On Wednesday 9 March, we once again explored the entrepreneurial ecosystem for start-ups and heard inspirational stories from entrepreneurs, all in one day - minus the iconic double-decker bus!
Over 1000 students from 30 universities across the world joined this year’s virtual Venture Crawl. Despite our students usually boarding buses and travelling across the London Entrepreneurial Eco-System together, this year they boarded the Venture Crawl virtual platform again to explore a huge content bank. The platform encapsulated an interactive map with over 100 fantastic resources for students and recent graduates to uncover – from pre-recorded workshops and panels to successful entrepreneurs sharing their stories and providing invaluable insight to budding entrepreneurs. Also, a huge 15 live events took place throughout the day, which focused on all aspects of entrepreneurship – from delving into sustainability to learning how to pitch.
This was not your average online event – the day started with a welcome and fantastic keynote from Sharmadean Reid MBE, the founder of The Stack World.
At lunchtime, we joined the other universities in a huge networking session, where our students could communicate with other like-minded students and graduates around the world. It was great to see so many engaged students networking, discovering and sharing their passion for all things entrepreneurial.
After lunch, Brunel University London held a live workshop covering ‘Digital skills and tools for entrepreneurship and the modern workplace’ which was hosted by Kay Kukoyi CSM FITOL. Kay is a software delivery specialist, tech startup mentor, speaker, lecturer, and the author of 5 books for SMEs and entrepreneurs, including an Amazon international bestseller!
Between live events and exploring the interactive map of content, we provided Brunel attendees with regular updates and kept in touch through an optional group chat, creating a space where our budding entrepreneurs could meet, talk about content they had unlocked and share recommendations throughout the event. This is where we could create a real buzz for the final live event of the day.
To round off the event, the famous London Venture Crawl Pitching Competition took place. All London based universities taking part in Venture Crawl have the option to put forward a student representative to pitch their business idea to be crowned Venture Crawl Pitching Champion of 2022. This year, recent graduate and co-founder of Zeal - Joshua King represented us at the inter-university pitch off.