The programme is aimed at the business’ senior leadership team (e.g. founders, CEO) but support can be made available to the successful applicants more generally upon request.
The programme is inviting applications from UK based pre-seed and seed stage companies creating innovative products and services in the creative industries.
- Applicants must have at least one founder that is Black or of mixed ethnic background with Black heritage.
- Applicants are looking to raise investment in the next 12 months.
- Applicants are currently working in the creative industries (for example, music, film, TV, arts, gaming, advertising).
To be considered, Digital Catapult supports companies using advanced digital technologies including:
- Future networks and advanced digital infrastructure (internet of things including low powered wide area networks, NB-IoT, LIFI etc. and includes sensors, edge devices, wearables etc.)
- Immersive technologies – extended reality (virtual, augmented, mixed reality and haptics)
- Artificial intelligence and machine learning (natural language processing, machine vision, deep learning)
- Distributed ledger technologies (blockchain etc.)
- Quantum
Defining Pre-Seed & Seed:
- Pre-Seed: Demonstrate that your business solves a customer problem. We expect that you kicked off your business with a small amount of funding. You are seeking funding that will help support your early product development. It’ll build the foundation of your business by funding an early team, operations, and the creation of a minimum viable product (MVP).
- Seed: focuses more on developing and proving that your customers want your product. Companies at this stage should have proven the key value of their product. We expect that you have received some early stage funding from either individual investors or an early stage venture capital fund. The purpose of seed funding is to help founders develop product-market fit, drive sales, and identify key growth strategies and enable opportunities to grow.
Creative Industries:
- Advertising and marketing
- Animation
- Architecture
- Arts and culture
- Crafts
- Design
- Fashion
- Film, TV and video
- Games
- Publishing
- Music and radio
- Visual art and photography