SOLUTIONS THAT WORK FOR YOU
Start-Up Support
STRIVE
START-UP SUPPORT
Our Strive projects have helped hundreds of people from all walks of life to start their own businesses through training, support and advice. Strive is an exciting and fun project where you and the CUBE team of experienced entrepreneurs get together and help launch your business.
Manzoor
Striving Entrepreneur
“The trainers are great – friendly and down to earth, they pass on lots of experience. I learnt so much on the course, and they are still offering support through events.”
Kareena
Striving Entrepreneur
“Strive really help me to get my branding sorted and offer practical advice and help every step of the way – it’s been so much fun!”
Leovanda
Striving Entrepreneur
“The support was just fantastic! I’m so proud to have my business running and couldn’t have won my first contracts without the help and advice from the team.”
Strive Tasters & Roadshow Events
Workshops, advice and taster sessions
Striving to Start-Up? is a super condensed and exciting taster session – to help you decide if Strive is right for you. We explore what is really involved in getting a business up and running. In these exhilarating sessions you’ll get to hear real life experiences from people who have started and grown businesses from almost nothing, learning how they did it and what you should consider before starting your own business.
Striving Catch-ups are a great way to meet other start-ups and your business adviser as you learn online. We hold these whenever we’re in your area and can manage it – mainly because we just love to hang out with old and new friends.
Strive Business Jams usually held in London and Berkshire, these business jams give an opportunity for start-ups to come and meet volunteers from from the worlds of accountancy, marketing, legal, sales and web development. The volunteers are there to help out with tips, tricks and support on anything that you’re struggling with.
Strive Intensive
Innovative Start-Up Training
Our Strive Intensive programme is designed to give Striving Start-ups all the tools they need to go away and start a business in just five training days. Like all of our training, the course is packed full of exciting and interactive activities and simple, easy to understand advice. Each day our training, workshops, debates and exercises will be supported by a pack of ready to use materials and tools.
Our Strive start-up course is only ever delivered by expert trainers who are actively running their own businesses. Through the course they share their own real life experiences of starting businesses, explaining both what works and doesn’t.
Strive Further
Training & Practical Development Days
Our Strive Further programme builds on the success of our experts’ years of experience in helping individuals to start their own businesses. To design this programme they’ve gone back to the drawing board, and carefully designed every aspect of the programme to provide the perfect support for anyone striving to start their own business. Our experts should know, they’re all still starting new businesses today!
The Strive Further programme does just that, going further than Strive Intensive’s 5 days of training offering extensive expert support over a further 6 days (typically spread over 11 weeks) to help entrepreneurs to get to a launch stage.
During six Strive Further development days entrepreneurs work in teams and one-to-one with our experts to develop their ideas and find the solutions that will help them to launch their enterprises.
Strive Dragons’ Dens
Launch Presentations
Our Striving Start-Ups graduate by presenting their launch plans to a panel of business experts and senior managers. It’s a thrilling day demonstrating the amazing potential of start-ups and the incredible progress the striving entrepreneurs have made during the programme. Press coverage and financing is often incorporated into these days.
*Start Up grants, loans and further support offers are awarded at Launch Presentations on some but not all programmes, to find out more please contact our team.
Striving On…
Ongoing Support
The ongoing support of the Strive team comes in many different shapes and sizes, and is where a great deal of our profit is reinvested. For all those completing our full programmes we offer ongoing support through our secret closed facebook group – start-ups can ask questions, find friends to work with and get all sorts of ongoing advice and support from the team.
We have had over 25,000 individual interactions in our facebook group, and the average question receives 5-10 responses. Harnessing the power of peer support means this support is on hand 24hours a day, every day of the year, with an average response time of less than 3hrs…now that’s support!
We also offer catch-ups, business clinics and a range of follow on courses working with housing associations and partners to offer a network of support to those graduating our Strive projects.
The Strive Project
The Strive Training Programmes were created by the Enterprise CUBE to be an exciting new way to help disadvantaged people to start their own businesses. Richard Lanning and Paul Funnell, the designers of the Strive Training, used all of their experience of business and training to create something totally new and different.
“We knew it was possible to do so much more.” says Richard Lanning “It was great to throw out all of the old assumptions, go back to the drawing board and design a training programme with no limitations. I think that what we’ve created is something pretty unique; Strive Training is serious but incredibly interactive, exciting and most of all simple to use.”
Strive mixes a range of cutting edge methods in with a classic ‘old school masterclass’ format where those on the training are taught by entrepreneurs who have themselves started businesses from scratch. A training session can switch from their impressive infinite zoom muti-media presentations to drawing a simple grid on sheet of plain paper and on to a group excercise in branding identies. This mix of styles bring Strive’s training sessions to life without confusing, built around simple ‘core-principles’ the sessions are easy to follow and the learning feels easy.
“It’s incredibly important to us that we keep finding new ways to make our training even more interesting and punchy, but we don’t do any naff role-plays or ‘ice-breakers’.” said Paul Funnell “Richard and I, have over 35years experience between us in running small businesses – so we know how tough it can be and what people will need to know to go out actually start their companies. All our training is exciting but more importantly it’s practical and useful”
Strive Training programmes are already being booked for 2013 which will see the programme delivered in partnership with some of the most socially minded and progressive housing associations and councils in the South East. However the Enterprise CUBE team are currently exploring funding sources and new partnerships to bring the Strive Programme to new areas and disadvantaged groups.
To find out more about Strive please see our training section of the website.