We’re delighted to announce that we’ve been shortlisted for a Hustle Award, for Workspace of the Year! Run by Startups magazine, the awards celebrate start-ups and those that work within the start-up ecosystem, to support, invest and collaborate. We’ve worked to support start-ups for many years and founded our first Future Business Centre nearly 10 years ago, as an innovation community in which we can help them to grow, scale and succeed. For more information, read our award entry below. We’ll be at the Hustle Awards ceremony on 21 July, to celebrate with some truly inspiring start-ups and organisations in the space (and fingers crossed we walk off with the bling!).
About Allia Future Business Centres
We’ve been at the forefront of impact innovation since 1999. In this time, we have helped hundreds of entrepreneurs, start-ups, small businesses and impact ventures to develop and grow, so that they can create employment opportunities and achieve greater positive impact.
We do this through running free business support programmes and innovative funded projects. Our programmes are delivered by our talented venture support team who work across Cambridge, Peterborough and East London. They are dedicated to help small businesses, start-ups and impact organisations build resilience, to thrive and grow, so that they can make a positive impact on their community, as well as addressing social and environmental global challenges.
Our centres are a support ecosystem for small businesses
Our three Future Business Centres in Cambridge and Peterborough offer flexible workspace and a vibrant community for small businesses who are creating change. We are delighted to say that the majority of our tenants are impact based and many started out on one of our business support programmes, moving to becoming a co-worker and then having an office in one of our centres as they have grown. Some have grown further and moved out of our centre to their own premises – and we see this as a success story, as we are proud to have played a part in their impact journey. As a not-for-profit, our centre services create funds that we plough back into our impact work, enabling the support programmes to be free, creating a support ecosystem for small businesses.
“Allia Future Business Centre has been with us through our journey from providing us initial mentorship through to moving in to the Cambridge centre. Not many organisations in the UK would be able to provide this level of support as your company scales up from 2-30″ Sachin Shende, KisanHub
We prioritise impact
We’ve supported over 2,000 ventures, which have gone on to create over 5,000 jobs, and our alumni have raised over £90 million through grants and investments.
Whether it’s a local social entrepreneur or the next tech-for-good start-up, every venture’s work we support goes towards our objectives of supporting a specific community or social and environmental issue. Traditional start-up ecosystems can be so focused on ROI and financial returns that the goals and values of the fledgling business can be overlooked, or worse, restricted. We prioritise positive impact, so we are able to help ventures create a path to commercial viability while changing the world for good.
Our Future Business Centres provide a supportive community where early stage start-ups can access free business support to help them understand if their idea is feasible and has a market; where established founders can meet weekly and meet with mentors to take their start-up to the next level; and where founders of impact businesses (such as tech for good or Cleantech start-ups and social innovation enterprises) can focus on growth and amplifying their impact.
From Grow Your Business for community micro businesses, to Impact Accelerator for environmental or social start-ups, our venture support team in East London alone helped over 200 businesses in its first year. We actively recruit underrepresented groups and are proud that across our programmes 50% of our founders are female. For every £1 investment in Grow Your Business, £8 is created in local boroughs, to benefit the local community.
“Allia Future Business Centre is home to like-minded businesses, and like-minded people run the centre. We’ve been connected to a wealth of useful information and networks that have supported our development, including mentoring, introductions to investors and potential customers” – Bios Health
A global network of resources and support
From investment and funding opportunities, coaching and mentoring, to collaboration with global networks, the start-ups in our ecosystem benefit from our support and from introductions to our own strategic network of contacts.
When founders join our programmes or start-ups move into our centres, they join a friendly and vibrant community of like-minded people who are all working towards creating greater positive impact. They join an ecosystem of support – the founder journey can be a lonely one, so we help create lasting relationships with our cohorts and tenants so that they know they are not alone. We bring founders together in an environment where they can talk about their challenges, share real life experiences, and help each other build networks and collaborate. Cohorts receive 1-2-1 opportunities with skilled business advisors to tackle individual challenges and work through ways to overcome these hurdles.
Most importantly, Allia’s strategic partners that help us deliver our programmes can introduce start-ups to a global network of resources and support – such as Allia being the first UK organisation to work with leading European climate initiative EIT Climate-KIC on its Climate Accelerator. Part of the programme is enabling introductions to a global network of investors, supporters and partners. All of our Accelerators end in a pitch day, where experienced fund managers, business angels and corporate investors hear the ventures showcase their business cases and solutions.
“Allia brings the rigour and structure of a Silicon Valley accelerator to UK Social Impact start-ups, creating powerful impact points for founders to maximise success in launching their company” – Rav Roberts, founder of medsii
Early stage start-ups on some of our programmes benefit from free workspace at our centres – taking them from their kitchen table or shed to an innovation community where they can step up, network and grow their business in a professional business environment. In addition to tenants in our centre receiving free business support, our programme cohorts benefit from the workspace too – and often are given free meeting room space (as well as lots of free coffee on the go!).
Most recently, we pivoted our own offerings to help struggling businesses to pivot theirs. When the Covid crisis hit and lockdown critically affected many local businesses we took our Grow Your Business programme online and altered the focus to building resilience and pivoting in response to the crisis. We’ve also worked with Tower Hamlets Borough Council targeting freelance creatives in the borough who’ve suffered through lockdown with grant funding and business support to help them build back stronger.
Finally, the impressive array of experienced mentors on Allia’s programmes come from a variety of professional backgrounds, have diverse skills and specialties offering valuable advice and coaching to the founders. This, together with the 1-2-1 business support from Allia’s advisors, the introductions to investors and funders, plus resources and workspace, means that the benefits to start-ups move with them from the start, through their impact journey, and help them to achieve real positive growth and change.
