Probably picked through the process of elimination as sadly I am one of only a handful of females who set up a business during Uni, I, along with David Langer and Andy Young, founders of GroupSpaces and Lucian Tarnowski of BraveNewTalent did a photo shoot for the National Consortium of University Entrepreneurs (NACUE) on Tuesday. Set up in March by the ex president of Oxford Entrepreneurs, Victoria Lennox, the consortium aims to empower, connect and represent university enterprise societies and student entrepreneurs to stimulate university enterprise.
Victoria tells me 52 societies are members and they are developing 25 with faculty staff so now all but two universities in the UK have joined NACUE, which also helps companies through the funding process.
The consortium has an impressive number of advisers including Julie Meyer – Founder of Entrepreneur Country & First Tuesday, CEO of Ariadne Capital, and the new Dragon on Dragon’s Den; Doug Richard – Founder & Chairman of Library House, Founder Vice-Chairman of the Cambridge Angels, and Chairman and CEO of Trutap; and, Emmett Kilduff, Founder & CEO of Cmypitch.com
Surprisingly, the consortium is being incubated by the London Metropolitan University’s Accelerator business incubator in East London, which is the first I’d heard of the incubator even though I attended London Met when I set up my business- huff!
Victoria cooked up the idea for NACUE whist talking to her counterpoint at Cambridge university about some of the common problems they faced. Although traditionally the relationship between the two universities has been marked by strong rivalry, they decided to work together. “We realised that we were facing the same challenges,” Lennox told Science|Business.
I’ll let Victoria tell you the rest!
NACUE is a fantastic organisation and they’ve been invaluable in helping to start Durham Uni Entrepreneurs. Victoria too is one of the most inspiring people I’ve met in a long time… watch that space!
Yes! they are amazing …I think Victoria is an incredible entrepreneur and strong character..she deserves a medal!
Amazing. I remember seeing Victoria when she took over from Alasdair. Was very impressed and I think NACUE are going to go places. I second that medal thing.
Good stuff! NACUE is definitely going places.
We look forward to seeing the first start-up companies being funded through this.
NACUE seems to be a great initiative from UK. I’m from California and I last week I met interesting people from Finland. They have a similar organization called Aalto Entrepreneurship Society, which have almost 2600 members in Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=37295947284
They also have a neat blog: http://aaltoes.com
Reading this makes my dcsieions easier than taking candy from a baby.
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