Summer accelerator
Source: https://www.york.ac.uk/students/work-volunteering-careers/skills/enterprise/summer-accelerator/ Parent: https://www.york.ac.uk/students/work-volunteering-careers/skills/enterprise/
Spend your summer vacation working on launching your business with our support, and find out whether your plans are heading in the right direction for success.
If accepted onto the summer accelerator, you will receive:
- a living allowance of £2,000 to cover eight weeks solely focusing on launching your business
- use of a workspace for eight weeks
- access to support from the University and five hours of specialist business coaching
Made possible by Santander
You should have a business or social enterprise idea in mind and be committed to putting it into practice over the Summer vacation. The idea should be your own, although applications from two or more students will be considered, again provided that the business idea belongs jointly to the students involved. Joint applications can only receive a single package of support.
We do not expect you to fully develop a successful business in a ten week period. The Summer Accelerator is about exploring the idea to see if it might work on a longer term basis. Discovering that the idea is less viable than you first imagined is a perfectly valid outcome.
All successful applicants must keep a record of their experiences and be willing to share their learning from the experience with future applicants and other students.
Applying
You will need to complete the application form on Santander X, which will require registration. If you experience any issues, please let us know.
Phase One Access
Students taking part in the Summer Accelerator are able to access the Phase One Workspace over 10 weeks during the summer of the programme.
- Summer Accelerator students are required to get in contact with Phase One to arrange an induction (health and safety, how the workspace works).\
- Access is only authorised after attending the induction.\
- Summer Accelerator students can use the space during reception working hours (Mon - Thu 8.30 to 16.30, Fri 8.30 - 16.00); They will be given a day pass on arrival, this needs returning at the end of the day.
Summer Accelerator students are welcome to apply to be a Phase One member at any time afterwards, if they wish.
Previous participants
We've seen a fascinating range of ideas from earlier groups - you can hear about two examples below. Other ideas have included conservation consultancy, flexible to-do list software, a platform that lets offices make the most of their empty space and a new way for charities to record crowdsourced data.
Video
GMP Beats
Video