10 Years of WE Innovate
In 2014, Imperial launched the first women’s entrepreneurship competition at a UK university with one clear objective: to address the stark inequalities faced by female founders. Ten years on, the programme has supported over 500 women who have gone on to raise more than £37.5 million for their ventures.
WE Innovate, formerly known as Althea, welcomed its first cohort of 67 women ten years ago. Established thanks to the financial support of Alexsis De Raadt St James’s Althea Foundation, its main aim was to address the gap in financial, human and social capital between men and women founders. “I wanted women studying at Imperial to have unfettered access to tools, mentors and funding to quickly test their innovative ideas; a place where they could dream, build, fail and start again without judgment,” explains Alexsis. A decade later, the programme’s format has evolved but its core mission remains the same.
After 25 female-led teams are selected, the WE Innovate programme runs over six months, delivering masterclasses from experts on topics like customer discovery, funding and leadership. It culminates in a pitch final showcasing five teams who are awarded part of a £30,000 prize fund.
There has been a significant increase in women participating in Imperial’s entrepreneurship activities, with over 500 females supported, 60 startups incorporated and more than £37.5 million in funding raised as a direct result of the WE Innovate programme. Participants who have not continued with their venture have taken the enhanced leadership and entrepreneurial skills they developed in the programme into the workforce.
The next decade
There’s still work to do to progress women’s entrepreneurship and WE Innovate has big plans to make it happen. In the next year, the programme is focusing on leadership and mental resilience, supporting founders to get to know themselves more deeply and be better equipped for the physical and emotional labour of entrepreneurship.
There are also ambitious plans to support women beyond Imperial. Alexsis sees huge potential for WE Innovate to expand its support nationally and replicate and scale the programme’s success: “It’s my hope that WE Innovate will spread to other UK universities and have the same success it’s had at Imperial.”
For the first time in five years, WE Innovate is opening its doors to new sponsors keen to contribute to making the next decade as impactful as the first.
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