Digital Catapult Black Founders Programme

What is the Business Support?

The Black Founders Programme is a 13-week accelerator targeted at pre-seed or seed stage, Black founded companies creating innovative products and services in the creative industries.

The aim of the programme is to fast track high-growth potential startups from a business and investment perspective, providing the support needed to increase their investment readiness level.

Sony Music UK and Sony Music Publishing UK are collaboration partners for this programme and will play an active role in supporting business growth & facilitating connections where possible.

Digital catapult held a briefing webinar on 17 June to give an overview of the programme and the application process. To watch it, click here.

Restrictions

In order to be eligible for the programme, applicants must meet the following criteria:

• UK based pre-seed and seed stage companies in the creative deep tech sector
• Applicants looking to raise investment in the next 12 months
• Applicants must have at least one founder that self-identifies as Black or multiracial with Black heritage
• Are currently working within the creative space (for example music, arts, gaming and advertising)
• Applicants must be eligible to receive £20,000 in State Assistance (De Minimis Aid)

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

How to find out more?

To find out more click here.