The Mayor’s Entrepreneur competition is looking for your business ideas to make London cleaner, greener and ready for the future. With a series of free workshops over the next few months to help students gain employability and entrepreneurship skills, you have got plenty of time to come up with an idea before the deadline on the 13th March 2022.
This exciting opportunity gives you the chance to turn your entrepreneurial ideas into a real business. You can develop an idea alone or in a team, whatever best suits you. This year, there are five categories you can submit an idea to which are: Creative Industries, Environment, Health, Social Enterprise and Tech. A winner will be chosen from each category so a total of £100,000 is up for grabs.
The programme also delivers a number of free workshops that budding entrepreneurs can benefit from. Please find the proposed timetable below:
Workshop 3 – Value proposition and business model
Monday 14th February online from 4-6pm
Wednesday 16th February online from 10am-12pm
Wednesday 16th February online from 4-6pm
Workshop 4 – application tips
Wednesday 2nd March online from 4-6pm
Tuesday 8th March online from 10.30am-12.30pm
The deadline to apply is on the 13th March 2022. 150 semi finalists (30 in each category) will hear that they have reached the next stage by 25th March. Training sessions will run in the following week with the deadline for video pitches after the Easter break. Finalists will hear around early May where 5 people from each category will attend the final event in early June.
All applicants are allowed to request mentoring. In the past, they had around 25 applications from non-finalists where they aim to match at least 20. Even if you don’t get through to the next round, you’ll still have access to your mentor for a year and beyond depending on how you maintain the relationship.
Struggling to think of an idea? Have a look at the winners of 2021 and 2020 to get an idea into the amazing businesses that past students have come up with.
You can sign up for one of the first batches of workshops here and look out for more information on how to apply on the official website. Good luck!