Digitalisation of K20

Week 3: 

+100 involved in virtual workshops 

1 All Hands 

1-2-1's x 31hours 

2 Silent Disco’s 

Three weeks ago our space in Bush House acted as a second home to over 60 entrepreneurially minded founders and their teams. Today, our like-minded community is still thriving in a new online environment, adjusting to new daily routines whilst courageously navigating this period of uncertainty. Each day they’re strengthening their resilience, developing innovative means of adapting, frequently changing priorities and demonstrating continued perseverance and community cohesion. 

Our migration from a physical to a digital Accelerator programme has been seamless, much to the credit of our King’s20 community and the surrounding eco-system of individuals and organisations that provide invaluable support throughout our 12-month programme. We have set up virtual coffees to provide much needed advice to our founders in how to navigate these uncertain times most immediately and over the coming months.

Our longstanding passion for nurturing entrepreneurial mindsets has been pivotal to how we’ve adapted and continued to support and engage our extended community in times of crisis. Like most, we’ve utilised technology to continue to operate a sense of normality, some examples of how we are functioning under this ever-changing environment include: 

· Continued light-hearted and informal discussions amongst our growing list of Slack #channels (#Donutmeetups included – fortnightly meetings between randomly selected individuals)

· A weekly ‘All Hands’ meeting via Zoom, an open discussion of weekly priorities alongside a friendly “wave”(where almost all have adopted a ‘camera on’ mode!)

· Regular ‘office hours’ with our Experts in Residents, championing virtual coffees and one-to-one discussions on business challenges

· Virtual workshops as the new ‘norm’, an outstanding way of integrating our micro-communities across King’s. We’ll also be hosting collaborative workshops with our friends over at Imperial College London and UCL.

Believe it or not, re-establishing ‘old fashioned’ forms of communication have come hand-hand with the use of innovative technology. Our Operations Coordinator, Katherine took pen to paper and sent handwritten notes as a pick-me-up for those in our community. A Telephone Tree is in circulation to encourage informal conversations and vital check-ins on mental well-being.

During such times it would be easy to retreat and disconnect, however, the Entrepreneurship Institute has invested a significant amount of time into fostering a sense of community to ensure we remain connected. Our ventures and Startup’s in Residents have risen to the challenge of ensuring the growth of our online community through weekly silent disco’, games evenings and daily hosted ‘Tea & Biscuit sessions’.

Over the next few weeks, we will navigate these uncertain times, together, as a community. We know it won’t last forever and we’ll be sharing pooled knowledge to benefit the wider startup eco-system.