Ready to use your start-up, scale-up and entrepreneurship skills to build a mission-driven venture with Zinc?
Get up to £300k investment
We are looking to invest in 50 founders to build mission-led businesses at Zinc to improve the health of people and/or the planet.
Is the Zinc Venture Builder for me?
We're looking for talented individuals who are one of the following:
You are an expert in the mission area
You have expertise and deep insight into an important problem in health or the environment that you believe has a commercial opportunity
You are a business or technical expert
You are ready to use your commercial, product or technical expertise to build and scale a mission-led startup in health or environment
You are a spin-out leader
You have already developed innovative deep tech or deep science with the potential for high impact in this mission space
What happens when you join the Zinc Venture Builder?
Phase 1: Creating your business
To create your new business, Zinc provides you with:
- £13,200 stipend to each founder for 6 months
- Access to a curated group of potential co-founders
- Support from the Zinc team and 100+ Visiting Fellows
- Executive coaching on your personal journey
- Support of an immediate cohort of 50 founders all building new ventures
- Access to the processes, content and partnerships you need to build your venture
Phase 2: Launch your venture
After 4 to 6 months we will have the opportunity to invest in your new venture. If we share your conviction in the vision and the team, we will back the launch of your new venture with:
Capital:
£300,000 investment in your venture, comprising:
- £150,000 initial investment
- £150,000 follow-on investment in your next funding round
Support:
Intensive support over the next 6 to 12 months to accelerate your venture, building the product, getting traction, winning funding and extending the team.
Do you have what it takes to build a business that will impact the lives of millions of people?
We are looking to invest in 50 founders to build mission-led businesses at Zinc to improve the health of people and/or the planet.
Because we believe that missions are a powerful way to mobilise the most talented and driven people in the world to come together to design, build and scale new breakthrough solutions that solve real huge societal problems.
The Zinc Venture Builder is a full-time, 12-month platform that exists to build brand-new, commercial, mission-driven companies that tackle the biggest social challenges.
Zinc Venture Builder in numbers:
Avg. age of 38
50% women
40% people of colour
500+ founders supported
What makes a successful Zinc Founder?
Ambition
Successful Founders can demonstrate their ambition, drive and resilience to continue to scale this business for the next 5-10 years of their life. They are able to motivate themselves and others around them to keep going when things get tough.
Clear Spike
The most successful Founders have a strong set of skills, relevant to the mission, that would appeal to other talented people in the cohort. They can sell themselves as an individual, as well as sell the strength and ability of their skills as a potential co-founder.
Mission obsessed
Successful founders at Zinc are fully committed to tackling the mission for the Venture Builder. They are frustrated by problems in the current mission and are keen to help solve them. They can demonstrate passion and motivation to be the person who leads large-scale change in this space.
User focused
Successful Founders are laser focused on their end users with the ability to think creatively about how to solve a problem that crucially – users want to be solved. They have the experience (personal and/or professional) to create effective change in this area.
What does Zinc offer?
We help you find your co-founder. Get access to expert support. Build a scalable business. Invest in you and support you to raise follow-on capital. All with Zinc.
At Zinc, more than 50% of the founders we back are women, and 85% of our portfolio companies are founded by all-women teams or co-founded by a woman. Beyond capital, our support includes mentorship, coaching, knowledge-sharing and access to a solid network of VCs, domain experts and ex-founders who share the same values as us.