Now's the time to apply for the Catalyst business accelerator programme

Early-stage science and technology companies are invited to apply for Southampton Science Park’s influential Catalyst business accelerator. (Pictured above: The Catalyst company founders.)

Catalyst delivers world-class mentoring and workshops to give early-stage innovation-led businesses the best chance of success. It has accelerated the progress of 83 companies, helping them to secure almost £50 million in investment and creating over 230 jobs signalling longer-term growth for the South Coast.

Why is this? The entrepreneurs that completed the 2022 programme explain that Catalysts’ success is a consequence of its quality environment and team.

Veopl creator, Janine Chard says: “The Science Park has created a perfect environment for a start-up company. Exposure to successful entrepreneurs from various industries and backgrounds has been an outstanding, priceless, and inspiring experience. From serial entrepreneurs to up-and-coming innovators, each brought a unique perspective and wealth of knowledge to the table. Learning from their experiences, I gained invaluable insights into what it takes to build a successful business.”

Josef Archer and Colin Christie of Acoustic Reality agree. They advise future participants to “make sure you attend all of the workshop sessions and get to know the rest of the companies on your Catalyst programme to build out your network of similar people going through the same thing”.

Tim Lloyd, founder of Helpful Digital also highlighted the benefit of working face-to-face in an innovation focused setting with likeminded people. “Catalyst helped me understand the real value in dedicated time and focus on developing the business. I can’t imagine I would get the same quality of support and guidance, for free, anywhere else. The balance of effort/reward has been just right,” he says.

Labl.it Solutions’ Sean Larsen, comments: “We really like being at the Science Park, so much so that we decided to stay beyond our Catalyst experience. Setting up our office here, we greatly appreciated how the management team understood our business needs.”  This sentiment is echoed by Sarah Eggleston of Fflow who says: “I love the commitment and involvement from both mentors and Science Park management.”

Data Revival founder, Sam Munday, comments on the quality of mentoring he received: “The coaching has been incredibly valuable – not just my own coach, but the whole team. I learnt a lot and progressed massively as a founder and as a person.” Highfield Diagnostics’ Ioannis Katis agrees, noting “the one-to-one mentoring meetings have been invaluable to help us refine our business plan and overall strategy”.

Ultimately, Catalyst is all about creating commercial growth. Nicola Davey, creator of the Quality Improvement Clinic says: “Catalyst has facilitated my growth significantly. It has helped me create a business plan that can unlock the potential of our business and allow us to capitalise on assets to deliver much higher returns. It’s been a significant mindset shift in the way I view and run my business.” While Studfast’s Eleanore Kelly sums it up. “The experience has been transformational,” she says.

Find out about Southampton Science Park’s range of free business support initiatives including informal breakfast and lunchtime learning events to one-to-one growth clinics, entrepreneur bootcamps and for those ready to scale, the globally renowned business incubator SETsquared.

Apply now for Catalyst at: science-park.co.uk/catalyst

www.science-park.co.uk