Over 30 students from across King's College London visited some of London's innovation hotspots at Venture Crawl 2024. 

Venture Crawl is the Entrepreneurship Institute’s flagship annual event, that invites students to visit some of London’s entrepreneurial hotspots, including start-ups, social enterprises, co-working spaces and more.

For the first time ever, the tour was a walking crawl, inviting students to explore the entrepreneurial ecosystem close to King’s Strand Campus. Students had the chance to network with each other between stops, whilst sharing their thoughts and ideas.

This year’s packed agenda featured stops at:

• National Theatre, including a behind-the-scenes tour of the set design workspaces and a talk on innovative approaches to sustainability from Paul Jozefowski (Head of Building Design and Environmental Sustainability) and Victoria Harding (Director of Food and Drink).
• Seven Dials Market to explore independent food start-ups, serving cuisine from around the world. 
• Peachey & Co LLP, to learn the legal fundamentals of starting a business, including founder agreements, intellectual property and data protection.
• King's Entrepreneurs Panel, featuring King's alumni Jamie Cartland (CEO and Co-founder at Conduit Bio) and Edwin Wong (CEO at Psyrin), who shared their journeys of starting a business.
• Reference Point, a library, bookshop and bar, catering to a wide and diverse audience.
• Somerset House to see their co-working space, Somerset House Exchange, and hear about initiatives to support entrepreneurs in the creative industries, like the Black Business Residency.

Over 200 students took part in crawls across London through a collaboration with Brunel, Birkbeck, Central Saint Martins, Goldsmiths, Greenwich, Imperial College London, London College of Fashion, London School of Economics, Loughborough London, Queen Mary, University of East London, SOAS and Westminster.

The day ended with a Pitch Off event at Bush House, where each London-participating university put forward a nominated student to pitch their start-up idea in just 90 seconds. Professor Sally Everett, Vice Dean for Education in King's Business School led the welcome. Clarice Ng, a MSc Strategic Entrepreneurship & Innovation student, and recent Idea Factory 2024 finalist represented King's whilst pitching her own venture, GROWN.

The judging panel featured Liz Choonara, Executive Director of Commerce & Enterprise at Crisis, Elif Sancak, VC Scout and Adviser at Antler and last year's London Venture Crawl Pitch Winner, Simone Panella, founder and CEO at Dyamotech Ltd. Christopher D'souza from Brunel was announced as the winner for 2024. 

The event ended with networking over food and drink, providing more opportunities for students to meet other students from outside their own university.

Launched in 2017 by King's College London, Venture Crawl has since grown to include 13 London-based university partners and many others around the UK and overseas, including DePaul University in Chicago, Trinity College Dublin and for the first time, University of South Africa (a first for the continent).

Venture Crawl will return in 2025 on Wednesday 12th March.

Photo credit: Nathan Clarke Photography.