• #1 Instaprint "Best UK Cities for Millennial Start-Ups"

  • #2 Barclays’ SME Growth Factors Index "best cities in the UK in which to start a business"

  • #3 Instant Office’s "UK’s Most Entrepreneurial City 2018" Ranking

  • UK #1 for increase in digital business births 2006-16 at 568%

  • #4 Paymentsense "best UK cities to start a business in 2019"

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Get Help (and give it!)

We believe the secret to building innovative, scalable startups is a friendly and helpful community of founders.

We organise and promote mentoring, talks, advice, collaboration and workspace offerings with a “give first” ethos. We warmly welcome people of all backgrounds.

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We’re always looking for supporters and sponsors to help us grow our community. Get in touch if you think you can help.

Leicester Pitch Night registration goes live

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The Leicester Startups Pitch Night registration is now live! To book your ticket to be in the live audience, watching along over Zoom, go here To apply to pitch in front of investors and leading business leaders in Leicester, fill in this form   Best of luck – and see you on Monday 22nd June!

Invitation to Webinar: Intellectual Property for Early Stage Businesses: 10th June 2020

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Leicester-based MSDUK who support innovative and high-growth ethnic minority owned businesses are offering a free intellectual property workshop webinar in partnership with Longmores Solicitors. Attendees will be able to learn about the different types of IP and understand what is applicable to their businesses. – The main forms of IP protection and appreciate how these apply to […]

Leicester Startups World Tour kicks off with a bang!

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The Leicester Startups World Tour kicked off in the last week of May. Founders from across Leicester enjoyed one hour with the friendly and charismatic Caya, founder of Slidebean. We got to hear his story, from navigating product/market fit, to scaling out to a team of 20+, via a tech accelerator and VC backing. Thank […]

Leicester Startups Pitch Night

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A showcase of new ideas, and startups on the rise! Monday 22nd June, 6:30pm. We’re hosting a pitch night. Held live over Zoom, with an audience plus leading businesspeople and founders in Leicester. This is your chance to share your idea with Leicester, the world, and our special guest panel of entrepreneurs and investors. The […]

Introducing the Leicester Startups World Tour!

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We’ve been running the biweekly lunch & learns online for a couple of months now, featuring great founders from across Leicester. You have so many brilliant founders from around the globe coming to speak to the community in the coming months. So many, in fact, that we had to change the name of our Lunch […]

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Next Events

June 8, 2020
Mon
08
Founders' Weekly Goal Setting & Roundtable
Location: Virtual
A weekly check in, troubleshooting, and goal setting exercise with other founders in Leicester

Let's own the week:

It might feel like chaos out there - but we all still have a job to do: building our startups.

Every Monday morning, at 9am, Founders across Leicester come together on Zoom to share ideas, troubleshoot, and set their goals for the week. Each and every Monday we're checking in with each other, keeping each other motivated, and holding ourselves accountable.

If you're a founder, you're warmly invited to join us. Register here: https://leicesterfounderroundtable.eventbrite.co.uk

June 10, 2020
Wed
10
Leicester Startups World Tour: Chris Heivly
Location: Online

Chris is a speaker, investor, mentor, and startup founder. Chris is one of the global experts when it comes to building great startups, and we're very lucky to have him share his experience with the Leicester community. Join us for up to an hour of live Q&A, and ask your own startup questions to one of the big names in startups.

Chris CV:

One of the Co-Founders of MapQuest - which sold to AOL for $1.2billion.

Managing Director of 77 Capital, a $25m Venture Fund.

CEO, COO or President of various companies ranging from $200k to $20m in size.

One of two Managing Directors of The Startup Factory (35 investments across 7 cohorts), founder and MC of the Big Top Reverse Job Fair and an international writer and speaker waxing poetic around startups and startup communities.

He wrote "Build the Fort", his much-anticipated book about how to take the lessons you learned as a 10-year old and ideas on applying those lessons to starting anything.

He's currently Entrepreneur in Residence @ Techstars. Techstars is an American seed accelerator founded in 2006 in Boulder, Colorado. As of 2019, the company had accepted over 1,600 companies into its programs with a combined market capitalization of $18.2billion. Less than 1% of applicants are accepted on top the programme. Chris helps community leaders around the world grow their startup community - including Leicester Startups!



Free registration here
June 11, 2020
Thu
11
DMU and NatWest Resilient Business Models workshop
Location: Zoom Details to be sent to attendees

About this Event



DMU Innovation Centre and NatWest have teamed up to deliver a series of workshops to help businesses navigate through the Covid-19 situation.

It’s one thing to build a business that meets customer needs enough to generate value to be viable. However, in the new economic reality of the Covid-19 situation new and existing businesses need to be viable and resilient.

Resilient business models can quickly pivot into new markets if your core is impacted and approach risk in a very different way.

As this is new territory the workshop will explore how tried and tested methods of business planning can be applied to your businesses to make them more resilient.

In this workshop you will get the opportunity to

- Learn about pivoting strategies

- Learn how to adapt your existing business model

- Explore opportunities to become more resilient


Sign up here 

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/resilient-business-models-tickets-103440262610

June 12, 2020
Fri
12
Mentor Fridays
Location: Online

Need help or support from a sympathetic expert or Founder who's been in your shoes before?

Or do you have experience and are willing to give back? 

Every Friday we're hosting and matching mentors to mentees with introductory 15 minute sessions. If you're interested, fill in the Google Form, and we'll match pair you up with someone you can help, or be helped by!
June 15, 2020
Mon
15
Founders' Weekly Goal Setting & Roundtable
Location: Virtual
A weekly check in, troubleshooting, and goal setting exercise with other founders in Leicester

Let's own the week:

It might feel like chaos out there - but we all still have a job to do: building our startups.

Every Monday morning, at 9am, Founders across Leicester come together on Zoom to share ideas, troubleshoot, and set their goals for the week. Each and every Monday we're checking in with each other, keeping each other motivated, and holding ourselves accountable.

If you're a founder, you're warmly invited to join us. Register here: https://leicesterfounderroundtable.eventbrite.co.uk