Guernsey Venture Challenge 2023 Winners - Where are they now?
The second Guernsey Venture Challenge took place in 2023, with local businesses Three Brain Training, Cloud Wealth, The Fund Society, WXplr, Stage Portal, C-Section UK, KIWI and Petlearnia selected for the six-week accelerator programme. They covered a range of industry sectors, including EdTech, EventTech and FinTech. The pitch night saw a tough competition after questions and consideration from the judging panel - made up of Charles Mindenhall, Co-Founder of Blenheim Chalcot, Fiona Bateson, Director of Guernsey Community Foundation, Marc Cohen, Sole Partner at unbundled vc and Paul Wilkes, Co-Founder of Osney Capital. At the end of the evening, the third prize of £10,000 was awarded to Stage Portal, and Petlearnia and C-section UK were announced as joint winners of the first prize, being awarded £30,000 each.
A year on, we caught up with two of our 2023 winners to see where their entrepreneurial journey has taken them since triumphing at the pitch night.
C Section UK
Joint First Place Winner of 2023 Guernsey Venture Challenge Founder Victoria HolyoakTell us about C-Section UK:
C-Section UK is a female-focused digital education platform supported by AI, for women having c-section births. We're disrupting the birthing market and promoting digital solutions that cater to the growing number of c-section mums who are desperately looking for information and guidance. Through a combination of courses and our vision for Milly the Midwife (our AI midwife) supporting women, as it becomes increasingly more difficult to access a midwife, we're determined to change the world - one c-section birth at a time.
How has your entrepreneurial journey been since winning in 2023?
It's been such an exciting time of growth for c-sectionUK since winning the Guernsey Venture Challenge in 2023. The mentor sessions allowed us to step back and get a higher-level look at what big problems we were solving and the quickest way to reach our target market.
We learnt to approach our KPIs with more strategy and have continued this approach as we've grown throughout the year. It's been a bit of a rollercoaster throughout 2023, with a steep success curve - but with the guidance from the Digital Greenhouse and the Guernsey Venture Challenge, we've always had someone to turn to for a little encouragement or advice when needed!
Have you got any milestones you would like to share?
We're really excited to share that we are collaborating with NHS Chelsea and Westminster Trust on a quality improvement project for c-section births. We were also kindly invited onto the Global Growth Programme with Blenheim Chalcott and we'll be continuing to work alongside some of our Key commercial partnerships into the new year.
What would you say to founders looking to apply for the next Guernsey Venture Challenge?
Go for it! It's so easy to doubt yourself, but set the imposter syndrome aside and do it! The process will encourage you to reexamine your approach to business and you'll learn so much about growth and strategy. No matter the outcomes, it will be a huge addition to your learning and development as a business lead.
PetLearnia
Joint First Place Winner of 2023 Guernsey Venture Challenge Founder Joanna Corder
Stage Portal
Second Place Winner of 2023 Guernsey Venture Challenge Co Founders Ben & Dave WrattenTell us about Stage Portal:
Stage Portal is a subscription-based platform, sitting as a central hub for live event management. Our mission is to give everyone in the industry, no matter what size or scale, the tools to bring to life the world's greatest events. The platform brings together key event management functions, standardised artist and venue information and crew resources, enabling the powerful automation of complex time-consuming tasks.
What aspects of the Guernsey Venture Challenge Programme have stuck with you the most and why?
Being part of the Guernsey Venture Challenge really helped us accelerate our venture, this was in two parts. Firstly the mentorship we received helped us refine and test a roadmap for both the development of the Stage Portal platform and the business as a whole, this really helped us as once the programme was over we had our plan of what to do next to continue building the business. Secondly, being part of a cohort of startup businesses was great, the group was really supportive of each other, and since the competition has finished we have all stayed in touch.
How has your entrepreneurial journey been since Guernsey Venture Challenge 2023?
As we mentioned over the course of the Guernsey Venture Challenge we had worked with our mentor to identify a clear roadmap and initial goals for the coming months so after winning third prize last year we began in that direction. This started with completing the work to publicly launch Stage Portal at the end of 2023 and starting to welcome our first clients onto the platform.
Since then we have been busy implementing our roadmap and go-to-market strategy, with some exciting developments being accepted onto the Microsoft Founders Hub, being founding members of the Music Technology UK Association and working alongside other Guernsey startups on the Global Growth Programme.
A major milestone of the last year was not only our acceptance into the Web Summit Alpha programme, where we stood out among 15,000 startups, but also securing a place on Websummit’s Startup Showcase which meant that Stage Portal had been accepted into the top 125 businesses from around the world and has been give the opportunity to present on stage at the conference.
What would you say to founders thinking of applying to the next Guernsey Venture Challenge?
We would encourage any founders to consider applying for the Guernsey Venture Challenge. The experience we had over the summer with our mentor helped us so much, being able to get their input and bounce ideas off of someone outside of the business was amazing.
