Entrepreneurial thinking takes centre stage at WBS London showcase

The curtain rose on a new start-up support programme this summer as student and graduate entrepreneurs gathered at The Shard to share stories of their business journeys.

The Warwick Enterprise Venture Showcase – delivered in partnership with Warwick Business School and held at WBS London at The Shard – featured a panel discussion between six company founders and a start-up pitch competition between six universities.

Hosting the day was start-up coach Alexander McLeod who has been leading the Warwick Enterprise Start-up programme at the University of Warwick’s main campus in Coventry and will now be rolling it out at Warwick Business School’s base at The Shard as well. “The fact that we will now be running the programme from the 17^th floor of London’s most iconic building will mean that people will want to be part of it,” he said.

“Early-stage Investors will want to come to meetings and showcases here, and would-be entrepreneurs will want to come here because London is right at the beating heart of the investment ecosystem.”

Start-up programme at The Shard

Starting in September 2025, there will be three intakes for the part-time programme for Warwick students and graduates who want to launch their own start-up venture. Whether they join that month or in January or May, the business founders will receive support for free with developing a minimum viable product (MVP), testing it and finding a product-market fit for it.   

In a 12-month package, they will also have access to a co-working space, a start-up mentor, and workshops in issues such as brand building, business modelling, AI integration, and investment readiness.

The expertise of an advisory board is also on hand. “With the advisors drawn from the London business scene, some from blue-chip firms, the conversations and connections on offer will be, I think, of enormous value to company founders,” said Mr McLeod.   

Connections had been all important for fellow conference delegate Eldar Agayev, who graduated from Warwick with a BSc in Computer Science with Business Studies in 2023 and is the founder of AI sales platform Hachly.

“I started my business with the help of Warwick Business School and the Warwick Enterprise Start-up programme,” he said. “The quality of that community helped me to network with the right people.”

He continued: “Once you are part of a start-up community at Warwick you know you’re going to meet business people who know what they are talking about and who you can trust. Whenever I had a question or a problem, I always got the answers I needed.”

Eldar was a panel member at the Venture Showcase and had some advice for would-be entrepreneurs. “The key to business success is failing quickly and failing small, and learning from the data you gain and the market feedback to build better next time,” he said.

“The more you fail with experiments and iterations is actually the metric for success, I think. About 80 to 90 per cent of my first experiments were failures but with the support of Warwick I just kept on exploring to find out what actually worked.”

Investment pitch presentations

Finding out what worked at the Venture Showcase were student and graduate teams from six universities who pitched their ventures to the assembled audience of university enterprise teams, investors, seasoned entrepreneurs, and professionals from across industry.

The teams from Warwick, UCL, Imperial, Brunel, Greenwich, and Queen Mary showcased products ranging from a pod to improve agricultural soil quality and a pharmaceutically formulated haircare product to a learning app for students taking medical exams and a device to tackle post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) amongst emergency responders.  

The pitches were representative of the spirit of WBS at The Shard, according to Karen Barker, Director of Stakeholder Engagement at WBS.

“It’s a space designed not just for learning, but for leading and nurturing new ideas,” she said in her opening remarks to the Venture Showcase.

“Since opening our London base in 2015, The Shard has become a dynamic hub for Executive Education, MBA programmes, and entrepreneurial thinking.

“It’s where Warwick Business School brings its ethos to life—applied learning, powerful connections, and a global network of Change Makers who are not just imagining the future—they are proactively shaping it.”