Entrepreneurs Monthly Meet-up festive special with Liverpool based deep tech founders
Our festive Entrepreneurs Monthly Meet-up held in collaboration with Knowledge Quarter Liverpool (KQ Liverpool), a world-leading innovation district and the innovation and venture capital agency LYVA Labs focused on entrepreneurship in the deep tech industry - a concept referring to start-ups with business models based on high tech engineering innovation or significant scientific advances.
The Brett Centre for Entrepreneurship was delighted to welcome two local entrepreneurs, founder of gigmate, Rob March, and OCUWELL CEO and co-founder, Rania Maklad, who spoke about their experiences of operating in the deep tech industry which provided Liverpool based students, graduates and local entrepreneurs with the chance to learn more and ask questions about the opportunities and challenges in this sector.
Rob March explained how he developed the idea for gigmate during the Covid lockdown when live events were sorely missed, both personally and professionally. He recognised the issues of loneliness and lack of meaningful connections exacerbated by the pandemic, and founded gigmate in 2022 to foster community and bring people together through a shared love of live music.
Based in the North West, gigmate creates online communities where members can connect over mutual music tastes and find opportunities to attend gigs together in real life. With 9 million Britons reporting frequent feelings of loneliness and 40% of 16-24 year-olds often feeling lonely, gigmate aims to combat isolation and improve wellbeing by facilitating supportive connections through live events.
Rania introduced the audience to the concept behind OCUWELL, a spin-out of the University of Liverpool. With corneal disorders affecting 1% of the world's population, topography devices are essential for their management but availability is often limited due to high cost, and bulkiness leading to late diagnosis and long-term suffering for patients. OCUWELL was established to develop a more affordable, portable scanning unit operated wirelessly by smartphone.
Together Rob and Rania also spoke about how their companies have benefited from the LYVA Labs Incubator and Accelerator programmes, which provides early-stage businesses with a tailored support programme, including the opportunity to secure grant funding and investment.
Local secondary pupils from King’s Leadership Academy Hawthornes also had the opportunity to pitch for start-up funding as part of the Brett Centre for Entrepreneurship's Enterprise Education in Secondary Schools programme. The programme gives young people interested in entrepreneurship the opportunity to participate in activities to help them on their journey to set up their own businesses.
School pupils were also able to ask panel members detailed questions on their businesses which demonstrated an early appreciation of the challenges and opportunities of business ownership. The pupils did themselves and their school proud as they sparked interest from the speakers and the audience.
Commentating on the night, Yasmin Hagan, Careers Leader at King's Leadership Academy Hawthornes said ‘It was brilliant the way the school pupils were so involved, with excellent presentations and listening carefully to feedback as well as providing really awesome answers to the questions from the panel. They were all super brave and inspiring to others.’
Following the presentations and pitches, the audience had the opportunity to enjoy lots of informal networking with FREE food and refreshments.