Guest Blog, Find your community: the importance of collaboration for early-stage startups, by Sustainable Ventures
The NWBLT have been working with partners to explore how we accelerate the growth and funding of ambitious start ups in the North West. In this guest blog from Sustainable Ventures, we hear about the importance of collaboration, a key enabler identified in the ‘Wired for Growth’ Playbook.
The life of an entrepreneur can be challenging, especially when starting out with your first venture. It’s a steep learning curve with questions and hurdles at every turn along the way – and that can be overwhelming at times. But if there’s one piece of advice we can provide, it’s to surround yourself with like-minded, purpose-driven people and businesses.
With over a decade of building climate tech startups, Sustainable Ventures (SV) have learned that fostering a community makes a huge difference. We set up our first coworking space in 2015, with the goal of bringing together entrepreneurs in the sustainability and climate-tech space. Surrounding ourselves with other founders operating in the sector enabled the sharing of knowledge, experiences and contacts, as well as our goals and aspirations for how commercial innovations can help address climate change. Since then, we’ve developed four consecutive coworking spaces across London, resulting in our County Hall HQ, which now houses Europe’s largest cluster of climate tech businesses, and our fast-emerging plans for the North,
centred on Manchester.
The benefits of being co-located with other sustainable businesses goes far beyond just sharing office space. For founders, and their teams, there are huge benefits to sharing a space with those working on similar challenges and dedicating their time to building solutions. As well as both serendipitous and curated networking and collaboration opportunities provided through co-location, these businesses can also directly benefit from being part of a wider integrated ecosystem of over 500 climate-focused organisations.
Startup communities are spaces to share knowledge, advice and support one another. Particularly in the early days, you might not have a dedicated office space, and be working irregular hours, either in isolation or with a co-founder or two. By joining a community, your support network is amplified, with the opportunity to engage with people and businesses that are at identical stages of their development, and facing similar challenges.
The startups in SV’s community share advice on anything from how to prevent burnout, to the
sustainable accountants or pension schemes that they’ve used. Some startups have shared workshop facilities, and of course everyone is always happy to catch up over coffee.
Recommendation: select a community that reflects your mission and your work. Whether you go for a sector specific workspace or an online group, surrounding yourself with people that understand your work will benefit you most.
Communities are widely acknowledged as breeding grounds for collaboration, particularly in the world of sustainability where everyone is working towards a shared purpose. Actively seek collaboration and you’ll be surprised how often people are willing to pitch in and work on collaborative projects.
We’ve seen organisations collaborate and cross-sell in countless ways; co-creating products, sharing market research, and leveraging collective action on campaigns and policy making. Our B2C companies are particularly great for gifting products for fellow members to use in speaking engagements and events.
Recommendation: the most unexpected collaborations are often the most successful. Just because you work in renewable energy and your neighbour works in sustainable packaging solutions, it doesn’t mean you won’t have things in common. Particularly in the climate/net zero space, you’ll often find crossover – be it with your investor base or your supply chain. Reach out and connect with as many people in the community as you can and see what sticks!
Knowledge is power; learn from other people who have been on the same journey. You can avoid obstacles that your fellow entrepreneurs have already faced, helping you to grow your business faster with less bumps along the road. As part of a community, we are able to bring together and share knowledge to enable all of our businesses to scale faster. We’ve seen established organisations help to amplify early stage teams in the same sector, sharing knowledge on their investor-base and connections within the industry.
Recommendation: Get involved in community networking events. This is a great chance to meet people from the community in an informal setting. You’ll be pleasantly surprised by the connections you make and how many people you already know in the space.
Hannah Robinson & Andrew Ruffler, Sustainable Ventures