Empowering Founders to Start Up and Thrive

Virgin StartUp exists to help founders start and scale early-stage businesses in the UK. Over the past 10 years we’re proud to have partnered with The British Business Bank to deliver the Start Up Loans programme.

Through this programme we’ve worked with tens of thousands of aspiring founders around the UK and provided business advice, funding and mentoring to help more than 5,000 founders start up.

Last week, we announced our?5,000th funded founder?– Bex Gunn , co-founder of The Worst Girl Gang Ever Foundation – which marked a significant milestone for Virgin StartUp.?But that's just the tip of the iceberg. We’re proud that over the years, we’ve worked with the founders of many more inspiring businesses and brands like: BYBI Beauty , Castore , Change Please | B Corp Certified , DASH Water , Denzel's , Minor Figures , Oddbox , and UpCircle , among many more.

From relatively humble beginnings, these founders have gone on to build businesses that have created thousands of jobs, have raised hundreds of millions in investment and have a positive impact on the communities within which they operate and the broader economy.?

Thanks to our partnership with The British Business Bank, we’ve been able to support and fund founders who, in many cases, wouldn’t have had the opportunity to get their business idea off the ground.

We’re therefore delighted to announce that moving forward, we’ll be working more closely with The British Business Bank to support more founders at even greater scale.?

Effective immediately, we now have access to ￡18m in Start Up Loan funding per year—tripling the previous amount of ￡6m. With these increased funds at our disposal, we’ll be looking to fund between 1,200 – 1,500 new start-ups per year moving forward.?

So, if you’re thinking of starting a business – whether it’s a side hustle or a full-time thing – or whether you’re running a business that has been trading for up to 3-years and you’re looking for funding and support, you can?check out our website?for more details on how to apply.

Alongside supporting more founders, we’ll be continuing with our?50:50 Pledge?– our commitment to help fund an equal number of women and men – whilst also continuing to instil in founders the belief that you can?combine purpose with profit?and help change business for good.

Here's to the next chapter of entrepreneurial success and to empowering the next 5,000 founders to start up and thrive.