Bernard Cho, co-founder of Med Arcade hopes for collaboration
Med arcade
Over the last few years, universities in the U.K. have become increasingly eager to encourage their students to pursue careers in entrepreneurship. That’s partly because colleges see the benefit in preparing students for working lives that could well involve starting, growing and selling companies, rather than competing for salaried jobs. In addition, universities also sit on a mountain of IP, which they would rather like to exploit and monetise, in some cases, through spinout companies.
But here’s the thing. Graduates have options. They may have ideas and skills in abundance, but without a grounding in business, they may well conclude their ambitions will be best served by taking a more traditional career path.
It’s a reality that’s acknowledged by Kamiar Mohaddes, Co-Founder and Director of King’s College, Cambridge’s Entrepreneurship Lab. “Cambridge has been responsible for world-changing discoveries, but entrepreneurship isn’t the first thought of most people studying here,” he said. 1.0, the college’s first-ever incubator.
Mohaddes was comending on the launch of SPARK 1.0, the college’s first every tech incubator. Open to students and alumni, SPARK has been designed to provide participants with a launchpad into a world that might otherwise be unfamiliar. As Mohaddes sees it, there is a pressing economic reason for offerin aspiring entrepreneurs with a route into entrepreneurship.. “Driving economic growth requires inspiring the next generation to think boldly about how their ideas can shape industries and society. We want SPARK to be a catalyst, showing students the reality of founding a company.”
That’s the pitch, but what do incubators of this kind deliver for founders who are often at the very beginning of their startup journeys? I spoke to two members of the cohort about their reasons for pursuing their entrepreneurial ambitions and what they expect from a university incubator program.
First Time Founders
Ali Draycott is the founder of Egg Advisor, a platform created to help women navigate the process of freezing their eggs. “We call ourselves a fertility asset management program,” she says. “We are proactively helping women to manage their assets – in this case, their eggs.
Ali Draycott says taking part in an incubator can help you build faster
Egg Advisor
Egg Advisor aims to provide women with advice at the earliest stage of their fertility planning, with a particular focus on new technologies such as egg freezing. And as Draycott explains, her desire to start a business was shaped by personal experience.
“I froze my eggs nearly ten years ago,” she says. “I was one of the first 500. The technology has huge potential, but it is not a silver bullet. It comes with physical, emotional and financial costs.”
For instance, Women may find themselves making important and difficult choices around the right time to freeze, utilize and ultimately discard eggs. There may also be decisions about moving eggs either domestically or across borders. These were issues that Draycott was keen to address through entrepreneurship, not least because she detected a growing market.
“This is my first time as a founder. It is primarily about solving my own problem. But it turns out, this is a shared problem in a high-growth market. Egg freezing is the fastest-growing subset of the fertility industry.”
Bernard Cho, co-founder of Med Arcade, was also nudged towards entrepreneurship by personal experience. Having spent a lot of time with doctors, he was aware of how much time they spend reading patient notes. “A doctor may have a hundred letters on the system. It is impossible to go through all of them, so there may be a misdiagnosis or duplicated tests,” he says.
He saw an opportunity to build an AI-driven platform that would enable medics to extract relevant information from multiple records documents more quickly than would otherwise be the case.
He was also drawn to entrepreneurship, seeing it as a means to take charge of his own projects and ventures rather than playing a contributing role as an employee. “Working for a corporation, you often get a small part of a bigger project. You rarely get to take ownership,” he says. “Entrepreneurship is more aligned with my personal interests and experience.”
Why Join An Incubator
Cho sees the Cambridge Incubator as a means to bring his ideas to fruition by tapping into the expertise that exists in and around the university.
“We thought there could be synergies if we could make a connection with the University of Cambridge. We believe there are ways we can enter into beneficial collaborations,” he says.
Added to that, there is the simple fact that- as with any incubator – mentors and industry experts are on hand to provide advice on running a business rather than simply developing an idea. In theory at least, this should make starting a company feel a lot less risky. “Doing it on your own, you are more likely to make mistakes,” Cho adds.
Draycott was attracted to the incubator because she believes the ethos of Cambridge is aligned with her own vision “They are looking for people who are willing to challenge the status quo and who are future-focused. They are looking for people who are looking to solve global problems rather than being solely focused on margins,” she says.
This offers a perhaps friendlier alternative to simply starting a company and seeking funding for a company from VCs who have not traditionally been attuned to femtech and who continue to commit a relatively small percentage of their investment budgets to female founders.
Clear Goals
On the business side, Draycott has clear goals, namely to build her network and to get advice on turning ideas into product as the platform is developed.
But does any of this do anything to attract more alumni to entrepreneurship, or is an incubator of this nature simply providing a service to those who already have an interest in running a business?
Well, it is part of a bigger picture. King’s College runs its own Entrepreneurship Lab (E-Lab), with workshops, talks and even an essay writing competition to whet the interest of students. This is part of a bigger operation aimed at supporting startups within Cambridge University. For instance, one of the flagship initiatives – Founders at Cambridge University – is charged with providing support for companies emerging from the city and its colleges. Less tangibly, incubators of this kind arguably make it easier for those with limited experience to put a toe in the water, gain skills and make contacts rapidly within a familiar environment.
The thing around an incubator, it can actually save time,” says Draycott. “A four-week programme can help you build faster and with confidence. Surrounded by the other people in the cohort feels less lonely.”