Start-up Resilience programme launches to support female and BAME founders during Covid-19

The new scheme wants to ensure diverse founders are still standing once things are back to normal 
Mimi Thian / Unsplash
Amelia Heathman23 April 2020

London’s start-ups are struggling.

Many are pausing fundraising rounds as a result of the coronavirus pandemic and the UK government’s business loans programme has been criticised for not going far enough.

For instance, the Future Fund is for companies which have raised over £250,000 in equity funding, which according to Beahurst only applies to around 27 per cent of UK tech companies. On top of that, companies will have to pay double what they borrow, plus interest, which will be off-putting to bootstrapped companies.

The city’s start-up network is rallying to provide alternatives to growing companies. Start-up scheme Capital Enterprise has launched a new Startup Resilience programme to support diverse founders, to ensure they won’t be left behind during the pandemic.

Supported by J.P Morgan and run in partnership with OneTech and Mindful Team, the programme isn’t offering financial support, instead it will provide online support, accountability groups, and access to coaches so founders can navigate this difficult time.

In particular, priority will go to start-ups with less than five employees, women founders and entrepreneurs of colour, as well as founders with limited access to social capital, such as they are first-generation university students or come from low-income boroughs. OneTech was set up back in 2018 to help 200 female and BAME-led start-ups grow and scale in London, a target it has already exceeded, so the emphasis here is on ensuring these companies can weather the crisis.

Speaking about the new programme, CEO of Capital Enterprise John Spindler, said: “Our simple advice to start-ups suffering the coronavirus crisis is to survive. Do anything you can to preserve your cash, keep your customers and maintain staff morale and effectiveness so that when the UK returns to some form of normality our start-ups will still be around.

“This is why we have developed, and now launched alongside our partners, a Startup Resilience programme to help tech start-ups individually and collectively to develop the best solution and maybe find an opportunity to grow stronger.”

During the programme, founders will have access to weekly webinars covering topics such as government support, cash flow management, and found health and wellbeing. There’s a new Slack group for community support and updates, access to wellness and resilience coaches via Mindful Team, and access to resident experts and founders including Check Warner of Ada Ventures and Diversity VC, investor and serial entrepreneur Andy Davis, and Spindler.

“Many of these founders are sadly not eligible for the government-backed support programmes that are targeted at more established, better-networked founders who in most cases have already raised money from VCs. It’s more important than ever that programmes like this exist to level the playing field for diverse founders when many of them are facing the biggest economic shock of a generation that will disproportionately impact their businesses more than those of their peers,” said Warner.

Another tenet of the scheme is that start-ups will need to demonstrate that they cannot access similar support elsewhere.

“Diverse founders faced huge hurdles before and even greater hurdles now and so an initiative that prioritises underrepresented groups is key,” said Mindful Team co-founder and former head of delivery for Capital Enterprise, Emma Obanye. “We’re super proud to support this initiative through the use of our technology.”

Listen to The Leader: Coronavirus Daily podcast

For more information and how to apply, visit the Capital Enterprise’s Startup Resilience page.

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