Despite a late switch from St Catz College to the Oxford Town Hall, there was a real buzz in the room at the start of the inaugural Reuben Entrepreneurship Forum, in the morning of Thursday 14th September. This was an exciting opportunity for 70 graduate students from across the University to learn from former students and well-known investors (including from California) for the next two days.
The day started with talks about seed funding from Oxford University Innovation (OUI) and Oxford Sciences Enterprise (OSE). Then the students heard about success stories from former students who had started companies whilst at Oxford, before moving into a session where international speakers shared their entrepreneurship expertise. Throughout the day, there was a steady stream of students wanting to ask questions of the speakers, both during the sessions and during the breaks, before Michael Moore, Director General from British Equity & Venture Capital Association (BVCA), brought proceedings to an end with a masterful keynote lecture.
The day finished with a dinner at the Pitt Rivers Museum, where enthusiasm (the students pitching the next day) mixed with expertise (the Day 1 speakers and the Reuben team).
The second day featured the long-awaited pitching competition, where 7 teams of pre-selected students pitched their start-up ideas to a judging panel consisting of a selection of speakers from the first day. The afternoon gave students the chance to network with experts in themed discussion clusters; in the areas of life sciences, fintech, climate tech, sustainability in FMCG, AI and health tech; before the winners of the pitching competition were announced.
Congratulations to the winning team OmegAlph (automated decommissioning of electric vehicle batteries) for their impressive pitch (they already have a customer!) and for winning the £40k prize money, and to PasanaQ (unlocking the financial potential of unbanked people in Latin America) for winning the runner-up prize of £20k.
