Plexal

🥊  Companies collided at Plexal Stratford this week as a selection of members from our Product Growth Programme with Barclays Eagle Labs went head-to-head during our Pitch Battle!   🤼  This was our second event of its kind but this time, having had a slight overlap between our second and third cohorts running, we embraced the competitive spirit of the Pitch Battle concept and put peers from each Product Growth Programme cohort against one another.    💬 Stephen Brown, Head of Barclays Eagle Labs said: “Our mission is to supercharge the innovation economy in the UK, which we do across areas including access to capital, skills and ecosystem. We know that money, skills and time are the top three challenges experienced by growing businesses, so we’re super grateful to all of you for being here for the Product Growth Programme.”    💬  Monika Radclyffe, Senior Director of Programmes at Plexal, followed up by welcoming the audience: “We’re delighted to have you at Plexal’s workspace on the HERE EAST campus, the beating heart of innovation and home to hundreds of entrepreneurs. This event is a celebration of you, the founders who have joined the Product Growth Programme, as we hear everything from success stories to ambitions.”    💡 With success in mind, Monika chaired a discussion between SoSquared CEO Sam Thomas Alexander Royle and Another Earth CEO Maya Pindeus, who shared their experiences of growing businesses to where they are today.    🔔 Having well and truly warmed the audience up by the panel’s conclusion, we began our Pitch Battle, which made for an energetic display of innovative ideas from founders ready to shake up the business landscape, with Plexal’s Emma Marshall and Mina Begum acting as referees. 👏 Emma Marshall, Innovation Lead at Plexal, concluded: “What a knockout pair of cohorts we’ve had the pleasure of supporting with Barclays Eagle Labs on our Product Growth Programme. Getting onto the stage in front of an expectant audience isn’t easy, so I applaud all our participants for getting involved – one who gallantly did so spontaneously – and especially this year’s champion, Nicholas Murphy, Founder and CEO at Kutana Technologies!” Harry Baker | Ria Khan | Emily Porter | Alliah Rust | Naia P. | Cameron Readman | Joe Howard | #ProductGrowthProgramme | #ProductGrowth | #BusinessGrowth | #Business | #Startups | #Innovation |

A few highlights from the week 👇 Monday kicked off with the Barclays Eagle Labs & Plexal Product Growth Pitch Battle 🤝 and what an event! Pitching back-to-back can sometimes feel repetitive, but this event was anything but. I had the pleasure of hosting the reverse pitch session, joined by Shosh Shetty, Kerry Dwyer, Neil Wood, Ana Fernandez, Vanessa Mbamalu, Theo Parry, and Bill Corfield - all of whom left the founders in the room with some brilliant insights. The afternoon wrapped up with 16 founders battling it out in the pitch competition. Huge congrats to Nicholas Murphy for taking the win - against some seriously impressive competition - and hats off to Emma Marshall and the team, the masterminds behind it all. Tuesday was all about Wales 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 loved meeting founders I don't regularly cross paths with, many of whom have ambitious (and exciting) fundraising plans in motion. I was too distracted catching up with familiar faces and meeting new ones to get any photos evidently! Well done Jack Christopher Development Bank of Wales, MediWales, Symbiosis IP , looking forward to the next time! Thankfully, Ian Merricks, FBCS FRSA took the lead on our other events this week, so the rest of the week for me has been filled with founder and partner conversations - lots of exciting plans coming together! If you’re a founder thinking about fundraising this year, drop me a message.

London has a dedicated AI security space! In a building that feels like it was designed by an AI with the prompt ‘tech start-up’ (I mean that as a compliment).. I’m here for it! 👏 Brilliant initiative, thanks to the team at Plexal !#LASR

🧭 Our presence in the North West is growing! We’ve launched a partnership with Lancashire-based Northern Reach, which connects founders across the north, leveraging strong credentials delivering projects such as Lancashire Innovation Festival and Lancashire Digital Hub: Powered by Innovate Lancashire and Barclays Eagle Labs. 🤝 Northern Reach’s mission aligns with our own. At Plexal, we look nationwide to solve society’s most pressing problems through accelerating access to novel startup solutions across the regions, effectively closing the gap between organisations that otherwise wouldn’t have connected. 💥 The impact of this is driving national security progress, economic growth and social prosperity, which we do by building physical places for innovation, delivering innovation services through programmes and consultancy and establishing regional clusters of excellence. 🗣️ Russell Gundry, Senior Director of Clusters at Plexal, says: “Our model with Northern Reach will see us work together to first deliver early-stage SME support and advice locally. From that initial touchpoint, we’ll provide tailored high-impact interventions, such as needs accelerators, keynotes, workshops and more across growth hubs in the region. “This builds on our existing work across projects including DiSH in Manchester with Barclays Eagle Labs and NW CyberCom with six partner universities. We’re also well positioned to support the Samlesbury Enterprise Zone, which Lancashire County Council has called ‘a place to catalyse innovation between the National Cyber Force, large industry partners, education institutions, agile businesses and expert practitioners.’ “With so many exciting innovation-driven events taking place, we’ll be running a series of focus groups with SMEs at key sites to understand where they are on their business journey, how well prepared they are for change and what would want to see from the emergence of a new cluster.” 🗺️ Plexal and Northern Reach are kicking off their partnership by hosting roundtables across Lancashire this month. These sessions will provide local companies a better understanding about the NCF arrival in Samlesbury, requirements for engagement, as well as a chance for us to gauge where Lancashire businesses require support from the local ecosystem to meaningfully engage in this opportunity. 📍 Our first sessions will take place in Lancaster, Chorley and Burnley with more to follow, so let us know which locations you'd like us to visit next! Innovate Lancashire | Dan Knowles | Mark Thwaite | Charlotte West | Catherine Hadfield | Tom Marshall | Francesca Castelo | #Innovation | #Collaboration | #NorthWest | #BusinessGrowth | #Startups | #ScalingUp | #Lancashire | #Clusters

Your voice matters: Help shape the future of UK business support for diverse leaders 🗣️ Plexal and the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology are gathering insights from underrepresented founders to understand how UK business initiatives have supported them – and where gaps still exist.    By providing anonymous feedback, you will directly inform recommendations for closing the equity gap and improving funding opportunities, ensuring more inclusive support for diverse entrepreneurs 🚀    Sharing your experiences will help contribute to real change – and you could win a £200 multi-store voucher for taking part! The deadline to have your say is next Friday 21st March 2025 ⏰    🗳 Join the conversation now: https://lnkd.in/e_U5CJgx ️    For this research, we are using DSIT’s definition of underrepresented communities, which includes woman and non-binary individuals, ethnic minorities, individuals with disabilities, LGBTQ+ individuals, neurodiverse individuals and those from socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds.    Andrew Roughan | Saj Huq | Rose Fitzgerald | Matthew Eddison | Tito M. | Bruno Sussat | Monika Radclyffe | Russell Gundry | Ruby Motabhoy | Diane Gilbert | Emma Marshall | Mary Welton | Alan Every | Maria Barr | Catherine Hadfield | Bernadette M. | Jennifer Underwood | Sophie Bacon | Monica Cheung | #InclusiveInnovation #Entrepreneurship #DiversityInBusiness #EquityGap

What a week it's been! From reconnecting with London Business School fellows and founders to celebrating important milestones at the Product Growth Programme graduation 🎊 Really appreciated being part of this transformative programme by Plexal and Barclays Eagle Labs. The experience helped sharpen our product vision at LevelUp ESG®, and the connections with other founders, investors and mentors were genuinely useful. Thanks to the entire team for putting together an experience that actually moved our platform forward and created real impact. The pitch battle was energizing and inspiring to see so many innovative solutions taking shape! The mentors and investors discussions were insightful thanks to Neil, Vanessa, 😎 Caroline, James, Sara, Shosh, Theo and Kerry! Lohit, Hesham! Looking forward to building on this momentum and leveling up impact. 🚀 #ProductGrowth #Sustainability #Innovation #LBS

I had never been to such a high-octane pitch event as the Barclays Eagle Labs x Plexal Product Growth Pitch Battle event. 🥊 🥊🥊 The audience members were given scorecards with the names of the companies that would pass through to the next rounds. Two companies would come up and deliver a 30 second pitch and the audience of 100+ members would hold up cards based on who it thought did better. The winner would pass on to the next round until there was a final winner. The Pitch battle was complete with boxing clothes, the boxing bell sound 🔔 for each round, high energy combat music (think Eye of the Tiger, we are the Champions, Fireball). 🎸🎸🎸 Great job to the team and Emma Marshall for MC-ing. It was one of the most exciting and engaging pitch events I’ve ever been to - well done to the team and partners and especially to the winner: Nicholas Murphy Founder and CEO at Kutana Technologies Great to meet Stephen Brown Head of Barclays Eagle Labs, Monika Radclyffe Senior Director of Programmes at Plexal, Mike Jacques of Barclays Eagle Labs, 😎 Caroline van den Bergh, James Lucas, Pierre Greenhalgh, Oliver Ramirez G., Rama krishna B. Prasanthi E. Ifeanyu Vincent . . . #pitch, #startups, #pitchbattle, #product, #VC, #entrepreneur

We have an office...or at least a desk! Thanks again to Plexal for letting Huntbase join #LASR - Laboratory for AI Security Research for the next 4 months. I'm really looking forward to collaborating with others in the hub and hearing some of the challenges they are facing in ensuring safe and secure use of AI systems.

“We fundamentally believe local government has a strong play in how we shape place.” “Part of the reason the council invested in Golden Valley is to try and create the preconditions to shape a self-sustaining ecosystem. By bringing in our development partner HBD, we’re confident that by having that local government intervention, we can create a fabulous place that isn’t like a business park but a sustainable community.” Great insights from Gareth Edmundson! Get more insights from this event here: https://lnkd.in/eEXnBPvS

🙌🏻Hands up founders if you have a chip on your shoulder?… According to Kerry Dwyer this is a good thing, and last Monday I was gloved up 🥊and ready to go for a knockout pitch day! Monday marked the showcase for Barclays Eagle Labs x Plexal Product Builder program where 25 businesses were chosen from 271 that applied to be a part of this year’s cohort. To top it off Persi was selected as one of 5 to showcase our milestones, and one of 8 to go head to head in a pitch battle 🥊 The day started with a reverse pitch panel on ‘Investment priorities and strategies’, giving us the ‘dos and donts’ for fundraising and presenting why a handful of VCs and angel syndicates are the right partners for investment, including Shosh Shetty Thim Ventures, Bill Corfield Love Ventures, Ana Fernandez NAUTA CAPITAL UK LIMITED Vanessa Mbamalu Cornerstone Ventures , Kerry Dwyer - Affinity Ventures, Neil Wood, and Theo Parry - Antler. 🔑 Takeaways: “Building with your customers is impressive” and “personalised services to individuals is exciting” ~ Bill Corfield - let me tell you about Persi! “Importance of alignment in vision for both the VC/investor and company/founder” ~ Bill Corfield “Due diligence is also necessary on your investors!” ~Ana Fernandez “Ask portfolio when it didn’t go well, how did the investor respond?” ~ Vanessa Mbamalu “Look for founders with a chip on your shoulder” ~ Kerry Dwyer This was followed by a Panel: ‘From idea to impact- scaling with strategy’ with Founder & CEO Another Earth, May Pindeus, and SoSquared Founder & CEO, Sam Thomas Alexander Royle, who had too many takeaways to include so here’s the top 5: 🪞Look in the mirror and hire what you are not good at 💰Cost of a bad hire is worse then paying more for the right person ⏳Your time is arguablely more valuable then investors, so make sure you are talking to the right person (decision maker) 🚀Launch launch launch - if you’re b2b saas just launch it no one cares that you’re not perfect 🔝Prioritise high value tasks and shift low value tasks The day ended up a winner takes all style head to head pitch 🥊 battle between 8 chosen businesses, of which I was a part of. After 3 rounds I bowed out at the semi final, just missing out to a very worthy winner Nicholas Murphy, Founder of Kutuna, who approached every round with a story with meaning, purpose and passion. 👏🏼 It’s amazing what a few minutes on stage can get you - the rest of the evening was spent networking with founders, investors and advisors. Thanks again to everyone involved in particular Mina Begum and Emma Marshall for organising the day and the cohort and all the amazing founders that took part! #femalefounder #pitchday #fundraise