as a hobby, so I never two Oxford Foundry-supported really had a chance to collaborate with ventures: Crowdless, whose app other people. This experience has provides real-time updates on how taught me a lot about how team busy local shops are, has now had projects work in the programming/AI 100,000+ downloads across 12 space.” different countries, and myo, a “In the wake of the pandemic, some of service connecting care home our long-term goals suddenly became residents, staff and families. short- or mid-term goals, and we knew Will Cowell de Gruchy. that we’d need more people, and Volunteer Francesca Blase, BA access to funding, to achieve them. Geography student, Hertford Thanks to the Foundry’s call for College said; “Working with myo has volunteers, we got the help we been a great experience and as a needed.”—Dr Nick de Pennington, team, we feel that we are producing Ufonia’s Founder and CEO. work which has a direct and positive impact. Our team has worked well Another venture to take up the offer of on remote platforms despite having additional volunteers was iLoF, a to cater to 3 different time zones!” deeptech venture using AI to find a For Crowdless, the OSG volunteer cure for Alzheimer’s. When the team, led by Daniel Jones (currently pandemic hit, iLoF refocused their doing a BA in Economics & attention on developing a low-cost Management at Pembroke College), rapid stratification tool for Covid-19 worked on ways of expanding the infection and clinical outcome risk platform’s user base, and helped assessment. build a financial model. Dan writes, “Despite having to communicate through Zoom, I felt we built a really good relationship over the weeks of our project. It was amazing to see first-hand how quickly Crowdless has evolved, and to be a part of that process. I’m now also a regular user of the Crowdless app, and it feels brilliant to have been able to contribute to such a constructive and innovative business.” Samuel Loh, a consultant on the team who is currently doing his BA in History and Politics at St Anne’s College, said, “Our experience benefited from our client’s generosity and willingness to work closely with us at every step of the process”. Joe Pocknell, OSG Director of Client Engagement, BA student in Economics and Management, Hertford College said; "The partnership has provided valuable experiences for our consultants, and has hopefully made a positive impact on the growth of these ventures too. As a student-led consultancy which provides services to a wide range of businesses, we felt our talents at the OSG could be put to meaningful use by assisting ventures battling through the pandemic and seeking to make an impact. The COVID-19 crisis has undoubtedly been the hardest period in recent years for any growing business. The Oxford Foundry’s Covid-19 Action Plan gave us a clear opportunity and platform to get involved and make a difference, and provided valuable experiences for our consultants too. In the future, OSG is keen to further develop its relationship with the Oxford Foundry, and to carry on providing ventures with valuable support, particularly at a time of such uncertainty. It has been a fruitful beginning to what we hope will remain a long-lasting partnership." Alex Barnes, Co-founder and CEO, Crowdless said the partnership really helped them scale, “The OSG volunteers took the time to understand our specific needs and requirements, and produced some excellent market research, business modeling and forecasting that we were able to take forward and use right away. For a small team, working at capacity to tight deadlines, it was so valuable having this added expertise and strategic support. We had three volunteers. They each made a great impact in marketing, market research and b2b customer outreach respectively.”