Octopus Springboard Entrepreneur Awards
Accelerating a new generation of entrepreneurs
Octopus Springboard is delighted to welcome back the Entrepreneur Awards for another year (more details coming soon). These annual awards provide us with a chance to celebrate those who have started their own business.
In particular, the awards will shine a light on the entrepreneurs who, through their own hard work and bright ideas, have improved their local community or found innovative ways to make their business more sustainable.
Previous winners include Cooper King Distillery who diversified during the pandemic to supply hand sanitiser to frontline workers and produced the first-ever carbon-negative gin in England and 1683 Chocolate Place, founded by Joe Vaughan who opened a shop aged just 16 and was celebrated as Britian’s youngest chocolatier.
How it works
Every Member of Parliament has the opportunity to nominate entrepreneurs in their constituencies who they feel deserves recognition.
There are no specific criteria for entering nominees, they just need to be entrepreneurs making a truly positive impact, and whose business is registered and operating in the UK.
The winners will be chosen by a panel of experts who have a background in entrepreneurialism. The final judging panel is still to be confirmed, but will include Karen Taylor, Founder of Parent Cloud, Jimmy McLoughlin of Jimmy’s Jobs of the Future podcast and Octopus co-founder Chris Hulatt.
The winners will have the unique opportunity to receive £5,000 worth of scale up advice from experts within Octopus. They will also be invited to the Octopus headquarters to meet with Chris Hulatt and discuss first-hand how they can grow their business.
How to get involved
To enter, MPs will have received an email with details on how to nominate their local entrepreneurs, which can be done by sending answers to [email protected].
If you are an entrepreneur who would like to be entered, please get in touch with your local MP and ask them to nominate you. You can check who your local MP is here.
More details to come. Terms and Conditions apply.
To find out more about last year’s winners, go here.
About Octopus
At Octopus, we’re a group of entrepreneurs and investors united by a common goal: backing the people, ideas and industries that will change the world. We believe entrepreneurs are society’s true agents of change and we want to support those entrepreneurs to launch new businesses that will solve society’s biggest problems.
That is why we invest the money our clients entrust us with into entrepreneurs and businesses where we believe we can have the greatest impact.
As a business that is proudly entrepreneurial – and is still run by the same people who started Octopus in the front room of a flat 24 years ago – and that has backed some of the UK’s most successful businesses, from Octopus Energy to Zoopla, we believe we are uniquely placed to support the next generation of entrepreneurs.