Hello, London.
Last week, we visited Founders Factory - a fresh new Lab partner, located at the heart of London - Kensington district. The three co-founders - Brent Hoberman, Henry Lane-Fox and Jim Meyerle - aimed at both building new businesses from scratch through an “incubator” and helping new start-ups to scale through its “accelerator”.
What is the value for startups?
Each start-up is given up to £200,000 worth of support, tailored mentoring, business support from an in-house operations team, and £30,000 of growth capital to get going. They will take part in the programme for around six months.
In return, Founders Factory takes 7pc equity. For the businesses that it creates from scratch, it will own the whole entity but will then apportion shares to the start-up’s management team.
They are backed by some of the world’s leading corporates across six sectors; travel (easyJet), beauty (L'Oréal), fintech (Aviva), education (Holtzbrinck), media (Guardian) and AI (CSC).
How do they differ from others accelerator programs?
They actually have a team of 60+ full-time in-house team to support startups in AI, engineering, product development, growth, PR, branding and fundraising. They have a team of scouts around the world on the ground, hunting for startups and they build tech start-ups from scratch. They ambition to launch more than 200 new startups in the next five years.
Meet the 3DEXPERIENCE users brought by Founders Factory partnership
During our visit we run a workshop with startups offering them guidance and advice on the 3DEXPERIENCE platform, CATIA and SIMULIA.
@SR onboarded the two following startups on:
- Monolithai | Machine Learning for Engineering
- Part Design, Structural Simulation
- Zoa Robotics | Affordable robots inspired by nature
- Part Design
What else?
Here is a recap video of our two days journey - From spending a couple of hours at the Startup Day at the British Library to visiting Tom Dixon Studio, restaurant and shop. We visit this space to scan it 360°. Finally ending the day by meeting the great team of Digital Catapult.
Thanks @LD for your warm welcome and for introducing us to the brilliant entrepreneurs of Founders Factory & your fantastic team! We had a blast !
Thanks as well to @SR and @CS for this gorgeous business trip ! Cheers!
