University of Southampton highlights new wave of student founders at showcase event

Eight student ventures will be presented at the University of Southampton’s Founder Showcase, joined by keynote speaker Jim Cregan of Jimmy’s Iced Coffee.

The University of Southampton will host its Student Founder Showcase on October 15 at Studio One, Mayflower Studios, featuring pitches from eight student-led ventures alongside a keynote from alumnus Jim Cregan.

The event is free to attend and open to students, staff, local businesses, and members of the public.

Student enterprise at Southampton

The showcase is part of the university’s Student Enterprise Team, which supports students in developing business ideas through programs including the ten-week Foundership Program. Participants receive mentorship, desk space at the Student Enterprise Junction, and equity-free prize funding supported by alumni donations. The initiative sits within Southampton’s wider entrepreneurial ecosystem that also includes Future Worlds, SETsquared, and the University Science Park.

The eight founders are recent participants in the Foundership Program. Their businesses range from stationery designed to support neurodivergent and neurotypical users, to London’s first white-label branding platform for barbers, to gymwear designed around personal resilience. Other ventures include a women’s empowerment platform, a motion design business, an FPV videography service, an AI-integrated project operations tool for the construction sector, and a psychology-based clinical trial consultancy.

Alumni and keynote contributions

Alongside the current cohort, past Foundership participants will return to share their experiences. Jamie Horsnell and Sam Aaron, founders of procurement platform mytender.io, secured undergraduate investment from Fuel Ventures earlier this year. Til Jordan, founder of Bloctopus, also joins the lineup following a seed round led by Hivemind Capital.

Sara Campin, Student Enterprise Consultant at the University of Southampton, says: “It's been an honor to work with this year’s cohort of student founders over the past 10 weeks. Our aim during the Foundership is to provide promising student founders with the support, skills, space, and dedicated time to take their business ideas and turn them into successful, viable businesses.”

Eromeo Quintus, founder at Branded Barber, explained that the program “has been one of the most valuable experiences of my time at university. Over 10 weeks, it has significantly developed my entrepreneurial mindset, equipped me with highly transferable skills, and provided insights that will continue to benefit both me and my business. I can't recommend it enough.”

Vladi Popova, founder at VMP Operations, added that the scheme “gave me the tools and confidence to take an idea I’d been nurturing for months and shape it into a real, scalable business. Along the way, it connected me with mentors, peers, and opportunities I would never have reached on my own and helped me turn my research into a business and my ambition into a plan.”

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