It was a real honour to receive this award for our work with King's entrepreneurs. People at King's have impactful ideas and supporting these to become ventures and move forward has become a daily pleasure for our team. In the year of our tenth anniversary, being recognised in this way for venture creation presented a real moment of celebration. Thank you to the team at the Entrepreneurship Institute.
Julie Devonshire OBE, Director of the Entrepreneurship Institute
10 October 2025
Entrepreneurship Institute gains global recognition for venture creation
King’s Entrepreneurship Institute (EI) has been awarded Outstanding Contributions to Venture Creation at the prestigious Global Consortium of Entrepreneurship Centers (GCEC) conference, held at the University of Calgary, Canada.
The award recognises the outstanding level of support and enrichment provided by the EI for all students, staff and alumni at King’s who are starting and scaling ideas and ventures. The award highlights the impact of the EI’s:
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Mindset-first approach embedding the Seven Skills of an Entrepreneurial Mindset across all programmes, equipping the King’s community with core capabilities to be successful entrepreneurs.
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Focus on validation, providing funding and expert guidance to help early-stage founders test their ideas, saving them time and money further down the line.
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King’s Start-up Accelerator, a 12-month programme of support which has supported over 160 ventures to develop solutions to some of the world’s biggest problems.
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Robust support network, including 12 Experts-in-Residence, Coaches-in-Residence, Start-up-in-Residence and alumni mentors.
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Inclusive entrepreneurship with initiatives like the Women Entrepreneurs Network (670+ members) and Gamechangers (27 students supported to date) removing barriers for underrepresented groups.
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King’s Investor Network connecting scale-ready ventures with investment, increasing their access to funding for growth.
The awards form part of the annual GCEC conference, which brings together more than 500 global entrepreneurship centre leaders from universities and colleges around the world, to celebrate the role that universities fulfil in educating future entrepreneurs. Universities in attendance include MIT, Stanford and Imperial College London.
King's is building momentum and a reputation for scaled-up innovation, and venture creation is an important part of the process. It is an honour for King's to be recognised globally in this way amongst such esteemed company. Congratulations to the Entrepreneurship Institute.
Professor Sir Bashir M. Al-Hashimi (Vice President of Research & Innovation)
Earlier this year the EI was listed in the Financial Times Leading Start-up Hubs report for the first time, ranking 4th university hub in the UK.
In its 10th year, the EI has amassed a digital community of over 30,000 members and supported 12,000+ to develop entrepreneurial skills. 160+ ventures who have been supported through the King’s Start-up Accelerator have gone on to raise £103,385,585 in revenue, £107,719,713 in investment, £10,562,611 in grants and create 1,368 jobs in the UK economy and economies around the globe.
Visit our website to find out how we support students, staff and alumni to develop their entrepreneurial skills and ideas, both during their time at King’s, and for success beyond university.
In this story
Director, Entrepreneurship Institute
Vice President (Research & Innovation)