King's College London

Now in its ninth year, Venture Crawl is the Entrepreneurship Institute’s flagship annual event, giving students unparalleled access to London’s entrepreneurial ecosystem. Alongside unique networking opportunities, students hear from founders and entrepreneurial leaders and connect with industry experts, whilst exploring innovation spaces.

This year’s crawl featured stops at:

• Google – Students met Emma Osman (Partnerships Manager, Early-stage start-ups), Benjamin Zirah (GTM lead) and Darren Ryden (Manager, Partner Solutions Engineering, P&D Enterprise Solutions, EMEA) to hear about the latest developments in tech, alongside tailored career insights.
• Seven Dials Market – A chance to enjoy lunch from independent food start-ups supported by KERB.
• Red Bull HQ – Students learnt about Red Bull Basement from Ashlee Philips (Consumer Collecting Specialist), alongside Victoria Nava (Sustainability Graduate) and Holly Cook (Product Communications Specialist) on Red Bull’s approaches to sustainability, innovation and brand building.
• King’s Start-up Founders Panel – A discussion on what it’s really like to launch and run a venture, featuring King’s alumni and King’s Start-up Accelerator cohort members, Jas Wilks (founder & CEO of Let’s Fund Her), Saifeddine Benamar (founder of True Green ESG) and Tiago Birenbaum (founder of Mony).

This year’s Venture Crawl brought together 17 universities from across the UK and around the world, each curating their tours in their own cities. 13 of these were London institutions, including three new partners joining the collaboration for the first time: ESCP Business School, Ravensbourne University London and University of Sunderland in London.

London Venture Pitch Off

The day ended with over 200 students and staff from the London partner universities gathered at Bush House, to watch each institution’s nominated Pitch Champion take to the stage to share their start-up idea in a 90-second pitch.

Reagan Kastner, a MSc Management and Technological Change student (King’s Business School) and recent Idea Factory winner represented King’s with her venture, Empowered Futures.

The judging panel featured:

• Marianthe Evangelidis (Director of Sustainable Finance and Investment (LSEG) and Chair of Capital Enterprise)
• Caelum Rosenkranz (Start-up Lead at Google Cloud)
• Deborah Okenla (CEO of YSYS and angel investor )
• Jas Wilks (Founder of Let’s Fund Her and venture scout).

Check Laam Wong from Birkbeck was announced as the 2026 winner.

Launched in 2017 by King's College London, Venture Crawl has continued to grow year-on-year, evolving into a global collaboration of universities passionate about entrepreneurship. Current partners include: LSE, Imperial, London College of Fashion, Queen Mary University of London, University of Greenwich, Brunel, Goldsmiths, Birkbeck, SOAS and Loughborough London University alongside Oxford Brookes, University of Wolverhampton, the British International University in Iraq and the University of South Africa.

Venture Crawl will return in 2026 on Wednesday 10th March.

Photo credit: David Tett