THE VFS MISSION
VFS stimulates the South’s innovation ecosystem.
We do it by working with key partners and influencers to deliver a year round programme and an annual Festival of Innovation that showcases the South’s talent, innovative companies and research capabilities through bringing together innovators, entrepreneurs and funders.
Its objectives are to…
- Build the reputation of the Venturefest South region as a great place to innovate and scale
- Signpost resources, information, partners, sponsors and ideas that growing companies need most
- Offer young entrepreneurs an inspirational platform
- Help established businesses explore ways to scale up
- Give primes or anchor organisations a way to engage with SME and innovation supply chain
- Provide early stage businesses zero cost promotional opportunities to share their ideas and innovations
- Bring interesting people together in interesting ways
- Deliver value to our core audience by bringing them together
It's a partner, sponsor and exhibitor led and funded program
Venturefest South (VFS) was the first within the Venturefest network to privately fund itself and is now considered a shining example of how Venturefest should run. The partners are proud of what has been achieved and invest money and time into what has become a rapidly growing network and the region’s most hotly anticipated innovation and entrepreneurial event. The partners’ seed fund the programme and then encourage additional partners, sponsors and exhibitors to join them in their mission. All money invested into VFS goes directly towards running the programme and showcase event. This provides the south’s most interesting innovators’ zero-cost opportunity to promote their ideas.
How we make it happen
Venturefest South is a not for profit initiative made up of people, organisations and businesses which recognise the innate value of engaging with, and investing in the south’s innovation and entrepreneurial ecosystem. Venturefest South expresses itself in three ways:
- A board of influence which advises, drives and champions VFS and the innovation agenda.
- An ongoing programme of inspiration to share and promote events and insight of value to the key audiences.
- The annual showcase event where we celebrate all that is great about our innovation ecosystem and promote the people, businesses, organisations and ideas that make it tick.
An ongoing programme of inspiration.
We curate, promote and share a year round programme of events and information driven by our partners, sponsors and board members. The programme signposts our audience to relevant content to help them. VFS actively promotes activities and creates its own pushing them out through its channels to the fast growing network.
- Partner Rumble events
- News, information and updates from partners, sponsors, exhibitors, innovators which is shared online and through email
- Key resources, guides and insights targeting our audiences
- Opportunities for our audience: e.g. funds, supply chain
Who is VFS for?
Early stage innovators and entrepreneurs with the ambition to grow
“We’ve got a great idea that’s new or not on the market and have huge ambitions to grow it, shape it and build it into a proposition of value”
Established businesses or IP that are ready to grow and scale up, with the capacity to collaborate
“We’ve been doing it a while and are good at it but we need to scale our idea beyond its current capability. We are searching for ways to scale up and take things to the next level.”
Large scale anchor organisations looking to innovate and engage
“We want to meet new talent that could play a part in our success, open our eyes to new ideas from new audiences and help us get closer to the innovators and SMEs that could make something new happen.”
In addition, we play host to a wide ranging network of interested parties and influencers including: business support, larger support organisations, media, investors, education, financial and funding, development, technology and the creative sector.
The annual showcase event
The jewel in the crown of our activity is the annual showcase. It’s designed to bring interesting people together in an interesting way and has built in size and success year on year. It is now a hotly anticipated and well attended event.