European intellectual property law firm, Mathys & Squire, has become an official partner of British Design Fund (BDF), an early-stage investment fund dedicated to supporting the growth of UK engineering and manufacturing start-ups.

Founded in London, British Design Fund backs product-focused start-up enterprises who are ready to scale-up and build thriving standout businesses. Alongside capital investment, BDF provides expert mentoring to support such companies to accelerate their growth plans.

A holistic metabolic disease management start-up, Dia Beta Labs Ltd has been named the overall winner of the 2024 INVENT Awards, after securing top spot of the brand new BioBreakthrough category.

Organised by science and technology hub Catalyst with headline partner Bank of Ireland UK, INVENT is the highlight event of the year for early-stage start-ups and aspiring entrepreneurs to showcase their innovations to a panel of expert judges.

A young entrepreneur whose AI social enterprise will help medical professionals save time, money and lives has won £20,000 after wowing the judges at a hotly contested funding competition at The Shard.

Talha Mehmood, a medical student at Anglia Ruskin University, is the founder of Medily AI - a suite of digital tools that support more efficient management of patient care. Talha, 22, was last night declared the first winner of Ignite, which has been launched by social enterprise philanthropists The Ford Family Foundation in partnership with Durham University. All six highly impressive finalists are undergraduates or recent graduates from leading UK universities.

With the FemTech market set to be worth $1trillion by 2027 (McKinsey & Company), impulse, the University of Cambridge's unique entrepreneurship programme, has seen a sharp rise in the number of participants contributing novel innovations to this exciting sector.

Playfair's Female Founder Office Hours (FFOH) event, which aims to tackle the gender funding gap, launched its 12th Edition this week.

on 7th November 2024, Playfair and 200 of the world’s leading venture capital funds will be holding remote office hours for more than 300 female founders from across Europe.

Funds participating include Balderton, Cherry, LocalGlobe, MMC, Northzone, Notion, Plug & Play, Seedcamp, SpeedInvest, and Target Global.

Last week, investors from 48 venture capital firms from the UK and Ireland ascended on Belfast for Catalyst’s annual Inbound Investors event.

Held in the new state-of-the-art Ulster University campus in Belfast city centre on Thursday 12 September 2024, Inbound Investors connected high-growth potential Northern Ireland companies with relevant investors through pre-matched meetings, tailored to each participating company.

Organised by Catalyst and supported by headline partner, British Business Bank, Inbound Investors gave 50 fast growing Northern Ireland start-up and scale-up companies the opportunity to meet and pitch to 48 investors, discussing investments of up to £10m+.

The Department for Business and Trade has published its annual Investing in Women Code which finds that venture capital fund managers who have signed up to the Code are more likely to invest in female founders.

32% of all venture capital deals made by Investing in Women Code signatories were in female-founded companies last year, compared to the market average of 28%, revealed in the latest report published today. This is the fourth year in a row that Investing in Women Code signatories have outperformed the wider market.

WeDonate, a reward platform for blood donors to encourage participation and Bluco, a WhatsApp-based app to make job applications easier, took the two £25,000 top prizes in this year's AXA Startup Angel competition.

The University of Strathclyde's Hunter Centre for Entrepreneurship, Strategy and Innovation has a new name and a newly appointed Director.

Formerly The Hunter Centre for Entrepreneurship, the addition of Strategy and Innovation to the name reflects its expanded focus, scope and alignment with the University's successful and distinctive strategy. The Centre also has a new Director, Professor Niall MacKenzie.

Caerphilly-based SPORTTAPE is gearing-up for global growth following a £1 million investment by the Development Bank of Wales.

Women are starting and running new businesses at virtually the same rate as men for the first time, while one in five entrepreneurs are non-white, according to new analysis of entrepreneurship activity in Scotland.

Akcela Ventures, Norwich’s only startup incubator,  has been awarded a £110,000 grant. The funding has been secured as part of the Ecosystem Partnership Programme, a joint initiative between Norfolk and Suffolk County Councils, Connected Innovation and Barclays Eagle Labs to boost support for the region’s digital technology sector.