An incubator for entrepreneurs

Since launch in July 2009 The Peter Cullum Centre for Entrepreneurship has worked with nearly 200 nascent and established entrepreneurs and business owners across the Cass network to help them develop and realise their business vision.

Through our unique annual New Venture Creation Programme we blend the knowledge and resources of a premium Business School with the skills and networks of successful entrepreneurs, financiers and business leaders, and focus them over 5 days on the needs of emerging businesses. The participants so far have ranged from Cass EMBA students through to a nominee from The Princes Trust and the annual winners of a national competition run by The Federation of Small Businesses.

For more established businesses, often with under-developed potential, we have developed an innovative agreement with Your Business Your Future (YBYF) for delivery of their new Better Business Programme exclusively in conjunction with Cass. This Programme is an evolution of the highly acclaimed Business Growth Programme which Gerard Burke (the founder of YBYF) ran at Cranfield for over 600 owner managers including notable success stories like Tristram Mayhew of GoApe. Gerard is now a Senior Visiting Fellow at Cass and many of his past participants such as Tristram have become active supporters and contributors to the new Better Business programme.

In The Centre itself we have physically incubated new businesses ranging from reputation analysis firm Alva (which is now based in its own offices in Hatton Garden) through to Inscribe; a business run by Cass undergraduates supplying notebooks to University students across the UK. Finally, for the best of the best, we have so far committed over £1m of early stage capital from the Cass Entrepreneurship Fund to 5 exciting new businesses (including Alva) in sectors spanning digital media through Cloud Computing to legal services.

The team in The Centre love meeting entrepreneurs and are ambitious to use the Cass Entrepreneurship Fund to put Cass quite literally inside many more high potential businesses from across the Cass network. You can find out more about what we do at www.cass.city.ac.uk/pcce.

The last word should perhaps go to Izindi Visagie, a recent MBA graduate, who is currently working with us in The Centre….

“During the course of my full time MBA at Cass I became interested in pursuing a career in Venture Capital and decided to switch from my previous career as a solicitor. As a step to further these aspirations I started an Internship at The Centre in July. Working closely with the investment team at the Cass Entrepreneurship Fund has given me excellent exposure to sourcing, evaluation, completion, and monitoring of venture capital deals and has fuelled my own enthusiasm to assist entrepreneurs and their businesses. I have found The Centre for Entrepreneurship to be a fantastic resource for Cass alumni in that it provides advice and assistance for all Cass entrepreneurs and funding for the most promising businesses.”

Nick Badman, Chair.

Centre for entrepreneurship