Start-ups get the chance to advance their businesses following the return of the Accelerator Programme.
The Accelerator Programme offers GeoTech and PropTech start-ups the opportunity to mentoring, a grant of £10,000 for six months, with the opportunity for another £10,000 afterwards and 12 month’s free desk space at the Geovation hub in Clerkenwell, London.
Programme members are given access to technical expertise, Ordnance Survey and HM Land Registry data, and open data sources. They also receive one-to-one sessions and workshops covering finance, fundraising, business planning, legal and intellectual property, company law, and coaching on presentations and pitching.
Backed by Ordnance Survey (OS) and HM Land Registry, the Accelerator Programme has produced a steady pipeline of success since its introduction in 2015. 84 start-ups have gone through the programme, creating more than 200 jobs and raising £23.3 million in investment funding.
Alex Wrottesley, Head of Geovation, said:
We want to hear from any new start-ups, entrepreneurs and developers looking to solve customer problems with location data, or creating new digital solutions in the land and property sector. Geovation offers a unique combination of funding, expertise, relationships and resources and the teams on our Programme find themselves at the heart of our vibrant GeoTech and PropTech community.
As well as financial assistance, mentoring and workshops, we are unique in providing access to a dedicated software development team in house, who work closely with our cohort companies to run lean experiments and build and release their first products.
All of this combines to help these emerging start-ups break through.
Names to pass through the hub’s doors include property licensing data company Get Rentr, sexual harassment mapping app creators Safe In the City, and pay-as-you-fly commercial drone insurers Flock (which has gone on to raise nearly £3 million in investment funding).
Pae Natwilai, founder of drone software company Trik, was accepted on the programme last year. Her company automatically turns drone photo feeds into interactive 3D models for the structural inspections of buildings. She said:
Through Geovation we have grown our team significantly and managed to secure pre-seed investment from two amazing investors, Alex Chesterman the founder of Zoopla and Simon Franks, founder of Lovefilm.
Next for us is scaling up the system and marketing it globally.
We are currently finalising a deal with a couple of large engineering enterprises both in the UK and internationally.
For more information on how to apply to the Geovation Accelerator Programme, visit www.geovation.uk/programme or email programme@geovation.
Image: Geovation hub