They run a co-working space in Hackney, and their remit is for start-ups, and existing business based in East London.
When i spoke with their staff, they said that they were open to the idea of supporting Co-operatives as a business model.
They’re also one of the few incubators that don’t require any equity from the organisations that they support.
They’re currently open for applications. Application form here, Allia Serious Impact London 2018. | F6S and they have an open day where you can talk directly with their staff on the 2nd of May.
The Resolution Trust sponsor the worker tech strand of Bethnal Green Ventures, I believe. They are interested in new business models such as co-ops, but the BGV structure currently requires that BGV takes a 5% stake in the venture. It might be worth talking to Resolution Trust to see if they would underwrite/buy out that 5% from the other BGV stakeholders.
I’ve spoken with some of the partners from BGV in the past.
I was going to apply to their incubator/accelerator 6 years ago.
When i went along to one of their open events for last last year’s intake, they explicitly said that they were not interested in funding Co-operatives.
It’s good to hear that they may be changing their minds, but as they are a VC outfit, you would still need to see whether the funding they provide has the same set of strings attached to the cash, that the commercial VC’s use.
Those strings can mean that they would have final veto over EVERY major business decision that you would make.
It’s one of the reasons that one hardware start-up working on Pollution-Monitoring systems decided not to go with them.
If the business didn’t work out, they wanted to Open-Source their hardware designs, but the funders would have a veto on that decision, which is why they decided not to take the money.
I hadn’t heard the news about the Resolution Trust.
I’ll look them up and see what they say. Thanks, Harry.
