The University of Glasgow’s RISE@UofG founders’ club for entrepreneurs launched at the Advanced Research Centre with an insightful panel event attended by 75 participants in-person and online.

RISE stands for Research, Innovation, Spin-out /Start-up, Entrepreneurship – and has been established to promote and enhance entrepreneurship across campus and beyond.

RISE@UofG chair Stephen Holmes said the launch event was a great success that had given those present a real insight into the issues, challenges and incentives for anyone contemplating taking their ideas or research along a commercial route.

The occasion also generated understanding and appreciation of a mutually supportive and informative founders’ network that would be an asset and ally in the University’s increasing activity around the innovation space.

Stephen said: “The RISE@UofG launch event was a great success thanks mainly to our fantastic speakers, the support team, and to the audience who joined us in-person and on-line.

“The experiences that the speakers told us about shone a light on the challenges faced by entrepreneurs as they spin-out and start up enterprises. The panel discussion with its associated audience poll was engaging and has provided us with a lot of data to analyse and build on this as we develop the offering that RISE@ provides.

“The launch is the first in a series of events that will cover topics that are most relevant to would be and early stage founding entrepreneurs.”

The expert panel was made up of Joe O’Keeffe, a serial entrepreneur and founder of InfiniLED, a MicroLED display technology company acquired by Facebook in 2016, and SensL, a sensor technology firm acquired by ONSemi; and entrepreneur Shireen Davies, the CEO and co-founder of University spin-out SOLASTA Bio, who holds an Honorary Professorship at the University of Glasgow and is an elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

They were joined by Dr Rebecca Cleary, co-founder of University MedTech spin-out Nami Surgical, and Dr Connor Blair, chief scientific officer and co-founder of pre spin-out Disruptyx Therapeutics Ltd.

Each set out the qualities required of anyone embarking on the entrepreneurial journey, Joe speaking about the need for people to be able “to sell, sell, sell”, whether in terms of product or in terms of themselves, and also the need to remain optimistic and focused on the goal.

Shireen said the pathway for entrepreneurs was a steep learning curve and involved long hours and periods of intense focus on the project.

Rebecca spoke about the demands of setting up a company and the obstacles she had to overcome, while Connor said learning or having good business acumen was an essential requirement for the successful entrepreneur.

RISE@UofG was set up in recognition of the challenges involved in successful navigation of the commercialisation journey, and the lack of accessible peer support despite the availability of significant untapped talent of successful entrepreneurs within the University.

To get in touch with the team or to find out more email the team at rise-founders@glasgow.ac.uk and visit the club’s website here and join the LinkedIn group here.