Lydia is our NEF+ Class of Spring 2022 alumna and the Founder and CEO of Don’t Shop, Swap – a Techstars-backed, clothes-swapping platform that received 4,000 sign-ups in under a year.   Gamifying secondhand fashion Launched in the middle of NEF+, Don’t Shop, Swap (DSS) is a platform that helps Gen Z to swap clothes for clothes. Users would upload or send their clothes to the DSS team in return for ‘Swap Coins’ – a token native to the website – that they can use to spend on other listed clothes. “It’s like shopping, but with a digital currency that helps people to save money on revitaliz ..read more

Winter 2022 Update: <title tbc>   Contents: Our partnership with the Founders Forum Group → NEF+ Cohort Updates → Applications for our next NEF+ programme → Alumni Highlights → Incubator and Accelerator Network Conference → Refugee Entrepreneurship Summit → CFE Team Update →   Our partnership with the Founders Forum Group     In October, we announced our expanded partnership with the Founders Forum Group. Alongside its significant annual donation to CFE, the Group will be supporting us in key activities including the return of our annual lecture next year and have s ..read more

Invest in the future of nutrition and beauty for Black women: backed by Reckitt and Founders Factory, NEF+ 2018’s Nomshado Michelle Baca is currently raising a £500,000 round for their venture, Sān Wellness. Sān Wellness solves the problem of poor nutritional intake as a result of poor diet and/or other health conditions and, the fragmented general health management information available, for black women. It has secured distribution contracts with Liberty London, Selfridges and Standard Dose. “At Reckitt, we invest in founders who fight for access to better healt ..read more

Results from our NEF+ alumni pitching event In early-2022, we hosted a virtual NEF+ pitch evening for our alumni to pitch their ventures to our wider Angel investor network. With over 20+ angels in attendance and 6 pitches featured, the events culminated in some great results of our NEFers and their ventures.  We caught up with our alumni to see where they are now: Ashley Staines – CEO and Co-founder, VolunteeroVolunteero is a B2B SaaS volunteer management platform. They were going out for small pre-seed looking for around £3,000 and closed around 550,000-  of which £75,000 was from ..read more

We’re delighted to announce our new partnership with the Founder Revenue Academy.  All NEF+ alumni will receive free access (regular price: £4,788pp/year) to the platform – supporting them with sales-related educational content, live Q&A events and a community to develop their revenue strategy.   About Founder Revenue Academy Designed for early-stage founders, the FRA platform offers a learning programme to equip founders with the real-world sales and marketing skills they need to accelerate from great ideas to valuable businesses; with expert content modules for every stage of ..read more

CFE Spring 2022 Update: Goodbye Neeta, hello Tim…   Dear friends & family of CFE, I write this introduction with a tear in my eye — this is my last CFE newsletter as CEO before I sign off and begin a new chapter in my career. It’s a bittersweet moment for me, having been so involved in first NEF (in 2012!) and latterly CFE; in both good and ‘interesting’ times. I’ve had the great privilege of meeting some amazing and inspiring people during my time, and I’m immensely proud of connections and community that we’ve built. Whilst I’m sad to be leaving CFE, I’m convinced that CFE is in a g ..read more

*Welcome to the Centre for Entrepreneurs WINTER newsletter    Welcome to the CFE December newsletter. A great deal has been happening in the past few months, and we have some fantastic updates to share with you. They include – CFE’s latest annual report (with some impressive impact data), the start of the all-new NEF+ programme, developing our new partnership with the Founders Forum Group and developments in our IAN and REN networks. Read all about them, and more, all below. We also have – for the first time – an online NEF+ Christmas market – with a curated selection of services and ..read more

Welcome to the Centre for Entrepreneurs Summer Update: Celebrating New Dawns and Significant Finales   Welcome to CFE’s summer newsletter – it’s fantastic to be writing this after hosting our NEF Class of 2021 graduation party last week, the first face-to-face event that we’ve held for more than 15 months. That’s motivated me and the team to get our  events programme back up and running post-summer, and I hope to meet many more of you at future events. Speaking of graduations, the NEF Class of 2021 have completed their NEF journeys and join our alumni network. Elsewhere, NEF alumni a ..read more

Welcome to the Centre for Entrepreneurs Spring update: a Time for Renewed Purpose and Fresh Ambitions! The CFE Spring newsletter is the most optimistic copy we’ve written for some time – we’ve come through the challenges of 2020 strongly and with renewed purpose and ambition. We have exciting plans for a bigger, better NEF+ programme, continued the fast paced delivery of the current NEF programme, successfully completed and reported our refugee entrepreneurship pilot programme and grown and enhanced the CFE team with some exciting new hires. NEF alumni have been equally busy, with some incredi ..read more

Welcome to the Centre for Entrepreneurs Winter newsletter! Welcome to the Centre for Entrepreneurs’ December newsletter – I’m writing this in two minds – looking back on 2020, this year has been incredibly challenging and we, along with all of you, have been on a difficult journey and have had to really scramble at times to ensure that our charity survived. However, with recent vaccine developments I can begin to look forward to 2021 with optimism and confidence. 2020 has been a test of resilience and it gives me great pleasure to be able to share some very positive updates in this n ..read more