Startup Support in...Birmingham

by Startacus Admin

Birmingham based early stage startups and entrepreneurs take note - here's the lowdown on key startup support and help available where you are...

Away from the established startup hubs like London, the support for setting up a business isn’t always so clear. It’s not a lack of support, just a quieter ecosystem that takes a little more work to unearth. We want to help with this by highlighting what some cities, which might not spring immediately to mind at the mention of ‘startups’, have to offer.

From sunny seaside Bournemouth to less sunny Birmingham, you may have noticed a complete lack of pattern to our journey around the UK...

Co-Working space

Comfortable chair? Coffee? 24/7 access? These are the most important questions to ask when looking for co-working space. These spaces answer ‘yes’ (disclaimer: we have not personally tested all the chairs):

Alpha Works is apparently Birmingham’s first flexible work space, offering hot desks, permanent workspace, and even private offices. Facilities include meeting rooms, shower, kitchens, café, coffee bar and, yes, free coffee. And tea, but that’s unimportant.

The Old Print Works in Balsall Heath is a vibrant community charity, providing workspaces for creative local designer-makers and opportunities for all. As well as workshops and studios, The Old Print Works also offers more traditional co-working space from The Transfer in a quiet but friendly environment.

Innovation Birmingham Campus is one of the biggest spaces we have written about, as it is designed for any tech or digital business, from entrepreneurs and start-ups, to SMEs and scale-ups.

Custard Factory is another big one, located in the Greenhouse building. It offers flexible co-working space and offices for startups, SMEs, and big name businesses. Existing tenants include a well-known video game developer and TV companies, including a BBC unit.

Finances

Midven manages multiple funds focused on early-stage and SME businesses. The range of funds currently represent over £110m, and Midven also provides mentoring, resources, and connections, which help businesses to overcome the challenges faced when scaling.

Ascension Ventures have a base in Birmingham and runs a number of UK funds from Seed to Series A. They will lead rounds or follow alongside other funds or angel investors. They also provide expertise in strategy, operations, finance, sales, growth hacking, and connections to current business and industry experts.

Midlands-based Minerva is an angel investor network focused on technology businesses from emerging or established businesses, and they often use their investment as a means of attracting further capital from other sources.

With an Innovation Grant, Business Development Grant, and more, Grants WM is a good place to visit for financing a business in the West Midlands.

The startup ecosystem and programmes

Innovation Birmingham Campus not only provides co-working space, but also runs an incubator for innovative ventures in cloud, gaming, social media, applications, digital technologies, clean tech and low carbon sectors.

BizzInn is an incubator located in Birmingham Research Park, and hosted by the University of Birmingham. It is particularly interested in startups in or relating to the medical and biomedical sectors.

As always, this is not an exhaustive list, so feel free to let us know at [email protected] if you think there is a particularly deserving entity in any of these categories.

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Published on: 2nd November 2018