At the University of Southampton, the Student Enterprise Team (based in the Careers and Employability Service), Future Worlds (the on-campus start-up accelerator, based within the Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences) and the University’s Social Impact Lab have come together to offer the SEED Start-Up Funding Competition.
The competition is exclusive to University of Southampton students and supports them in the creation and development of early stage businesses or social enterprises through the awarding of funding prizes. Students have to submit business plans and video pitches before being shortlisted to pitch in front of a panel of judges.
The Engineers in Business Competition has been integrated into the SEED Fund to engage more engineers and students with engineering-related business ideas to develop their own start-up business. Students from specific and relevant engineering modules are also able to apply via their coursework assignments, offering an innovative approach to reaching out to more students with the opportunity.
Positive Feedback
The Engineers in Business Competition prize is an incredible opportunity for our University of Southampton students. While the Engineers in Business Fund is available to all students with engineering business ideas through our SEED Fund Competition, an additional application route has been made available to engineering students from a specific module, which has encouraged much greater diversity in applications and has raised greater awareness of the opportunity. In 2020 one of our winning teams came through this route, and the two other winners had applied direct.
Sarah Rogers, Head of Student Enterprise, University of Southampton