OX1 Incubator nurtures aspiring entrepreneurial talent, providing a platform for building start-ups at university.

A start-up incubator founded by students, for students.

OX1 understands and caters for the needs of student entrepreneurs far better than current university or college-led support systems. We have created an incubator programme which is effectively structured to support the early stages of founding a start-up.

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We do not take equity or IP, and provide end-to-end support throughout the process of start-up foundation. In addition to the incubator programme, we run social events and have established a strong alumni network of student entrepreneurs and mentors. This provides support to
the start-ups which develop in OX1 Incubator and enables them to continue to develop beyond our programme.

How It Works

Stage 1 - Team Formation

We invite students to apply to the OX1 Incubator programme if they have an idea for a start-up or key skills (whether technical or ‘soft skills’) but no idea for a start-up. Following a selection process and team formation event, we support team formation based on complementary skill sets.

Stage 3 - Demo Day

The start-ups pitch their ideas to a panel of investors, CEOs and members of the Oxford entrepreneurship community. The ideas are scored on their novelty, market and scalability, profitability and feasibility by our judges. The best start-ups receive financial investment from OX1 Incubator in the form of grants.

Stage 2 - Mentorship and Workshop Program

We hold a 12-week programme to develop students’ start-ups from an ideas-stage to investment-ready. CEOs and investors run workshops on 3 core areas: ‘idea validation’, ‘build’ and ‘growth’. Mentors are allocated based on students’ ‘problem statement’ and target market.

Our Partners