Start-up support

Open to any student or recent graduate with an idea for a start-up or innovation project, or an existing business or social enterprise.

Pen lying on a completed form.

Validate your assumptions!

We subscribe to Lean Entrepreneurial approaches, particularly the importance of validating your business case and business model.

The main purpose of our support is to ensure you have have a clear business case for start-up (via a company, social enterprise or self-employment). By this we mean that the predictable risks and resource costs – things like time, money, effort, and personal sacrifice – associated with getting the business off the ground are outweighed by the potential returns it will generate, be they financial, environmental or social.

There is no simple formula for determining this case; it’s very hard to weigh up the equivalent value of many of these different factors. In fact, many of them are entirely subjective. For example, acceptable risk and loss, the time taken to recoup investments, the ability to ride unexpected delays in income, will differ from person to person. This means your business case is personal. Ultimately, any decision to start-up, rightly or wrongly, is yours as the main factor in its success will be you; your entrepreneurial capabilities and attitudes, your passion and motivation, your resilience and personal well-being.

We cannot say definitively that you will or will not be successful, but we have seen a lot of start-up ideas, projects and resulting businesses over the last ten years and we have learned to spot things that make a difference to the probability of success. And this is where we can input in the interest of helping you to reduce risk, to take confident and objective decisions, even when they are difficult and require you to step back from something that you’re personally invested in.

Launch the enquiry form

Are you ready for start-up funding?

Thanks to our partnership with Santander Universities, we can offer awards for new start-up ventures of £500-£1000. Our Start-up Advisor will make sure you are aware of what's accessible to you when you meet her for your first 1-2-1 meeting (hit the Launch Form button above to get started).

In the meantime, why not click the button below to find out about the whole range of exclusive support, competitions and development opportunities available through Santander Universities?

Visit Santander X

Do you need a visa for start-up or self-employment?

If you are an international student with a visa to study at Lancaster then you can only start a business or become self-employed after you graduate and switch to a new visa type. Any breach of the terms of your study visa could put your degree at risk.

Read our page on Graduate Visas to find out about your options and how to remain compliant.

Graduate Visas
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