The Great Accelerator from the Business Hot House

Join Sussex Innovation for this event, offering a comprehensive toolkit for start-up founders to refine their business model. The Great Accelerator is a programme of intensive training, held across two days for growing businesses in the South East.

If you’re a fast-growing start-up based in or around Gatwick, Chichester, Brighton & Hove, Worthing or Haywards Heath, Sussex Innovation’s expert team are coming to town with a packed two days of workshops to help jumpstart your business. Sign up now to reserve your free place at the Business Hot House Great Accelerator.

Our specialist innovation consultants will deliver a series of sessions including:

DAY 1

Stress-Testing Your Business Model

Interrogate the key building blocks of your business with the Business Model Canvas, a one-page plan to help you rapidly road test new concepts or explore necessary changes to an established model. This session will be delivered by Maria Bedoya, Sussex Innovation’s Research and Insight Coordinator, Maria is experienced in designing and developing innovation and impact projects.

Pitching Your Business

Learn how to tell your story clearly and effectively, engaging investors, partners, customers, employees and media with your values, vision and mission through a well-chosen narrative. Led by Joseph Bradfield, a content and communications expert with experience at one of the country’s biggest PR agencies.

Reboot Your Sales and Marketing

Explore tactics to reach and convert your customers on a small business budget, and get your marketing department focusing on the activities that deliver the best return on investment. Delivered by Head of Centres, Community and Outreach Claire Pasquill, Claire uses her experience of using lean marketing and sales techniques in her own company to advise founders on the fastest way they can acquire customers and develop their pipeline.

Building and Leading Your Team

Find the right plan to scale your business successfully by understanding the key concepts in recruitment and management, and how they help keep your employees motivated and aligned behind the same ambitious plans. With Nigel Lambe, Sussex Innovation’s CEO and a veteran of leadership teams ranging from Small Batch Coffee to PepsiCo.

DAY 2

Making Ideas Happen

Future-proof your business by learning how to encourage a creative mindset and realise successful ideas from within. An interactive and creative ideation session with Maria Bedoya.

Transitioning to Net Zero

Get prepared for the sustainability challenges of the next decade, with a session focused on the incoming regulation that will help UK businesses target net zero carbon emissions, and the steps you can take now to get ahead of the curve. With Steve Creed, Co-founder of Circular Brighton and Hove, Steve is a specialist coach in sustainability, waste management and climate change.

Useful Resources for Your Business

Find out about business support, resources and collaboration opportunities available locally, including the RISE programme from the universities of Sussex and Brighton, the British Library Business and IP Centre and Innovate UK Edge.

Funding Options

Learn all about the different methods to fund your business, from seed investment to grants and loans. Which is the best approach for you, and how can you prepare for the best chance of success? Led by Neema Amin, Sussex Innovation Business Coach specialising in Investor Readiness.

What’s Next?

After two days of workshops, what’s next for your business? In this wrap-up session facilitated by Nigel Lambe, we’ll discuss your action plans as a group and learn how to prioritise for success.

If you can’t make the dates of this event but would like to find out more about how Sussex Innovation can support the growth of your business, complete this enquiry form and a member of the team will get in touch.

The Business Hot House is funded by the European Regional Development Fund as part of the European Structural and Investment Funds Growth Programme 2014-2020. The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (and in London the intermediate body Greater London Authority) is the Managing Authority for European Regional Development Fund.

Established by the European Union, the European Regional Development Fund helps local areas stimulate their economic development by investing in projects which will support innovation, businesses, create jobs and local community regenerations. For more information visit https://www.gov.uk/european-growth-funding.

In order to be eligible to attend this event fully funded ,you must be established as one of the following company structures:

• Registered Soletrader
• Registered Limited Company
• General Partnership
• Limited Liability Partnership
• Community Interest Company
• Registered Charity