Accelerators & incubators: Take them or leave them?

Overview:

Many accelerators and incubators have appeared over the last few years. What makes good ones and what services are best provided through such initiatives? Are accelerators and incubators which specialise in industrial areas or stage of investment more use than generic property plays? In this event, we invite some successful accelerators and incubators to present their case and also the case when maybe not to go down this option.

Sabry Salman, Managing Director, Barclays
Sabry is the Managing Director, Head of Subsidiary & Treasury banking in the UK. He leads a business which includes Relationship Directors in International Corporate Banking at Barclays. His team is focused on supporting US, European & Asian Multinational Corporates in UK. Sabry joined Barclays in 2004 and worked in Standard Chartered Bank & RBS previously. Sabry has 21 years of experience in Global Banking, having lived and worked in Asia, the UK and Jersey. He covered the United States & Afraica for corporate banking for 7 years in Barclays prior to his current role.

He is a qualified Chartered Marketer (DipM MCIM) and holds and MBA from Warwick Business School. He attended Manheim Business School to complete his education on Mergers & Restructures in the US and Europe. He is an Associate Fellow of Warwick Business School and on the board of British American Business (BAB). He juggles work and school-runs spending most of his spare time with his 10-year old son. A keen sponsor of Dynamic working in Barclays, co-chairs the Women’s Forum for Corporate Bank.
http://www.barclaysaccelerator.com/#/ 

Matteo Scarabelli, Head of Investment, LMarks
The worst mistake any corporate can make is ignoring the threat of disruption. For a business to continue to grow and developing new and profitable ways, only a well-thought-out innovation strategy will do. LMark’s strategy of leveraging the entrepreneurial ideas of early and growth-stage businesses has proven effective for international corporates spanning all sectors. As Head of Investment, Matteo ensures LMarks makes the smartest investments across all the programmes and also supports their portfolio in their growth. Previously, Matteo was Head of Startup Support, where he leveraged his broad experience of the startup world, drawing on past operational roles at VC—backed startups, and support for numerous startups from due diligence to further investment.
https://lmarks.com/

James Powell, Regional Director, Entrepreneurship, Midlands, Wales & South West, Natwest
James started his career at NatWest where he held various roles over a 12 year period in both personal and business banking. In 2014 he joined Entrepreneurial Spark, a start-up whose vision was to support entrepreneurs across the UK to create and scale their business ideas. Here James coached hundreds of businesses, supported investment raises and during his last 8 months headed up the South East team, launching the London Hub.

In March 2018, James joined NatWest as the Regional Director for the Entrepreneurship team, responsible for the Birmingham, Bristol and Cardiff NatWest Entrepreneur Accelerator hubs. James’ team supports over a thousand entrepreneurs every year to scale their business through workshops and their Pre-Accelerator and Accelerator programmes. James has a real passion for entrepreneurship, coaching, and supporting both business strategy and personal development. His personal drive is to support the ambitions if others and help them to manage the inner critics that can prevent all of us from stepping outside our comfort zone.
https://www.business.natwest.com/business/business-banking/services/entrepreneur-accelerator.html

Suvi Chi, Chief Operating Officer at Claimer
Suvi likes to explore both in her personal life (more recently visiting Japan, Iceland, the Philippines and Costa Rica) and in her professional life before joining Claimer as their COO. Prior to joining Claimer, Suvi worked in financial services for approximately 10 years (2 global investment banks, 1 financial exchange, 1 trading house, 1 quasi-regulator), working on policy initiatives and regulatory work to more operational focused roles to front of house in a busy sales and trading division.

Suvi left more ‘traditional’ financial services in order to embark on a journey to (re)discover what mattered to her - helping others and she's still discovering the rest. From a start-up perspective over the last 5 years she has: been part of 3 start-ups and 1 accelerator, accepted into 1 accelerator that she decided not to join, and attended more start-up investment pitch events than she can remember.
https://www.claimer.io/