Esme Caulfield, September 19, 2018 2 min read
Rising Stars is the UK’s newest and most exciting competition for innovative, early-stage tech startups, with a prize package designed to send your business into the stratosphere.
We’re scouring the country looking for the UK’s most ambitious tech startups to join Tech Nation’s first ever Rising Stars cohort. Whether you’re in St Ives or Inverness, Bangor (Wales) or Bangor (Northern Ireland) we’re looking for stellar startups with the passion, proposition and ambition.
Need more convincing? Let this lot persuade you. Thanks to Mel Bound (ThisMumRuns, Bristol), Amman Ahmed (Music for Pets, Manchester), Lizzie Brough (Kindaba, Edinburgh), Rich Wooley (Paperclip.co, Cardiff), Kiran Bhagotra (ProtectBox, Belfast), and Joel Blake (Cultiv8 Solutions, Birmingham) for lending a hand 📺🌟.
The competition will result in three winners in each of 11 regions of the UK; Greater London, Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales, South West, South East, East of England, Midlands, North East, North West, Yorkshire & Humber.
11 regional judging teams will review all applications, and the 33 shortlisted companies will progress the semi-final. Held in mid-January, during the semi-final all participants will receive pitch training and expert advice, with a final judges’ startup selection progressing to the Grand Final.
The programme is open to any 1-3 year old UK-based digital tech company, with at least one active client or product, and the ambition to grow and scale. Your company will be at seed to pre-Series A funding stage, or if bootstrapped, will have no more than £1.5m annual revenues.
We’re looking for you to submit a video pitch of your startup. Never done a video pitch before? Not to worry, we’ve got a few tips that might help. Props to our lovely friends What Marketing for the slick, and (deliberately) not so slick vid, and Allied London and Beastro for the shoot locations 😘
Rising Stars is a brand new early-stage programme from Tech Nation, but is also an evolution of the successful Tech North competition Northern Stars. Over the last three years Northern Stars produced such incredible winners as LivingLens, Peak and Dream Agility, with a number of winners and finalists having since gone on to take part in other Tech Nation growth programmes; most recently Airtime Rewards joined our first ever sector-specific growth programme, for bridge-stage fintech startups. Rising Stars will be taking all the best things from our programme based in the North of England, and rolling it out bigger, better and brighter, for the whole of the UK.
Much like Northern Stars, the new competition will culminate with a glitzy final, filled with fellow startups, investors, corporates and friends. The national finalists will pitch to become part of our first cohort of Rising Stars, and our semi-finalists will have the opportunity to exhibit at the event. The all-important prizes will include 1-2-1 mentoring with high profile mentors, investor introductions and opportunities, bootcamp training, pitch training, a press campaign, and a contribution towards a conference of your choice.
Entries are now open for the 2018 competition – don’t miss this opportunity to connect your startup with mentors, investors and influencers, and significantly raise the profile of your business. Applications close on 4th November.
