And yet, British students – and those on a Graduate Entrepreneur visa – have more ‘Zuckerbergian’ ambitions than ever before, wanting to be CEO of their own company rather than starting at the bottom of someone else’s. In fact, it’s projected that 50,000 students a year start their own business in the UK – 15% before even graduating.

Unfortunately, this ready supply of graduate entrepreneurs is exceeding the readiness of some institutions and investors to support them. Not all universities have figured out how to help entrepreneurial students, and few have access to start up funding.

All is not lost, however! Reflecting the growing wave of graduate entrepreneurs are a number of innovative organisations offering financial support and expert advice. They believe that the big ideas coming out of universities could change the game within enterprise, and want to ensure age and access to funding is not a barrier to entrepreneurial spirit.

If you are in the process of launching your business, here are five of the best places to find start up funding as a graduate entrepreneur:

The Young Entrepreneur Award

This new award, which has been put together by The Formations Company, aims to help and support students who want to start their own business after university, rather than go straight into a traditional job or graduate scheme.

Launched at the start of July, applications are open to current students who have aspirations of starting their own company, and to those who have just graduated. The top five finalists will all have their company formed (not only will their business be registered with Companies House, but also they will have a company bank account set up, logo designed, business cards created and receive expert advice – good, eh?), whilst the overall winner will additionally receive £1,000 in start up funding to spend on developing their idea. And even if you don’t make the top five, you might still be offered a £5 company formation for proving your passion.

In order to apply for the award, all you have to do is fill in a short form outlining who you are and why you want to start your own business (hint: show how you would use the money should you win!). Applications will close at the end of the summer – so you have plenty of time to get creative (there’s another hint…) – and the five finalists will be featured on The Formations Company website and social media channels. In the last stage of the process, a short telephone interview will be conducted with each of the finalists to determine the winner.

There really is nothing to lose here, and everything to gain. So, what are you waiting for?

Catalyst Founders

Catalyst Founders is a new company that invests in innate entrepreneurial talent under the age of 24. They provide access to capital, a support structure, and a network to enable young would-be founders to achieve their entrepreneurial potential. They are looking to support the next generation of makers, creators and retailers, backing people who have a passion for their idea and a drive to build a large company.

Catalyst Founders take a generational view on investment, looking to support young entrepreneurs as they grow to an appropriate scale. They have no requirement to exit within a certain time frame, making them very different to many existing investors. Their intention is to back 50+ young founders over the next three years and, unlike other sources of investment and support, they are in it for the long haul: they look beyond monetary return towards mutually life-changing relationships.

This August, Catalyst Founders are also running their first ‘Summer Pitchfest’ – an opportunity for you to pitch your business to judges and investors and potentially win £500 funding (and a fast track invitation to a CF assessment day). Securing start up funding is not easy – and why should it be? – but joining a network like Catalyst Founders will turbo-charge your route to entrepreneurial success. Good luck!

The Deutsche Bank Awards for Creative Enterprise (DBACE)

Established in 1993, the DBACE has helped hundreds of arts graduates negotiate the challenges of enterprise and self-employment. In the last twenty-four years, over 177 businesses have been launched with the support of the programme.

Open to final year undergraduate and postgraduate students, and those who have graduated within one academic year, the DBACE is specifically targeted towards aspiring artists, designers and performers who intend to follow a freelance career, develop a specific project, or establish a business once they’ve graduated. Five winners receive £10,000 in start up funding and five runners up are awarded £1,000. All winners and runners up enjoy year-long business mentoring and enterprise training from Deutsche Bank.

Applications open in January of each year for all five categories: Art & Photography, Craft & Design, Film, Music, and Performance. The judges want to know that funding, mentoring and business training will make ‘the difference’ to your career – so be sure to show them what the support will mean to you and your project. Throughout the process, DBACE also offer business planning workshops, online resources, and one-to-one advice, so even if you don’t end up winning, you’ll still come away with valuable knowledge about how to progress your business.

Santander Universities Entrepreneurship Awards

The Santander Universities Entrepreneurship Award is an annual business pitching competition for student and graduate entrepreneurs. Since its launch, Santander has given away more than £220,000 in start up funding, as well as invaluable mentoring and business support to promising small enterprises.

The great thing about this scheme is that it involves your university, too. The first stage of the process takes place internally, with Santander’s partner universities (check to see if your institution is eligible here) running their own competitions to find the best business ideas and start ups on campus. Each university submits their winners to Santander, who draw up a longlist of 20 (ten ideas and ten start ups). Business plans are then scrutinised by an external panel made up of academic leaders, successful entrepreneurs and former winners, who identify their top ten. These finalists make a 15-minute pitch to a live panel at Santander HQ, with a winner and runner-up being identified in each category (ideas and start ups). Prizes range from £15,000 to £1,000 funding, plus mentoring, brand consulting and website build/hosting.

The competition opens in February each year (which gives you plenty of time to hustle your university’s enterprise team to get behind you…).

Crowdfund Campus

Many of the most exciting businesses in recent years have been launched thanks to a new trend in enterprise: crowdfunding. No longer do entrepreneurs need to rely on banks and investors – who can be less willing to help young talent than seasoned tycoons – to get a project funded. Instead, they can open their idea out to the public and let them decide what it’s worth.

One of the best things about crowdfunding as a source of start up funding is that, unlike traditional sources of capital (who primarily look for a financial return), investors typically contribute towards a campaign because they believe in the purpose of the project. This means that not only do you get the investment required for your business, but also a real understanding of your audience and what they want from your service or product.

Here at Crowdfund Campus, we are proud to support all student and graduate entrepreneurs who want to validate their ideas and secure some start up funding. For advice on how to make the most of your budding business by taking advantage of our unique platform, please give us a call on +44 (0)7545 898120 or drop us a line at hello@crowdfundcampus.com – we can’t wait to see what you’ll achieve!

In this fast-paced modern world – with the memory of the recession clear in the minds of most – job security has become something of an outdated notion. Instead of looking for opportunity, the boldest and brightest youngsters are creating their own.

Nonetheless, whether as an entrepreneur or an employee, the ability to adapt quickly is a vital skill for all who hope to succeed in today’s job market; and universities, too, have had to adapt their own business offering in line with this new mode of thinking. Courses that focus on entrepreneurship and enterprise have become a key part of the curriculum.

The aim, of course, is to prepare budding businessmen and women for the ‘real’ world of business – but this, too, necessitates an adherence to the latest trends. And there’s been one trend in particular that has proved a game-changer in recent years, disrupting conventional funding methods: crowdfunding.  No longer do entrepreneurs need to rely on banks and investors to get a project off the ground; now an entrepreneur can open his/her idea out to the public and let them decide what it’s worth. As LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman puts it:

Call it the emergence of a “world’s bank” – a system built by and for the people, delivering credit in America and across the globe in a radically decentralized, highly scalable, and crucially equitable way.

The World Bank funds institutions. The world’s bank funds people.

If you’re an institution offering any kind of enterprise course, there are many reasons to involve crowdfunding within your curriculum. Here are our top three:

#1: THE DEVELOPMENT OF REAL BUSINESS SKILLS

A crowdfunding campaign requires all of the same processes needed for a successful product launch in any arena: marketing (including digital marketing, video production, copywriting, etc.), sales, strategy, social media and PR, as well as operational planning (manufacture, sourcing, logistics, delivery).

The difference is that these elements are extremely accessible: most of the ‘pre-campaign’ can be delivered via the platform of choice, and it requires little expenditure. Most importantly, crowdfunding is a direct test of an idea in an open market: instead of a handful of investors (or similar) deciding about the viability of a product, it’s the general public who decides. There can be no better test, in a sense.

#2: THE ABILITY TO FAIL

Better still, it gives students the chance to fail. Failing is a key part of the entrepreneur’s journey (a theory that is easy to prove – one need only think of Steve Jobs); and providing a safe environment by which students can try, and fail, and try again may be the greatest gift a university enterprise course could give.

Platforms like Crowdfund Campus are ideally placed to help with this; our Sandpit tool allows students to test an idea fully by using ‘virtual’ currency before transferring over to a live marketplace.

#3: PRACTICE IN BUILDING EFFECTIVE RELATIONSHIPS

Traditional funding routes often promote working in solitude (or small groups) as opposed to real teamwork, which can be to the detriment of the entrepreneur in question; indeed, the ability to build relationships with a number of people can often be the difference between success or failure for a fledgling company.

Crowdfunding forces students to think out of the box and – more importantly – come out of their box. To make the campaign a success, they will need to muster support: from friends, family, teachers, and beyond. This practice will provide valuable insight into networking and relationship-building; moreover, it has the added benefit of raising the profile of the course across campus and – if really effective – the profile of the university as a whole to wider networks.

At Crowdfund Campus, we provide full support to students and universities who wish to embrace crowdfunding. Our offering includes – but is not limited to – step-by-step guidance to creating a successful campaign; free educational workshops; and a full vetting process of each campaign before it is launched. There are also no participation fees! The only fees that will be payable to Crowdfund Campus are those stipulated by our payment provider for card processing.

If you think your university is ready to enjoy the multiple benefits of crowdfunding, please email support@crowdfundcampus.com – we’ll be delighted to help.

But speak to any campaign team, successful or not, and most will only mention money as a by-product. Instead, what the casual observer might see as ancillary benefits are actually understood by savvy startups as the primary purpose of crowdfunding: to determine if there is demand for an idea or product before making risky investments. Indeed, as Ethan Mollick and Venkat Kuppuswamy – authors of After the Campaign: Outcomes of Crowdfunding – write:

“Crowdfunding is not just a means for immediate funds. Rather, it’s a way to validate ideas, test markets, launch brands, find customers and impress investors.”

Marketing, not money

The most basic mistake a crowdfunding campaign can make is to focus solely on boosting profits rather than building awareness. Funding should be seen as validation that an idea has an audience; to affirm if it really is a good idea. If the crowd gets behind it and feels invested in it (both literally and figuratively), then the entrepreneur will have tested and marketed a product with very little risk. Even if they don’t, it will still count as a valid trial which can inform any iterated offering. There can be no better mode of market research.

At its heart, crowdfunding is a participatory tool focusing on people, not just pennies. It enables a budding entrepreneur or business student to apply their knowledge in a physical setting – upholding the Aristotelian belief that we learn by doing. This is why crowdfunding on campus is so important: where better to introduce the idea of enterprise than at university, where intellectual, financial, and, critically, social infrastructure abounds? Whilst a lecture or textbook can teach key principles, crowdfunding presents an opportunity for hands-on learning, allowing students to participate in, and feel empowered by, their own education.

Moreover, a university campus represents an engaged community of students, teachers, staff and alumni. Here, the budding entrepreneur will find a willing audience to test and validate their idea (and hopefully throw in a little spare change if they’re interested) – or show them they need to go back to the drawing board. In fact, it is ‘failing well’ – not achieving the stated financial goals but tapping into a target audience and learning more about market demand – that can teach the most valuable lessons.

The proof is in the pudding

One young entrepreneur who understood the importance of ‘crowd’ first, ‘fund’ second, was Yannan, a Warwick University student who wanted to sell unique tea-based products. In the first iteration of her campaign, Yannan intended to open a tea shop in Leamington Spa, a quaint Midlands town – teeming with tea rooms.

Realising her audience would not stump up support in an already saturated market, Yannan reworked her offering, focusing instead on selling her ‘Teamisu’ – a tasty tea and tiramisu treat – rather than taking on the risk of an entire premises. Within two months, Yannan had lined up her first commercial partner and prepared her market test, pre-selling her products on Crowdfund Campus. In fact, her campaign not only went on to be over-funded, but also affirmed that her ‘crowd’ were prepared to pay a profitable price. Since no brand (however tasty!) can trade without a loyal band of customers, it is this test of desirability and viability that must been seen as the real value of crowdfunding: it’s not about the money, it’s about the market response.

“The medium is the message”

When done well, a crowdfunding campaign can teach so much – far more than investment alone. Here at Crowdfund Campus, we support students and universities seeking enterprise education and profit sources, providing both a simulated experience (called Sandpit) and a live marketplace. If you would like to introduce crowdfunding to your classroom and lead an enterprise renaissance on campus, please email support@crowdfundcampus.com – it would be our pleasure to show you around our setup.

But why?

You have a project in mind, you create the campaign, you attract a crowd of backers and the payment processor (usually Stripe, Paypal or GoCardless) transfers the funds. So what service are these platforms providing for their fee? Is this too much to pay for a ‘place’ online for this to happen? And what are your other options if you want to raise funds through pre-selling?

Let me start by dispelling some myths about Reward crowdfunding:

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Myth 1

The platform supplies the crowd

One of the biggest misconceptions about crowdfunding is that, simply by putting your genius idea up on the internet, legions of bored netizens waiting on the crowdfunding site will fund you. This is not how crowdfunding works. You have to prepare your own crowd for funding and bring that crowd to the platform. There are an abundance of failed campaigns that never took off on these sites because these campaigns relied on the hosting platform to do the work for them, instead of going out themselves and asking for funds from their networks.

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Myth 2

You need a platform to crowdfund

The second falsehood surrounding this form of crowdfunding is the idea that you need a platform to host your campaign. Reward crowdfunding isn’t regulated in the same way as equity and P2P lending, both requiring expensive and time consuming HMRC authorisation. You can get your own ‘Out-the-box’ solution with something like Ignition Deck. That, by the way, is how we started.

It was a clunky, difficult thing to get working, and the support was awful, but it worked. Until these products improve as the market matures, I’d say you’re better off using an existing platform rather than having that hassle, especially if there is no tech expertise in the business. But the key question is why is there a market for ‘Out the Box’ software?

This is good evidence of Myth 1. You supply the crowd therefore it doesn’t really matter where your campaign is hosted. You could do as Brewdog did for Equity crowdfunding, Rhino Rugby bonds did with lending and the MYO gesture wrist band have done with reward crowdfunding; you could crowdfund on your own site.

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Myth 3

The percentage fee structure represents value added

The percentage fee structure works when someone is giving you access to a network. Take for instance, equity crowdfunding. An equity platform will have a crowd of investors perpetually on the look out for opportunities. The platform acts as the gatekeeper to that group. If you want to pitch to them, and you are successful, they’ll take a cut.

It works because it is their network, they are giving you access, and they will also be giving the investors a screening service, making sure they don’t see any projects that are wasting their time. In essence, they’re adding value to both campaign creators and investors, so the percentage fee model makes sense for equity crowdfunding.

With reward crowdfunding, however, you are being given access to no such network. In reality, you are bringing your network and your customers to the platform. The platform usually isn’t screening projects either, so they aren’t providing a service for the contributors. Where is the added value?

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Essentially this blog sets out to make one point. You are responsible for preparing and building your own crowd for crowdfunding.

It is for that reason, at Crowdfund Campus, we don’t believe in success fees/campaign fees and why we are pioneering with a different business model. One where the campaign creator keeps everything they earn (after payment processing fees).

Our model means we can spend more time with our campaign creators, giving them the skills and knowledge to run a successful crowdfunding campaign and build their own crowd. That is how we add value and that’s why 70% of campaigns have successfully hit their targets on our platform. If you are connected to one of our member institutions then start your campaign today and book your FREE online crowdfunding workshops at http://crowdfundcampus.com/workshops

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Don’t lose out to success fees on other platforms and get #FundedOnCampus

Follow the blog at https://crowdfundcampus.com/blog for great crowdfunding insight.

We’d love to hear from you, ask us anything via facebook or Twitter or e-mail us at support@crowdfundcampus.com

The University of Warwick has launched a crowdfunding campaign in order to create a Student Enterprise Fund. This marks the first time a University has raised funds in this way for this purpose and is a tribute to a University itself acting in an entrepreneurial manner.

Enterprise has been a notoriously difficult area for Universities to handle. Whilst they value and want to promote the enterprising activities of students, and indeed see it as a vital part of a student’s personal development, Universities are slow, lumbering, bureaucratic beasts that struggle to show or even understand the pace of action required to develop a product or service and take it to market. They insist on putting committees in place to manage committees who oversee partnerships between groups who develop strategy to present to the managing committee, and round the cycle spins. (All have bizarre acronyms which no-one really knows what they stand for)

Some Universities have whole student enterprise departments, employing between 10 and 20 staff, others leave enterprising activity to one lonely but dedicated Enterprise Officer, and inevitably they find more doors blocking their path than are open. These departments rest on the principle of inspiring enterprising action through events and the use of external companies.

Students on the other hand, come in October and leave in June (roughly, depending on the specific University calendar). They have studies, extra curricular actives and many seize the opportunity to turn their spare time to something entrepreneurial. But their short University life-span does not easily match University politics. They need fast answers, and dedicated programmes to develop their enterprising skills.

At the University of Warwick, much of the Enterprising activity has come from the students themselves. In 2007 a group students approached the Students Union to start the Warwick Entrepreneurs Society. They came up with Dragon’s Den like competitions, and took inspiration from the Apprentice to run challenges around campus. Some of these early members have gone on to found multi-million pound businesses and non-profits like NACUE (secured £3.5 million in government funding) and Buffer (raised £3.8 million dollars), and some provide experiences to students that still exist to this day like TheUniExpress. Each year, students pass through the society, generate ideas, and try and implement them. In 2014 two students set up an Incubator, which took 10 start-ups from idea generation through to working prototypes and businesses with customers.

What students don’t realise is that the University has provided them with the environment to make this happen. They brought these students together, provided space, equipment and allowed them to take part in these activities. The University actively looks for ways to support this activity, and sees the society as a vital tool in delivering it’s own Enterprise agenda. The question is how does the University go from a facilitator of entrepreneurial activity to an instigator of it.

Enter the 50 Years of Warwick Enterprise Campaign.

Warwick was built on the foundation of entrepreneurial thinking and fundraising. The founding Vice-Chancellor Lord Butterworth persuaded industry to protest in the 1960s when the University Grants Committee resisted his ideas (the idea of the Vice-Chancellor leading a protest would seem quite unusual these days). According to his obituary, when he was refused funds to create a business school he went raised them himself to establish one anyway. He and Lord Rootes, “were an extraordinary fundraising combination and established a tradition at Warwick that success could not be achieved on government funding alone.” Michael Shattock

There are a large number of alumni who were involved in Enterprising activity at Warwick, whether they were the founders of the Entrepreneurs society, or benefitted from it’s existence over the last 8 years. There are Warwick Business School alumni who over the last 40 years have reached positions high up in corporates due to the entrepreneurial attitudes they developed whilst studying at Warwick. There are alumni from all over the University who have gone on to found lifestyle businesses or businesses they have gone onto sell or are now publicly traded.

The 50 Years campaign is about using the knowledge and experience of these alumni, and matching it with the enterprising students that pass through Warwick every year. It’s a crowdfunding campaign and a crowd sourcing one. With the funds generated and the knowledge accumulated over the last 50 years, Warwick can become an instigator in developing the enterprising activity of it’s students and take it’s traditionally entrepreneurial fundraising attitudes, and apply them once again to make this campaign the first of it’s kind for a University.

Don’t know enough about crowdfunding? Why don’t you read Alex’s piece on ‘what is crowdfunding?’ first

So why should I care about crowdfunding?

• The crowd can get behind an idea

Unlike traditional sources of finance that are primarily looking for a financial reward, crowdfunders are typically contributing towards a campaign because they believe in the purpose of the project. They want to be a part of the campaign and to make the project happen. A great example of this was Solar Roadways. Solar Roadways managed to raise over $2million because the general public thought that this was a brilliant idea that needed to exist in the world. Backers got little more than thank yous, hats and bags.

• Benefit to the economy

Small businesses are the engine of the British economy. According to John Longworth from the Guardian, “Small businesses make up 99% of the 5.2m businesses in the UK, yet rarely receive the public’s attention or praise. Not only do they deliver jobs, growth and prosperity for millions of people across the UK, they have also played a fundamental role in driving our economy out of the recession.” Crowdfunding gives the general public access to these small businesses, and is quickly becoming their preferred funding source.

• Staying away from the banks

As this article in the New Economy states, “Crowdfunding is threatening to supplant the banking industry’s status as the go-to source of finance for small businesses.” In one sense this is not too big an issue for the banks, who probably see these opportunities as too high risk to lend money to anyway, but I expect they are keeping a close eye on the crowdfunding sector. For the time being though, crowdfunding represents a way to raise money from friends, family and the market at large, validating ideas and raising funds on better terms for the enterprise.

• Disintermediation

I have to be a bit careful here, because I could and probably will write a whole article on this topic alone. There are advantages and disadvantages to disintermediation (where intermediaries like banks and fund managers are bypassed as savers decide where to put their own money). “The digital landscape has created new bank managers; the public” writes CapGemini’s Patsy Neville. In this environment of low trust in the banks and high bonuses for bankers who seem to be reaping more rewards for managing money than those for whom they are managing money, is there something to be said for taking a little more responsibility over your own money? To be continued…

Conclusion

In essence, there are quite a few reasons introduced here to explain why you should care about crowdfunding. As an entrepreneur or business owner its an increasingly attractive form of generating sales or raising finance. As a contributor you can make great ideas come to life, take responsibility over your own finances, and for the time being, crowdfunding can provide an alternative to the banks.

Photo credit: David

It has officially become a buzzword.

A buzzword, for those not in ‘in the loop’, is a word or phrase that is bandied around wantonly in an attempt to sound knowledgeable by simply spouting meaningless drivel. If you’ve ever heard someone talk about ‘outside the box thinking’, ‘touching base’ or ‘moving forward’ towards a ‘common goal’ then you’re likely to be sick of these buzzwords.

The real shame is that crowdfunding seems to have lost some of its real meaning thanks to these superfluous encounters around the watercooler. Everyone thinks they know exactly what it is, or worse pretends to, because it’s seen as an ‘innovative’ and ‘fresh’ approach that could, heaven forbid, lead to some ‘blue sky thinking’.

In the first written post on this blog, we want to remind everyone exactly what crowdfunding really is, and more importantly why we should care. So, please, take a second and hear us out while we ‘run something up the flagpole to see who salutes’.

Crowdfunding is people coming together to financially support an idea. It’s that simple. What’s interesting about crowdfunding though is that it supports ideas which may have struggled to find traditional methods of financial support.

Crowdfunding is nothing new. Without it our friends over the pond wouldn’t be able to adorn t-shirts, mugs and other various tat with that tourist favourite, the Statue of Liberty. Joseph Pulitzer, of Pulitzer Prize fame, started a drive for donations to complete the project, which had stalled. Pulitzer’s crowdfunding brought in donations from over 120,000 supporters, the majority of which actually gave less than a dollar.

Crowdfunding has grown massively in popularity thanks to the rise of the internet. An abundance of platforms are making it possible to sponsor charitable adventures, buy products before they’re made, and purchase shares or debt of a company.

Read founder Henry Jinman’s thoughts from nearly two years ago, which are as true today as they were then, to find out more about crowdfunding. http://hcjinman.com/post/98644826508/what-is-crowdfunding-back-to-basics

The vision he presents in his blog is clear and has not changed, but now university crowdfunding is here, and we are doing it.

No clichés. No gimmicks. No buzzwords.

So why should we care? See our next piece here.

Photo credit: A. Strakey