Thanks for your support. I've actually worked to get this off the ground - unpaid - for the last two years but it's a ten year play for us.
Many more Team Advisors to come... just ran out of time in updating the site I'm afraid.
Many more Team Advisors to come... just ran out of time in updating the site I'm afraid.
Do any of the alumni have a web-presence? Perhaps you could either link to their websites; or you could host small "about" pages for them?
You're going to get people thinking that this is just another quango product - something created to use a budget from some government organisation - so how could you address those concerns? How can you show that you're different?
I guess I understand the concern that I'm just a quango/think tank guy but most of the useful stuff I've learned was as co-founder and CEO of School of Everything (www.schoolofeverything.com). We built a product, were finalists in the first round of Seedcamp, raised seed investment from angels including Esther Dyson and have a whole load of happy customers. We never became Google but the site does ok. I'm the first to admit I made lots of mistakes along the way which I hope I can help our teams avoid making again.
Would definitely welcome advice on how to show we're different.
So if you consider advice and mentoring a major part of the investment into the startups you fund in exchange for a lower cash valuation, you'll have to be very convincing that it really will add that much value.