Growth Builder, a UK public and private partnership that includes University College London and Loughborough University, has been launched to support high-growth UK-based companies.
The program’s remaining co-creators are the UK government’s trade and investment department UKTI, as well as telecoms firm BT, freight mapping services provider Pie Mapping, financial services firm Natwest, angel investor organisation UK Business Angels Association and event organiser Fast Growth Forum.
Growth Builder is a 12-month program designed to provide businesses with access to the government, university innovation, corporations, investors and other entrepreneurs. The program will consist of monthly events, workshops and coaching groups.
Companies hoping to take part in the initiative should have either £1.5m ($2.1m) in revenue or employ 20 or more staff and have grown by more than 20% in the past two years. Applications are now open and the program will begin in April 2016.
Ed Wray, ambassador for Growth Builder and co-founder of betting company Betfair, said: “British startups are doing a great job, but more can be done to help them scale to become global and industry-leading success stories. Growth Builder has been designed to tackle some of the current barriers to this.
“Bringing together leading players in public and private sector organisations within a collaborative peer group, the focus is on providing promising entrepreneurs with unrivalled access to the most useful names in business, angel and venture funds, global universities, government and entrepreneurship.”
– A version of this story originally appeared on our sister site, Global University Venturing