Celebrating six years of the Ad:Venture programme

What is Ad:Venture?

Ad:Venture is a European-funded programme with over 10 partners across the Leeds City Region designed to help ambitious early-stage businesses grow and create jobs. At Leeds Beckett our activity was led by academics from the Business School working with Post Award Team.

Launched in 2017 we now have over 6 years of delivery under our belt. In that time we have seen over 700 businesses come through our doors and we have provided over 7000 hours of support in total. Now that our involvement in the programme is coming to a close we can pause for a moment and reflect on the journey…..or should that be *adventure*…...  In the early days of the programme we piloted different workshops and events right across the region (often working with our University Businesses Centres). Building on these foundations we launched Accelerate in 2019.

Accelerate – masterclasses and mentoring with ‘real world’ insight

Accelerate is a six-month programme of support (combining both masterclasses and one-to-one mentoring) which brings together a cohort of 10 businesses. The focus is on providing participants with practical skills and knowledge which they can apply to their business and then supporting them to achieve their goals. Subjects covered include developing your business model, connecting with customers, marketing and sales fundamentals and scaling up.

We have now delivered 12 cohorts of Accelerate. The majority of support was delivered by a small team of committed Business School academics: David Andrews, Stephanie Dawson, Mark Copsey and Paul Rhodes - whose combined commercial expertise and ‘real world’ insight was a tangible benefit to the programme.

“Insight into business models and strategies was extremely useful, it allowed me to rethink the original business proposal. It's one of those "you don't know what you don't know" until someone tells you, situations..” Amie Hayes, Owner, Equip Your Mind.

Putting the business at the heart of what we do

Looking back I believe that the key factor in our success has been our adaptability – we have always been responsive to both individual business needs and also changing external circumstances. We genuinely put the business at the heart of everything we do, from the initial diagnostic through to ongoing mentoring and coaching.

It is easy to underestimate how challenging and lonely it can be when starting a business - our role wasn’t simply to advise on the technical aspects like business plans or funding applications – often it was to provide encouragement, motivation and even sometimes a shoulder to cry on.

Adapting through Covid – from face-to-face to online to hybrid delivery

All business support programmes expect to evolve to changing circumstances but few of us could have predicted the cataclysmic change brought about by first Brexit, then Covid. The latter meant tearing up our project plan and moving all of our existing delivery online.

It is easy to forget those early days of lockdown when we sat in our spare rooms wondering how on earth we could translate four full days of interactive face-to-face learning into 2 hour online sessions.

It was a time when the businesses themselves desperately needed our help and I am proud to say that we embraced the new technology and we were back up and running in a matter of weeks.

We have since adapted the programme yet again and we now deliver Accelerate in a hybrid way – providing a return to face-to-face elements whilst retaining the flexibility of online learning – it was so nice to be back in a room pouring over a Business Model Canvas with post-it notes and seeing how the businesses connected with each other.

“Accelerate was great for helping us learn new skills from experts and while on the course we met people we have gone on to collaborate with, and that’s what the programme does; it helps you build networks across Leeds and the city region.”  Sam Taylor, owner, Madeby Studio. Read  the Madeby Studio case study here.

Opening doors to our wider University support

The programme has been important for the wider University in many ways. It is a great example of how Leeds Beckett fulfils its mission of being an anchor institution - contributing to regional economies by supporting entrepreneurs and creating jobs - leading to further opportunities for knowledge-transfer between academia and business.

Evidence of its impact was instrumental in helping the Business School achieve Small Business Charter accreditation, which in turn led directly to our participation Help to Grow: Management programme which is now on its sixth cohort.

We have been able to facilitate student consultancy projects and have been delighted to support our own graduates to achieve business success - including Joel Cortez from Intellistart. We have been able to develop lasting relationships with our alumni and have seen them engage with other University programmes both as participants (in #WECAN) and expert speakers and even mentors.

"Having come into the world of business without any formal training, I wanted to get to grips better with the non-musical side of the business. I found the Accelerate programme to be incredibly helpful in mapping out the structure of the company, properly organising my ideas, and understanding the strategies needed for success." Joe Wadsworth, LBU graduate and owner - The Online Recording Studio. Read Joe's case study here.

What’s next?

From a personal point of view, Accelerate was the first ‘big’ project I managed within the Leeds Beckett Post Award team. At times it was challenging; working with EU funding regulations and many partners… but it has enabled me to work with many fantastic colleagues across the University.

I have found it really inspiring to work with start-ups who come to us with little more than an embryonic idea and so rewarding to see the impact we can have in helping that idea to form and grow. However….six years on and I am more certain than ever that nothing could persuade me to start my own business!

And so what about the future?..... Brexit and the end of ERDF funding have resulted in the current iteration of the programme coming to a close. However Leeds Beckett’s commitment to working with early-stage businesses isn’t going anywhere.  Businesses still want to work with us and we are continuing to design new projects to engage them with our Knowledge Exchange Hub – a new, physical business-centred space located in the Rose Bowl – at the centre of this activity.

Ad:Venture in numbers

• 712 Businesses engaged
• 7004 Hours of support delivered
• 247 Received a minimum of 12 hours support
• 201 Diagnostics undertaken
• 100 Masterclasses delivered (includes face to face and online)
• 716 Masterclasses attendees (includes face to face and online)