If you’re a tech entrepreneur, be it aspiring, scaling or late stage, we have a programme for you. See here...
Supporting climate tech founders
Empowering underrepresented tech founders
Growing late-stage ventures, to IPO and beyond
Equipping scaleups post series A
Pitch competition for early-stage startups
Championing disabled founders and entrepreneurs innovating around disability
Work, Live, Thrive in the UK
Supporting global talent to work live and thrive in UK tech through our various support services
Discover the steps to apply and begin your journey
Gain access to a global talent alumni network to support your journey
Showcasing success stories from our Global Talent Visa Ambassadors
Understand the standards applicants need to meet to be considered for a successful endorsement
Celebrating 10 years of global talent in UK tech
One in three disabled people in the UK see entrepreneurship as a career path that’s inaccessible to them. Founders in our Creo programme are working to change that.
Jessica Lloyd used to watch as concert tickets would sell out while she waited for venues to respond to her accessibility inquiries. As a wheelchair user, she’d grown accustomed to failed booking attempts and feeling that the entertainment world wasn’t built for people with physical disabilities. But where others saw an unchangeable reality, Jessica saw an opportunity.
She founded Able2Book, an ecommerce platform that streamlines the booking process for disabled people and their carers. “The disabled community have enough trouble navigating the world, because it’s not built for them,” she explains. “Part of the reason I started Able2Book was to remove one of those barriers and make life a little bit easier and more enjoyable.”
One in four founders in the UK identify as disabled or neurodiverse, yet are 400x less likely to receive VC funding than their non-disabled counterparts. Our report, Inclusive Innovation, explores how we can unlock entrepreneurship opportunities for entrepreneurs with disabilities in the UK, exploring perceptions of entrepreneurship, the barriers, and the potential solutions.
It also showcases the founders in Creo, the first springboard platform for disabled founders and entrepreneurs innovating around disability, forged in partnership with Motability Operations, which connects founders and provides them with the knowledge and resources to scale.
According to our research, people with disabilities in the UK are overwhelmingly positive about the opportunities entrepreneurship can offer. However, one in three disabled people see entrepreneurship as a career path that’s inaccessible to them.
Key barriers cited include physical accessibility issues, discrimination or bias, and insufficient support systems. Financial challenges were also a concern given that 60% of disabled founders receive no support when starting their business, and face average additional living costs of £570 every month.
Generally, there is a lack of appropriate support initiatives for disabled entrepreneurs in the UK, leading to unfair and discriminatory conditions that shut people with disabilities off from business ownership.
Chris Lynch, founder of Diverse Made Media, encountered these obstacles firsthand. As a wheelchair user working in TV and film, he noticed a stark absence of minority groups behind the camera. His response was to develop Caerus, a prototype product that allows those with mobility disabilities to operate cameras steadily without needing to balance their equipment and chair.
“My ultimate goal,” he says, “is to be integrated into a major company and work on big productions while training cohorts of disabled creatives looking to enter the industry.”
Removing the barriers for entrepreneurs with disabilities could unlock an additional £230 billion for the UK economy.
According to our research, we need a widespread improvement of existing platforms and the availability of resources to create a more accessible and equitable entrepreneurial environment in the UK.
53% of the people we surveyed said that access to funding would make them more likely to explore entrepreneurship, and 42% said that increased mentorship and representation would support their entrepreneurial ambitions.
The benefits of having access to resources and a support ecosystem can be seen in businesses like WeWalk. Founded by Gökhan Meriçliler and Kürşat Ceylan, WeWalk is leveraging AI to build revolutionary mobility tools for visually impaired people, driven by lived experiences.
With support from funded partnerships with Imperial College and the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB), their Smart Cane and WeASSIST visual interpretation service has reached users in over 60 countries, with the potential to benefit 253 million people worldwide by 2050.
Through the Creo programme, founders are able to have honest conversations, network, gain access to mentorship and investment opportunities, participate in expert-led workshops, and receive peer-to-peer support.
To apply for the programme, your company should be a pre-Seed to pre-Series A tech startup based in the UK, with at least one founder who self-identifies as disabled or neurodiverse, or the company must be innovating around disability or neurodiversity.
How can unlock opportunities for entrepreneurs with disabilities? Based on our research and conversations with our first cohort of Creo programme founders, we set out five key recommendations for policymakers and industry leaders in our Inclusive Innovation report.
Download our Inclusive Innovation report to uncover our research findings and learn more about the disabled entrepreneurs reshaping UK tech.
Main Image: (From left to right) Ed Curwen (Motability Operations), Alex Papanikolaou (Freedom One Life), Zareen Ali (Cogs AI), and Fiona Jarvis (Blue Badge Style) at the Creo launch in 2024.
