After such an inspiring last week, the Converge team were raring to go and immersed themselves into the world's largest festival of entrepreneurship – Global Entrepreneurship Week! #GEW is the world's largest campaign to promote entrepreneurship and this year's message was to seize the opportunity and #GEWmakeit happen! We were excited to attend 11 events throughout the week and would like to take you through our #GEW journey. Grab a hot drink and enjoy part one!
Monday 16th November, Strathclyde
Enterprise Campus West Exhibition
Monday afternoon saw a Strathclyde 100 event open with the Enterprise Campus West Showcase Exhibition, where 12 nascent businesses supported by Enterprise Campus West presented their propositions to an invited group of interested parties, which included potential investors. It was great to see Converge Challenge alumni such as Steven Russell from Guerilla Drums, Abiy Desta from Hyposafe, James McMinn from Scoop Analytics and Susanne Mitschke from Mindmate continuing their journey with the support of Enterprise Campus West. The Strathclyde 100 Programme included 60 second pitches from the 12 Exhibitors, and also longer business presentations from Liflinked Ltd, Vuzii and Chitopolymers, alumni of Strathclyde 100, who have gone on to develop great business propositions.
Tuesday 17th – Thursday 19th November, Edinburgh, Glasgow & Aberdeen
Converge Challenge Entrepreneurial Sessions
Converge Challenge set about engaging at an early stage with potential applicants at Entrepreneurial sessions on Tuesday (Edinburgh), Wednesday (Glasgow) and Thursday (Aberdeen). Attendance was noted from the Universities of Aberdeen, Abertay, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Queen Margaret University, University of the West of Scotland and Glasgow School of Art. The content was raising awareness of the aims of the Converge Challenge and other competitions within the ecosystem, as well as identifying appropriate support mechanisms for business development. It also had fun exercises which prompted detailed discussions on "What is your market? Who are your customers? How do you reach your customers?" proving that it's never too early to be thinking about the critical components of a successful business proposition.
Tuesday, 17th November, Strathclyde
Enterprise Footsteps
Tuesday saw Olga Kozlova, Director of Converge Challenge attend and speak at an Enterprise Footsteps session on Leadership and Motivation (stage one of the Enterprise Pathway programme) ran by Strathclyde Enterprise Network. Around 250 students have attended this event, which is really impressive and gives huge credit to the organisers Josh Sauter and Eleanor MacKay. It was a very inspirational event with the first speaker being Sir Jim McDonald, Strathclyde's Principal and Vice-Chancellor. Sir Jim has spoken very candidly about importance of having a vision and passion. He emphasised the need for collaboration as you can't be a leader on your own and also stated that in order to be successful you have to be yourself. He was very generous of sharing his experience on being on the board of FTSE 100 company, leading Strathclyde for the last 6.5 years and was very honest about the fact that every leader has made many mistakes in their lifetime and it's the ability to learn that makes true leaders what they are.
Olga spoke about her entrepreneurial journey from being a scientists, through the RSE Enterprise Fellowship to starting a biotech company. She has used Simon Sinek's what? how? why? approach to describe the thinking behind set-up of Converge Challenge. What was really impressive is that the students were spot on when asked to describe the leadership. They suggested Vision, Influence, Motivation, People, Learning and many other very important points. So overall, we can certainly say that there are many future leaders in Strathclyde University and Scotland will definitely benefit from such approach.
Wednesday 18th November, Edinburgh
Jackie Waring, Investing Women - An Entrepreneurs Journey
Bright Red Triangle invited Converge Challenge and others to Jackie Waring's, CEO and Founder Investing Women, Masterclass on being Investor Ready during Global Entrepreneurship Week.
Jackie talked about her career as an entrepreneur, how she set up Investing Women and why she believes it is important to encourage both female entrepreneurs and investors. Founded in 2013, Investing Women Angels is Scotland's first women angel group bringing together women angel investors and women entrepreneurs. Investing Women has a vision of increasing the number of women investors stating that only 2% of Scotland's angel investors are female.
To help women (and men) realise their entrepreneurial potential Jackie explained how passion is the identifiable DNA of an entrepreneur and it is this passion that drives the 'can do' mindset to ensure 'people don't buy what you do but they buy why you do it' as Simon Sinek put it. So it is always important to be clear on your 'why'. This 'ignition' can keep an entrepreneur going through tough times such as failure. However learning from such failures or mistakes is equally as important for if you are too frightened to make a mistake you will never innovate. An entrepreneur's journey should therefore focus on
1. a belief in yourself, 2.core values and 3. the ability to think BIG. Jackie then went on to explain the ten things investors look for. In brief: 1. Vision 2. Conviction 3. Curiosity 4. Founder/Market Fit 5. Balance of humility and confidence 6. Delivers on commitments 7. Relational Intelligence 8. Passion and relentless 9. Industry experience 10. High interity. If anyone wants this list expanded please email info@convergechallenge.com and we'll provide.
And a takeaway from today? It's worth remembering when speaking to an investor it's a value partnership - a two way relationship based on trust.
Investing Women run events - please see http://www.eventbrite.co.uk/o/investing-women-angels-limited-4232228663
We hope you enjoyed our week so far! Part two will be available tomorrow.
