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!
