Cohort Orientation Workshop

The programme kicks off with an orientation workshop with two clear aims: i) to ensure that you and your fellow cohort members know each other and can function effectively as an Action Learning Set, and ii) to ensure that you know how to access all components of the programme and take full advantage of everything that is available.

This is a full-day event, and will be scheduled according to the availability of you and your cohort members. You'll find out all about the other cohort members' ideas, ambitions and start-up journeys. And based on your ECHO profiles, you'll be able to easily see whose strengths and development areas best complement and reinforce your own as you go forward together.

You will also have the opportunity to meet and ask questions of members of the programme delivery team, and learn how to use the resources you'll need throughout the programme, such as our online Business Model Canvas and financial planning template.

1-2-1 Action Planning

While you will not be on your own during the programme, you will be working independently to validate your own business idea. One of the most challenging aspects of being your own boss is managing your own progress and performance. To assist you with this, you will have access to a dedicated Start-up Advisor.

The first time you meet them, they'll undertake a diagnosis of where you are now and where you are trying to get to, to identify your goals and priorities. They'll help you to produce an action plan that will include both independent research and development tasks and timely access to the programme resources. They'll also agree a check-in date with you reflect on what you've discovered, identify new priorities and agree a new plan.

Through this, you will be able to ensure your actions lead you effectively towards the validation of your business case for start-up.

Online BMC Platform

All participants will be issued with an exclusive licence to use SimVenture Validate. This is an online Business Model Canvas, but with some extremely helpful self-access features. Firstly, it will guide you through each block of the BMC, asking you the questions which will ensure you've caputured all the key information. Once you've done this, the system will challenge you to identify the assumptions you've made that may put your business case at risk if they are not validated.

Once you've identified these, the system will help you to design the tests you need to conduct to validate or invalidate your assumptions. Each time you run a test, you can update your canvas with the results, and gradually eliminate the associated risks.

Finally, you can export your canvas as an online slide deck that you can share easily with others - customers, suppliers, business partners, investors, etc - for example as part of a pitch event. (Hint: you'll want this ready for when you pitch at the end of the programme!)

Action Learning

To ensure that you get the most our of your cohort membership, you'll be expected to meet together on a regular basis to provide peer support. During the Activation Workshop you'll be introduced to the basic principles of Action Learning, but this is where they will really start to make sense and make a difference.

The power of this approach is that it helps you to identify what's at the heart of the issues and obstacles that you'll inevitably be encountering on your journey, to identify practical steps and solutions that you can take to address them, and to really own these. This vastly increases the chances of you taking the approaches that work for you, regardless of whether they are right for other people.

Of course, everyone's contexts and challenges will be entirely different, but you'd be amazed how much you can help people with things that you don't have personal experience of, just by learning to ask the right questions.

Workshops

While the vast majority of your business case can be explored via the Business Model Canvas, we will run additional activities to support your thinking around this. The most common ones are:

• Environmental Analysis: Your business model will not exist in a vacuum; a wide range of factors will have an influence on the validation of your business case and potential for success, including political, environmental, social and technological (PEST).
• Risk Management: Your business model will have to survive the unexpected, as well as the expected. This requires you to anticipate things and plan your response in advance, taking steps to avoid, transfer or even let them happen and embrace them.

We will schedule these workshops and other according to sufficient common need and mutual availability.

Co-working Space

As a SUVP participant, you will have privileged access to the Work in Progress facilities on Alexandra Square. You will be able to use this as a co-working space, a creative studio, a meeting room or a video-conferencing facility. You can configure the space and furniture to suit your requirements and access the resources on hand, for example, prototyping kits and our Build A Better Business canvas library.

Networking Opportunities

We will also ensure that you are on our invitation list for other events that will be of relevance to you as a member of the wider Work in Progress community, for example networking events, panel discussions, masterclasses and celebration events.

Final Pitch

Once you've determined that you've validated your business case for start-up, you can apply for an opportunity to pitch to a panel in the hope of securing a Start-up Award of up to £500 from our partner, Santander Universities.

You'll get invaluable experience from pitching and invaluable feedback from the panel, regardless of whether you are successful. If you are, then the award will go a long way to covering your start-up costs when you are ready to take that leap!