Validator Competition 2023
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25 businesses ideas accelerated through the Loughborough Enterprise Network's Validator programme!
Throughout the Summer the Loughborough Enterprise Network, delivered The Validator Programme – an accelerator designed to support Loughborough University Students and Graduates from both Loughborough and Loughborough London campus’.
Validator provides the structure and practical time needed to really interrogate, test and validate business hypotheses and ideas to take their business to the next level!
This year’s Validator Programme worked with 25 budding Entrepreneurs!
The Programme consisted of live workshop delivery featuring Loughborough Alumni speakers (Thomas Constant- TheBugFactory , Kate Walker – ExpHand Prosthetics and Tom Jelliffe – Tzuka). Tailored online courses were also sent to founders to help develop knowledge and skills to develop Limited Companies, Freelancing and Social Entrepreneurship.
Additionally students and graduates had the opportunity to connect and work with mentors across the Loughborough Enterprise Network and wider Alumni community.
This is a great scheme. Although I have given talks to students before at the university, I have been thinking about other ways of helping the students. This scheme works well for me.
As part of this year's Validator Programme, each founder received a £500 grant, awarded by the Student Success Academy, to help the cohort further develop and test business ideas.
Thank you to Student Success Academy. It's an excellent investment for me to use in developing prototypes for my concept.
To conclude the Validator experience, founders had the opportunity to enter the Business Validator Mini Competition – an opportunity to win £250!
Founders showcased their ideas by entering a 1min video pitch via the Loughborough Enterprise Webpage. From here founders were told to utilise their networking skills to ask their audiences to vote for their business.
The Business Validator Mini Competition had a grand total of 285 votes.
Charlie Wheeldon - Head of Careers, Student Enterprise and Opportunities, had the pleasure of announcing this year's winner - Jessica Strain with her business Ovrbloom!
Taking part in the Validator Programme allowed me to connect with some fantastic mentors who have guided me on my journey to pivoting my business idea. It's also been a great opportunity to learn about what other students and graduates are working on.
Hear from our winner!
Hear what this year's 2022 Validator mini competition winner, Jess Strain (Ovrbloom), has to say about her experience of the competition.
Programmes such as Validator are important to join when starting your venture. Validator brings community, structure, and feedback from the LEN team. It’s great to see confidence and progression from each founder.
The Validator Programme will return annually full details here: https://www.lboro.ac.uk/students/len/what-we-do/create/sul-programmes/
See below the submissions for the 2022 Business Validator Mini Competition:
Jess Strain - Ovrbloom
Jamshid Tavallali - Surreal
We help the Tech enthusiasts achieve the AR dream by making the necessary tech and making it accessible so they can do thier magic!
Priyal Bafana
A fashion brand focusing on sustainability at its maximum with purposeful designs. It aims to be sustainable at each level of the production process.
Nemat Alizada - Rakeb Limited
Connecting mechanic shops to customers using car delivery drivers.
Xiaoyu Lei - WooDesign
Service Design Tools online templates.