Entrepreneurship Forum 2024

The second Reuben College Entrepreneurship Forum took place at Reuben College on Friday 6 September 2024. The keynote lecture was delivered by Ed Bussey, who has been the Chief Executive of Oxford Science Enterprises (OSE) since September 2023. Ed is a serial entrepreneur, having launched, scaled and successfully exited three venture-backed businesses during his career.

 

Between 80 and 100 graduate students from across the whole University attended the Forum, including 5 invited teams for a pitching competition after the keynote lecture, with a first prize of £20k and a second prize of £10k. These teams will have been pre-selected from the Business School’s Oxford Venture Builder (OVB) competition and from the Student Entrepreneurs’ Programme (StEP) of Oxford University Innovation (OUI).

 

The Forum started with opening talks from Dr Mairi Gibbs, the CEO of OUI and Dr Sanne de Jongh, Life Sciences Partner at OSE, who explained how they help to support student entrepreneurship. We then heard from CEOs who started their companies as Oxford students and went  further afield during the afternoon session, before the keynote lecture and pitching competition.

The full round-up of the event can be viewed here.

 

The programme was as follows:

Session 1

  1. 9.30: Lionel Tarassenko (President, Reuben College) - Welcome 
  2. 9.40: Mairi Gibbs (CEO, Oxford University Innovation)
  3. 10.05: Charlie Curtis (Said Business School): 'Climate tech entrepreneurship'

10.30: Coffee break

Session 2 

  1. 11.00: Phelim Bradley (CEO & Co-founder, Prolific)
  2. 11.25: Husayn Kassai (Founder, Onfido, now at quench.ai): 'From undergrad to the largest UK tech exit of the past 2 years, the Onfido story'
  3. 11.50: George Savage (Silicon Valley): 'Deep technologies for health'

12.15 Lunch in Hall

Session 3 

  1. 13.00: Sanne de Jongh (Partner, Oxford Science Enterprises): 'Oxford Science Enterprises: Building companies to solve the world’s greatest challenges'
  2. 13.40: Ed Bussey (CEO, Oxford Science Enterprises):  'From university start-up to exit - lessons learned' (keynote talk, followed by Q&A session)

14.30: Tea break

Session 4 (Pitching competition)

The final session started at 15:00 and will feature the pitching competition, with each team of pre-selected students pitching their start-up ideas to the judging panel for 10 minutes. They had 10 minutes of questions from a Panel chaired by Baroness (Nicola) Blackwood, Chair of the OUI Board. Other members of the Panel were George Savage, Sanne de Jongh and Vishal Gulati.

17:00: Drinks and canapes

Session 5

Announcement at 17:30 of the winners of the pitching competition, who will receive a prize of £20k (with the runners-up awarded a prize of £10k).