Since October, a growing community of cross-university dinner clubs, incubators and informal hacker-houses have formed the foundation of London’s student start-up scene. Roar spoke to cross-university community builders and Kings-affiliated founders to learn more about this developing community and what support it can offer to student entrepreneurs.
Entrepreneurship at KCL
Ranked as the fourth best UK University Start-up Hub, King’s is an active player in London’s start-up ecosystem. Since 2016, the King’s Entrepreneurial Institute (KEI) has supported, through its annual accelerator programme, over 160 start-ups who have gone on to generate over £103 million.
They support early-stage businesses through short-term tailored mentoring and dedicated office space access to fast-track their growth. KEI’s Start-Up Accelerator runs a unique “pledge model”, taking 3% of equity in the ventures that either generate £1 million annual recurring revenue or receive £1 million in investment within the first five years.
Julia Devonshire OBE, Director of the KCL Entrepreneurial Institute told Roar:
“Entrepreneurship is for everyone, and anyone can become more entrepreneurial. We support students, staff and alumni at King’s to learn new entrepreneurial skills such as disruptive thinking, compelling communication and team working, to enhance their chances of success beyond university. Some will create start-ups of their own and we support them to start better and scale.“
A Harsh Environment
Being predominantly aged 18-25, many student entrepreneurs have found that inexperience makes it difficult to gain the respect of potential investors and clients.
Immanuel Rajadurai, ex-Kings and now CTO of AquaZoo Consulting Partners, a software start-up in the visitor attractions space, recalled being challenged on his team’s competency whilst on a client call. They gave their software for free to initial clients to build relationships and their reputation.
In a male-dominated space, this sense of not being respected due to experience can be compounded by gender. When speaking to Roar, Jolyn Yin, an international University of the Arts London student stated:
“In the startup scene, women constantly feel the need to prove themselves twice over just to be acknowledged—a system that rewards performative confidence over genuine work… So, I began hosting gatherings: first for 6, then 20, then 40, and now for 100+ founders and builders, all guided by my own rules. It’s exciting to see more and more existing and new startup initiatives and communities being led by women redefining entrepreneurial culture.”
Tight Budgets and Thin Margins
When speaking to Roar, Blitzo’s co-founders and ‘Idea Factory’ finalists Arjun Khanna and Sundar Arvind highlighted that the high operational costs meant they were “burning cash” whilst making a loss to undercut the saturated same-day courier market.
During this stage, one commonly felt issue is that of team motivation when the money is tight. This makes the promise of an equity share and future rewards crucial in motivating the team.
Daniel Merighi, current King’s student and CEO of Gradstay, a platform that connects landlords with students looking for a place to rent, shared this experience of giving free consultation to attract clients. Discussing the initial financial challenges, Merighi said:
“The harder it is to get started, the more defensible your business will be in future years. I initially couldn’t pay my team a decent wage, and so fully credit our company’s early success to our strong founding team.”
Psyrin is a mental health start-up with a vision “to enable doctors to see 100 patients per hour” through transforming mental health diagnosis that has raised over £1 million in investment after winning ‘Idea Factory 2022’.
When their three co-founders met, an important topic of discussion was how to split equity, the distribution of ownership within the fledgling company. CEO Edwin Wong told Roar:
“We split equally. In the grand scheme of things, you’re hoping to exit with a large amount, and we knew the relative gain isn’t worth incessant fighting over.”
An Exciting Future
On 19 October, Bush House hosted the ‘KCL x UCL TechSummit 24’, a collaboration between King’s College London Technology Society (KCL Tech) and University College London Technology Society (UCL Tech).
Over twenty UK universities were represented at the event, attended by over 1,000 investors, recruiters, tech start-ups and students.
The summit inspired further collaborations, including the ‘Breaking Into VC’ and ‘Warwick Entrepreneurs (WE) Shard’ events which brought together the UK’s ten biggest entrepreneurial societies.
These experimental gatherings are inspired by the dynamic start-up scene around Palo Alto, providing new spaces for creativity within the entrepreneurial community.
When speaking with Roar, LSE Entrepreneurs Chairman Reese Wong compared the entrepreneurial cultures between London and California, stating he wished “to harness that risk-taking wild energy lacking here.”
As young entrepreneurs across London continue to support each other through these shared challenges, students at various universities are planning a joint initiative which is unprecedented for London.
Strand Ventures is aiming to be the first fully student-led venture capital fund in the UK when it is launched in April. Ammiel Wan, Co-President of Kings Entrepreneurs, will be one of the fund’s co-founders. He told Roar their team is looking to “find the best student start-ups throughout London & the UK” and will be “working alongside founders and entrepreneurs with experience in building start-ups & working in VC”.
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