How do incubators and accelerators support start-ups?

Our campaign Unis Start Up the UK reports that the number of student and staff start-ups increased by 70% between 2014-15 and 2022-23. One reason for this is an increase in the support that universities offer to people who want to start their own businesses. 

Increasingly, university programmes are taking start-up founders through a journey from idea to product – or service – to company growth through incubators and accelerators. This directly leads to job creation and economic growth across all regions where universities are found.

University incubators are programmes that help start-up founders at the earliest stages of business develop their ideas and products, build out their teams and navigate difficult challenges. No two incubators are the same, but typically they offer specialised tools and advice, access to office space, business education, mentorship opportunities, and community networking events.

Incubators can be virtual, bringing people across regions together online, but they often rely on a physical space. The design of this space is important – it should create a sense of community and allow students and staff to work together creatively. Incubators are frequently located on campus, sometimes close to a university’s business school, helping embed entrepreneurship into the curriculum.

Incubators typically cover some of the costs for early-stage businesses, which means they are reliant on funding from Higher Education Innovation Funding (HEIF). The flexibility of HEIF allows universities to allocate money towards incubator and accelerator programmes which have civic impact.

Incubation is just the first stage of the start-up journey. Once start-ups are ready to pitch to investors, they are invited to participate in accelerator programmes, which specialise in helping businesses secure external investment such as seed funding. Accelerators operate on a much shorter timeline than incubators. For this reason, they tend to be more targeted and may require start-ups to have already tested their product.

The accelerator process can be intense for participating start-ups. Unlike programmes run by industry, university accelerators typically offer greater wrap-around business support. At some universities, incubator and accelerator programmes are linked, operating from the same spaces and with the same staff. Where a start-up is struggling with acceleration, these staff can go back to basics, re-building the founder’s confidence in incubation principles.

For some universities, accelerators are located off-campus, in the local city-centre or science park. Not only can this physical relocation represent growth for student start-ups – a sense of graduation and moving onwards and upwards – but accelerators off-campus allow universities to open their doors to a wider group of people. Off-campus accelerators are more likely to support non-university businesses and entrepreneurship in the local community.

The amount of incubator and accelerator programmes nearly doubled between 2017 and 2023. Eight years ago, NESTA identified 390 incubators and accelerators across the UK. As of May 2023, the Centre for Entrepreneurs reported over 700 incubators and accelerators, supporting an estimated 19,600 firms each year.

According to the Centre for Entrepreneurs, there are 269 university-affiliated incubators and accelerators across the UK. Crucially, the support for start-ups is more widely spread across the UK than before. While the largest concentration for business support is in London, there are now incubators in every region of England as well as across Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales.