 Thank you. Before we start I just wanted to give you an overview of the event today. So I'll give a brief introduction about the Unfound Accelerator. I'll then introduce our excellent panel that will be followed by the team pitches and then we will conclude with voting on how to distribute £10,000 which have been provided by the Corruptive Bank as a prize fund and you as an audience will help us decide how to share that money amongst the teams. It is quite a complex event because we have a lot of panelists, a lot of people that have to speak so please please be patient with us as we manage the logistics of this event but hopefully everything will run smoothly. We are running it as a webinar so as participants you do not appear on video and we are recording this event. So before I start I imagine that some of our audience is quite new to the Corruptive Movement and to platform co-ops more generally so I thought I would start with just a description of what we mean by platform co-ops. There is no predefined official definition of a platform co-op. This is a definition that we have found quite useful to describe it. So a platform co-op is a democratically owned and controlled business that uses an online platform or a mobile app to trade, connect people and pull resources or data. Now just to make this a bit more real I'd like to share some examples of platform co-ops that we have supported in the past before this accelerator. Equal Care Co-op is a platform co-op for providers and receivers of care and it allows people to book care support via the platform. The receivers and the providers of care are all controlled democratically the organization and own the business and the platform. Signalized is a platform from British Sound Language Translators and for Deaf people who also control democratically the organization and own the business. Another interesting platform that also has an international dimension to it is the Open Food Network which promotes the creation of ethical food supply chains and provides a shop front for ethical farmers and ethical food shops and who are all members and control the business. And we're really excited now to share six new emerging platform co-ops who have participated in this accelerator. So what is the Unfound Accelerator? The Unfound Accelerator is a business support program for a cohort of six teams at the early stage of setting up their platform cooperative. And I want to emphasize early stage because that's where we decided to focus this accelerator. For those that are really at the idea phase and they're eager to transform that into a business but they're not yet incorporated. And so the the requirements for for applying to the accelerator was first of all that they had a team in place because obviously for a cooperative you can only set it up with a minimum of two or three people that they had an idea and believe that the cooperative model worked for them and that they the principles and the values of the cooperative model aligned with their business idea. However we didn't expect them to have a complete understanding of all the legal forms and implications of setting up a cooperative and that they were looking to register in the UK within the end of the year. The content of the accelerator covered cooperative structures and ways of working, business planning and strategy, product development and brand and marketing. And the way it was structured was up to now what the teams have attended are 10 master classes which were 10 full days of classes held once a week by experts on each topic. We're now at the pitch event where the teams will be pitching their business idea to this this online event and where they have a chance to win part of the 10,000 prize fund provided by the cooperative bank. After this pitch event they will have one-to-one support with experts on specific issues that they want to dig deeper in. And so I just want to emphasize that they're reaching this pitch having followed all the master classes received on the information but they still need to have one-to-one support to dig deeper into defining exactly what their legal structure is and their financial forecasting etc. So just bear that in mind. Now I would really like to emphasize that there are two accelerators running this year. So this is the pitch event for the first accelerator but we are already accepting applications for the second edition that will run in the autumn and applications, the window for application closes on the 28th of July. So if after this event you think that the accelerator might be for you or for anyone that you know please share information about the accelerator because we're really eager to hear about your ideas. So how will the day run today? I will briefly introduce our panelists. After that we will hear from each team who will present their business idea. We will then have a Q&A with the panelists. So only the panelists will get a chance to ask questions to the teams. However we really would like to get as much interaction from the audience as possible. So please use the chat to ask questions to the teams that each team has one person who will be following carefully the chat and answering your questions. We'll be also pasting a form in the chat where you can select the team that you would like to connect with and you can use that either to offer supporting kind or suggestions for their business idea etc. So please do use that if you want to provide your contact details for example to a specific team. We will then vote on how to distribute the money. You will get the chance to rank your top three preferences and then we will announce the winners. So I would like now to introduce our panelists. So Leila if you would like to start adding them to the Zoom. So we have Rose Mali our CEO at Corruptors UK. Catherine Douglas Managing Director for SME at the Corruptive Bank and Marta Bryant founder of Big Revolution that supports tech companies. So I'll pass it on to Rose if you want to say a few words and then Catherine and Martin. Thank you for being here. Thank you Bika. Thank you for all your hard work and this really put an area of cooperative development. I'm really excited to see if you're not least because the amount of people joining us today on this live pitch session that we've done for the first time but actually there's two specific reasons. One is that the cooperative principles I should sorry just Bika did say I'm the CEO of Corruptors UK and we're based in Manchester and operate nationally. But I'm fairly used to the role I started in 2021 but one of the reasons that I really wanted to work more closely with the movement to support and deliver greater awareness of cooperatives is because of platform co-ops. I absolutely believe that they are the future of business, the principles of cooperation particularly around one member, one vote and how that works really well with tech in enabling this kind of choice and decision making for both suppliers and you know the members themselves it's really really exciting. So I do believe cooperative platforms are the future of business and I really do believe that you are the new pioneers of the movement. So the second reason I am really excited to be here is to see you know we met you at some of these organisations 10 weeks ago and it's just going to be great to see how the ideas have developed and enabled and I'm really really looking forward to hearing next steps for you all. So thank you very much for inviting me to judge and I'm looking forward to seeing the results. Thank you. Welcome and thank you Rose and Catherine would you like to go next and introduce yourself? Yes certainly so hi everybody I'm Catherine Douglas I'm the managing director for S&E at the cooperative bank and like Rose I'm really excited to be here this evening it's great and I'm looking forward to seeing how your ideas have really developed and since we met you a few weeks ago and at the cooperative we're really sort of keen to support other cooperatives it's just why we really enjoy working alongside cooperatives UK and the Hive and I think these kind of support programmes are really fundamental so which is great to be part of it all and see you all again tonight thank you. Thank you Catherine thank you for being here and Martin over to you. Hi yeah so most of my work is with VC backed companies who are you know a typical small little startup who wants a big exit and just focus on growth and making a nice exit for a handful of investors and that's fine but I think there's room for a lot more in terms of variety in tech and new ways of making for a more equitable and interesting approach to the internet and fair and all of that wonderful stuff and I've coming from the north of England I've got that kind of cooperative spirit running through my blood and my DNA somehow so when I first heard about this programme a few months ago I thought it sounded fantastic and really was very interested to learn about platform co-ops and yeah looking forward to seeing what everyone's got to offer today. Thank you very much Martin for being here okay so we are going to start with the pictures now um so the first team we have Saida from WeGuild who will be presenting welcome Saida over to you. Hello hello thank you very much you all I'm just going to start sharing my screen and start my presentation straight away uh okay can everyone see and hear me properly yes okay amazing so here we go my name is now yes my name is Saida Palma and I am a freelance dance teacher based in London early last year my teaching went fully online but my laptop was 10 years old and couldn't handle zoom calls I had some savings but not enough for a new laptop and I was very worried about the uncertainty of the situation I shared my issue with some friends and they chipped in for me with their help and my savings I got a new laptop and started teaching Zoom after that they saved my source of income for months to come not to mention the sense of community and gratitude that I go from the gesture humans are naturally inclined to help each other we enjoy helping others and being helped can be materially and emotionally vital so we ask ourselves how do we share this sense of support among a wider group of people could we use technology to create networks of financial mutual aid could technology enhance solidarity there are over five million people in the UK who are self-employed or under zero hour contracts many forced into a geek economy of uncertain income without access to sick pay or other forms of financial cover not everyone has personal savings insurance or loans to cover financial thoughtfuls and additionally these options do not promote or enhance community and solidarity through the platform we are building you can build grassroots networks of financial mutual aid to help absorb financial blows such as equipment breaking or income loss due to sickness or injury by connecting with individuals you know and trust you can ask for help when you need it and you can donate when you are able we give will provide a collective alternative to individualistic band aids while maintaining personal freedom and judgment it will bring about a change in culture based on trust and transparency our first approach will be niching down to freelancers aiming to reach 10,000 users by 2023 anyone else is welcome to join the network of course at any point students part-time employees or groups of friends will also be able to use our platform and how does we guild work when you join we guild you link up with people that you know and trust they will be your network together with their respective trusted friends do you need help as for it the app distributes then the help request and everyone in your network can chip in to help you out if people in your network need help they can also ask for help and you can then chip in for them to keep things balanced we guild uses a color code to help you easily assess the state of your exchange it with your network means and goals are equally important to us that's why we guild only makes sense as a multi-stakeholder cooperative we want to be held accountable for our mission and be owned and run by our workers and users self-organized mutual aid groups have existed for centuries however until now there has not been a digital platform available to facilitate this form of peer-to-peer exchange in the uk we guild will fill this gap in the market due to the way it works friends forming trusted networks and inviting others we guild is a model with high scalability let's say kate successfully invites six of her friends and those friends invite an average of four each following a progression like this we should have passed 10 000 users by the end of 2023 with the three pounds monthly fee the platform would generate around 30 000 pounds per month of revenue with a base of 10 000 users in 2020 we developed and tested our fair first user interface prototype right now bearing the process of incorporating a multi-stakeholder cooperative in october 2021 this is this year we'll be launching a crowdfunding campaign with some important goals in mind validate the idea raise funds to develop the platform and enroll our first 100 users by mid 2022 we will have the first version of the web app available for new members and users so we can look forward to working even at 10 000 users at the moment we are a team of four resourceful people we live in a housing cooperative and have expertise in coding and ethical technology marketing and psychology arts and project management finance web and graphic design we all envision a world where cooperation and equality are the norm and not the exception we guild mainly needs two things the first one is exposure as our crowdfunding campaign is approaching we guild needs to reach as many people as possible so please subscribe to our newsletter you can find the link to our website on the chat and we also need support so if you like the project and you think you could contribute in some way get in touch please we guild chipping for each other thank you for your time thank you Zaida now Gudjelmo who is also from we guild will be answering questions from our panelists uh so Leyla if you want to bring the panelists on as well perfect thank you so Rose would you like to start if you have any comments or questions I absolutely do and thank you Zaida that was really succinct and clear and it's brilliant the way that you've developed and I believe incorporated through this period so congratulations well done really excited that you've joined the movement and I think what I really like about this is it taps into something that we all know who hasn't paid for a friend on a night out you know who hasn't given someone that extra 50 pence to get on the bus even someone you don't know because you can just see they need it and you've got it and you don't need it and and that is the solidarity and cooperation and I know you've not got the platform ready until 2020 but I'm wondering what have you done to test that instinctively I feel like this is a really strong idea but what have you done to test that well we've done user surveys uh to start with and at the same time we had a prototype that we tested as Zaida said in October and with that we tested the idea and not with the pavement mechanism but the information about the pavement is something that in the issue service that we carried out everyone said like we're happy about it of course ultimately we cannot really test until we have the prototype going with the payment system because that is the actual working of the of the platform but for that we need to incorporate to be able to connect the API of the payment mechanism to the actual software that we're developing at the moment so that's the answer your question it does thank you Catherine that's that's great thank you and I think again you know agree with Rosa a fabulous a fabulous idea you know really really like it have you done any validation of the idea though you know if you sort of spoke to many people about it see what kind of take-up you may get well we have already Facebook and Instagram uh with I feel like almost 300 people on Facebook a few hundred and like 150 on Instagram we have about I think 80 or 90 people on our newsletter and um and they actually reply we did a survey as well recently to check some ideas about the platform and there was a take up of I think 20 people replied on that um again the people who have so far replied they seem very positive about it but you know we don't want to be naive I mean ultimately the test of the actual product is what really will determine part of the crowdfunding campaign is a side asset market validation so that will also tell us a lot about whether this is something to really go you know full power or to think about maybe we need a bit of a new direction okay that's great thank you please Martin go ahead thank you I was just wondering who you consider your competitors to be because certainly I'd say there's probably something more along these lines in terms of existing online behavior in the US the idea of supporting other people through mcash and that kind of thing tends to be more of a thing that you see in in the states which may be testing the states and anything else but I just wondered if you have any idea of who you're competing against whether it's a particular existing online behavior or existing businesses well it depends on how you would use it I mean would you would use if you were to use wiggle to get things like um a sick buy or like to get some money to get an equipment I guess you could say whenever you're competing with the students companies maybe you're competing with with a bank to give you a loan for equipment maybe you are competing with in terms of the product itself there is nothing that would be competing at that I know that sounds very nice we have no competitors but it would depend on how you would be using it for in that respect yes you would have some competitors here and there and there depending on how people want to use it we are in the same way that we are niching down the the people that the users that we want to enroll first as self-employed that would come with it that would bring with it a niching down of what you use the platform would be for but eventually you know we would be happy for people to organize their own cultures as to what this should be used for it's up to people really does the answer I digress a bit thank you Guillermo and thank you for the panelists for your questions I think we can move on now to crystallizer with David thank you yes thank you let me just find my presentation here we can only see part of your slides at the moment how about that yes perfect I got there I got there right let's start at the beginning hello everybody and hello to friends who have joined on our invitation and to colleagues and panelists and hello panelists so crystallizer is is operating in South London in a small but very we hope impactful way I'm David Randall I'm co-chair of crystallizer a multi-stakeholder marketplace for community investment across the South London subregion so what's the problem that we're trying to we're trying to resolve I've got one problem we've got to resolve we've got to move people's names away from my notes because they are currently obscuring them there we go um in two words is economic stagnation it's the failed schemes and the budget cuts which show the traditional economic development to get us out of this mess just isn't working communities and the small business people and the self-employed that make up a large part of those communities are becoming systematically left behind much development which looks like economic development really isn't its organizations giving themselves a makeover its construction with no outreach or involvement with local SMEs and money is continuing to leave the local economy systematic flaws in local economic development are shown here on the left but what we need to do is move from the top two quadrants on the right where things are done to us or for us to the bottom two quadrants where things are done with us and bias this is where community wealth building and asset based community development is done and thank you to Cormac Russell for that slide so this is where we are we suffer the biggest budget cuts in London UK wide we won't get redressed with the Build Back Better policy and the self-employed are sitting with horrible incomes below minimum wage like £14,400 but here are seven people who are challenging this status quo so this is the crystallizer team and we cover a range of skills from finance to two operations making local activism activism platform architecture etc what do we want to do to improve things well we want to see more collaboration between the local buyers with deep pockets and those social value businesses operating or potentially operating in the local area we want to create jobs and employment and we want to do community wealth building using our digital platform that will bring us together our platform will fill a gap it will simplify the tendering process allowing anchor institutions to find social value SMEs this is something that they're experimenting with in in Birmingham and we're learning from them about that we'll motivate anchor institutions to to think hard about social value and how to maximize social value and we'll enable local SMEs to jointly bid on large contracts that are usually out of reach for them and here's some examples of the supply chain transformation that we want to do with our platform example one is a council wanting an event expert to run an award ceremony well we could help a freelancer to get that job a leisure center wants to open a cafe well we can help a local business to get them that contract and the NHS wants to build better technology for adult social care what a local technology consultancy can be part of that long-term project we can't do this on our own we need buy-in from the stakeholders in particular the SMEs and the local anchor institutions and social partners that support them and we have started consulting with them they do support us and they're waiting for the results of this accelerator to see what solution we come up with collaboration of this kind though does take time we're about three years into this what's the revenue model well we've got a diverse source of revenue we've got off-platform funding sources through donations of crowdfunding and on the platform well the SMEs will be paying a subscription and the anchor institutions will pay a bigger subscription but they'll pay something that we're tentatively calling a social value premium which is collected when the contracts pass through the platform and this premium is cash that can be used to reinvest in our community and its SMEs our action plan there are four phases in the next 12 months we start with two raise with one raise and then we do two phases and then another one which will be the major investment to finish building the platform and then we're going to do something exciting very exciting in in stage four which is to do something that few are doing even in community wealth building which is to allow citizens to have a direct say in how the social value premium this cash can be reinvested in things that they want to do we're going to scale up we're going to multiply because we think this platform can be used by other communities it will be open source software that other people could replicate internationally as well and to help us if you will we'll drop the the link into the chat we'd be very grateful if you could complete our survey we're continuing with our research and we'd like your participation thank you very much for listening and thank you Vika and the team for giving us this wonderful opportunity which we've enjoyed immensely thank you thank you David for that and I'll invite the panelists back over to you Rose if you have any questions yes please uh David and crystalize that if you fix this this will be so impressive it's a problem across the land isn't it and actually it's a problem that you know local authorities do want to fix and you know that that's my question really how in in London in the local authorities that you're talking to how how do you decide which have you got any idea of what kind of local authorities or what the drivers are at their end for those to be the right organizations but then also you know there's some great models across the UK Preston's particularly strong in some of these areas and might not have the tech to go with it but what learning are you doing from councils who are you know doing this uh doing this well maybe not necessarily through a tech platform thank you Rose well we're learning from Claes because Claes have been working with many of those councils that you've been talking about we're learning through the dialogue that we've already had with the with three local authorities in a little bit more detail for local authorities if you if you include one that we had a short meeting with they see the need for a third party organization like a platform that will enable the various parties to come together because what they don't want to do in a quite a disparate sort of political geographic and economic sort of setup they don't want any of them to be the one that has to coordinate everything they would like that to be done for them and they can see that this is um this is potentially something that they could support but we're really rose to be honest at the beginning of a very long journey and there's be a lot of dialogue a lot of input before we get there I think thank you Catherine I know that's great again you know if you can crack this one I think it would be a fantastic opportunity for a lot of people and a really great way of working I think really to be fair I was going to ask what kind of feedback you've had but I think you know you've answered that with Rose it's the beginning of a very long journey but you are getting some positive kind of feedback and acceptance is just something that they would like today so good luck thank you very much Catherine thank you Martin do you have any comments or questions I was interested in this because I did some work with a startup last year that is working in a similar basically the same space in a way helping companies with the intelligence about upcoming contracts, upcoming bids that they can get involved in and the kind of extra data they need to help submit a successful bid and one thing that came out of that was just the way that certain people are very good certain companies are very good at bidding for things and in the end it all tends to come down to price doesn't it and how so how are you support how will you support companies in winning these contracts when in the end it often comes down to the people with the scale to put in the lowest bid well we're borrowing from the community wealth building strategists who say that you know bidding for these tenders is not a charity play you've got to be fit to supply so the question is how do you get SMEs to a stage when they can be fit to supply well we can help them we can help with their financial property if they're too small in scale we can connect them with other SMEs so they can scale up a little bit and we can signpost where they can get access to business building funds I think that's the answer because they're not going to get this work unless they can actually do it you're right okay great thank you very much crystallizer and again thanks to the to the panelists we now move on to Colin with African Futurist Arts hi everybody let's get my screen going for a second great I'm Colin Charles and this is African Futurist Arts we're here to tackle inequality in the creative economy we're distributing movies and films and opportunities to people who are less connected to the creative economy which incidentally is worth generates two and a half trillion dollars a year now if you upload your work to one of the big platforms you're giving them the right to do what they like with it and as things stand value is flowing upstream to the giants well the great thing about digital platform is that wherever you are in the world that value can flow back down to you and we're here to try and help that happen let's have a look in our own small way when it comes to ideas unlike Netflix or Disney we're not charging a subscription to view we'll have advertising and we'll insist that the ads are made by our members so that they're as beautiful as the films not mind control ads driven by cookie data but advertising as art and and not a gig economy where people's work is is commoditized and traded at the lowest price but to compete with the ad agencies for high value work and we aim to protect our members intellectual property we aim to help through our platform also small tv stations to sell their productions to other small tv stations working with our membership to add value create trailers posters and graphics right now we've published two books and we've got two more in the pipeline books commissioned and produced by african futurist arts are sold a print on demand and we'll we'll scale up by building pre-orders we're reaching out to writers poets illustrators printers publishers and photographers we've also got a couple of films in the pipeline few films in the pipeline some of them are made some of them are in production and some of them are in development our primary audience is creative people they can both contribute to our platform and appreciate what's there in two months time we should be ready for our first event and that event will be a poetry contest a global poetry contest we've tested our prototype website and it's live right now africanfuturist.com and we aim to publicize this poetry contest through our own network and through research we're going to research art galleries and poetry societies in communities that we're interested in and we'll invite poets to film their poem on their phone for a prize of a thousand pounds this time next year we hope to have over 500 members we'll be happy if if we had a working ecosystem as well but we'd be content to be smaller we've built a team to do this and they're working in various areas commercial that's Rudy and and intellectual property finance and governance film production coordination tech strategy creative development and tech development web development all of this um with the with the values and principles of a cooperative it's early days so naturally we'll sense test and go along as we go along and most importantly we'll keep moving forwards instead with a large membership of creative people because building a business is really about building a community finally the global creative economy is huge and it's growing and your vote today and your support tomorrow could help level the playing field in a small way thank you for listening thank you Colin thank you Colin okay have i stopped sharing yes thank you and we're having our panelists join again Catherine would you like to go first now with questions is that okay yes certainly no so it sounds you know Colin I think it's very inspiring what you're trying to achieve and I think it's great that you're really trying to sort of get that global aspect in as well even though you know also with the focus well on the UK it sounds like as you and I think you said you know it's very very early sort of stages of where you're at what do you see sort of your biggest hurdles at the moment how are you going to overcome them um right now we're looking at uh being able to cope with a spike in in interest and we're looking at ways to piggyback off other platforms um we don't think we could build a platform that's strong enough I think we could accept a good number but a real big spike and then our our site falls down so we're really looking at that right now okay yeah and so is there any particular sites that you've already started to sort of work with explore um um uh no we're still looking at it okay thank you um Martin would you like to go next yes sure so yeah really interesting concept in terms of your ambition where do you see this what do you see this looking like in say five years time in five years time I think the main thing is there's lots of people out there who are who are working in a job they don't like or working in a job that doesn't earn them any money and and it would be great if creative people could think I'll give up my job and start doing what I love and um that wherever they were if they weren't near a big city um if they weren't near one of the big commercial centres they could still work with us thank you andros do you want to go next yeah Colleen just to let you know you'll see when you finish put some really brilliant comments on the chat for you so I'm just gonna um I'm gonna ask you always this question because it was something that I was also thinking about is about engaging the creative agencies in less connected economies and just a little bit more about um your income streams because you it's quite a challenge what you're trying to do enable it for everybody but you do still need to be sustainable um economically so it's just how you're going to manage that um challenge earlier okay what was quite interesting is that the the creative economy is growing at a rate and UNESCO is really looking at it and thinking it won't be long before it's 10% of our global economy and look at these advertising agencies they really need to step up and make sure they're providing serious jobs serious people so I think that the world is moving in that direction right now we're looking at 3% of the global economy which is a huge number already and uh people are also noticing people like UNESCO is that in the creative field uh it's 50 50 men and women also it really favors younger people and so this really works for for those other parts of the economy where where people can't really get in um I know you asked me a different question and so I say we've got a whole bunch of uh income streams um um one of them is through selling advertising and making sure that part of the money from that reaches our members but also where I said talking about uh small tv stations and us being a marketplace for tv programs uh where we can have in our platform we can have people who produce tv programs and also people who consume them and we feel like that we can add value and uh have an income stream from there really and Colin thank you I really do hope lots of people saying on here how needed it is for all creatives so if you disrupt them and break this market again it will be a very significant pioneering moment so thank you for your presentation Colin thank you Rose, Martin, Catherine and do answer there are lots of questions in the chat so do connect with people there over to you Red Brick Language School hi everybody welcome Bernie and Lucy over to you hi everybody I'm Bernie I'm a co-founder of Red Brick Language School it's an online English school and a worker collective I began teaching English as a foreign language in Tokyo in 1998 we all know that zero hour contracts can be problematic but they sometimes kind of work and they did for me but this was relying on the goodwill of my boss I was lucky and then suddenly I wasn't I got three new bosses who did not care how long I'd worked there or that I had childcare responsibilities and I lost a third of my income I don't want this to happen to other teachers hi I'm Lucy I've been teaching on and off for 10 years taking an admin job when I became disillusioned with the English as a foreign language model four years ago on furlough I decided that teaching full-time was for me Bernie asked me to join her and here I am today as co-founder of Red Brick so what's the problem with the English as a foreign language industry well teachers are exploited in numerous ways the lack of job security and all the poor working conditions associated with the gig economy exist teachers are undervalued as professionals they're the bottom rung on the ladder students all too often receive a bad deal because profit is prioritised over learning and what impacts teachers impact students the pandemic has changed the world learning online is booming students have found it's more convenient cheaper more flexible and greener so what will Red Brick offer teachers fair and just working conditions autonomy and respect for all and a democratic flat structure Red Brick will offer students a chance to study in an ethical school in an industry lacking in this the chance to have a say in how the school is run and an online English language community so we have two revenue models the transactional model has three different revenue streams a pick and mix of modular courses private one-to-one and cell phone group classes and bespoke courses we also have a subscription model with three different streams our tried and tested speaking clubs offering fluency practice language doctor surgeries providing students answers to their English language problems and donations that will help fund our subsidised classes for immigrants teachers will donate their time planning these classes the adult online English language market is worth 4.2 billion pounds assuming 50% of this is lost to indirect competitors our target market is 2.1 billion 0.002 of our target market represents a turnover of 43 thousand to give you an idea of how we can achieve this we need 220 students with an average spend of 196 pounds our ambitions for the first 12 months are extremely modest as we want to build our community test our courses and clubs building up our clubs in the first 12 months will generate another 15 and a half thousand which works out at two clubs a week with 12 students the opportunity to scale our platform massive growth in the sector is predominantly online and this has been accelerated by the pandemic the global online market is expected to grow by 18% annually and will reach 15.3 billion by 2027 so what does this mean for rebrick in 18 months we'll have 10 teachers and a turnover of 150 thousand in three years we'll be a multi-stake holder co-op with students as members have 30 teachers and offer digital course supplements in five years we'll have autonomous e-learning courses and plan to offer other languages so what we're asking for you today is to please spread the word about red brick with anyone who might be interested in studying with us we're also particularly interested in partnering with international unions and corporate it we'd also love it if you support us on social media and spread the word of red brick virtually and please subscribe to our newsletter the link will be in the chat thank you very much thank you thank you very much Lucy and Bernie so if we can have panelists again let's see great thank you maybe Martin would you feel like going first yeah sure yeah interesting so I can see how the cooperative model helps the teachers how you've got the students as stakeholders in the cooperative as well how does the cooperative model help the students especially consumers will be more churn of students than there will be of teachers how will you compete with you know the well-funded rivals you got out there with a cooperative model in a way that makes sense for the students yeah that's something we've been working on so I think one of the reasons that we put it as an ambition for three years for the multi-stakeholder co-op is that really we want the students input on how to make them members so for the first three years we're just planning to be a working collective but that doesn't mean that students won't benefit students will totally benefit from this because they are totally exploited as much as the teachers in the current system they're putting classes at the wrong level for their misled about courses things like that also we're using certain teaching techniques using a flip classroom where the students basically minimize the amount of time that they're in the actual classroom which is where it's expensive and they can collaborate with each other as well as having teachers support online which is one of the benefits of online learning which makes the lessons cheaper or makes the course cheaper overall so we will ultimately be able to compete on price providing a package of courses even if the time in the classroom maybe might be less but we believe that the learning that the students will achieve at the end will be more significant I hope that answers your question yeah sure thanks um sorry I think I was muted Catherine would you like to go next yeah certainly so a great thank you very much it's an ambitious plan and you shared your ambitions with it which is great to see and I think you quoted to begin with about 220 students you want to bring on board so how how do you plan to access those students and use any connections you may well have and we obviously shared you've got social media accounts but I'm interested just to how you're going to attract those students to you um well one of the things that you want to do is we're currently working with a contact in Japan for example he's going to act as an agent so agents can often be problematic in the Apple industry so we want to create relationships with agents that are transparent so the students don't pay extra money to the agents any students we get from an agent will come out of the profit that we would make obviously through social media and we're also looking at hopefully partnering with other co-ops and unions internationally thank you thank you Rose please go ahead so thank you Bernie, Lucy, really a thorough business planner clear trajectory you know achievable targets I felt it was really well laid out in in that perspective when I first met you I was asking about Duolingo and thinking that would be the kind of competitive you've got and you very eloquently explained to me about the human interaction and the experience that you're going to provide so so now you've kind of done 10 weeks of development who are your competitors? Well we think our competitors are basically other online organizations but the market is so big and we believe that students are thirsty for an ethical alternative you know when I spoke to students they were shocked at the way teachers were treated and they feel that they want to do something to stop that and they want to be part of something positive and research shows that particularly younger people would choose an ethical organization and also an organization that is better for the environment than what there isn't so I think that's one of our selling points we're sourcing all our support things like how we're posting we're using green web posting so all these things will allow students to feel feel like they've made a good choice you know not just for them but for everybody great thank you very much again to our panelists and to Redbrick we now move on to Zachi from DOPO Zachi you're muted sorry after a year and a half on Zoom and said welcome to DOPO the overdue upgrade to abortion care I'm Zachi I'm the founder of this community and so I just want to start many people are like why abortion so after my own abortion it was the loneliest period of my life and the lack of support and community around it stayed with me a long while after so DOPO is inspired by experience and also the experience of the people that for the past four years I've supported through their abortion experiences it's built from necessity and it's created with care and now I moved to a wee and we hope that you will also be part of DOPO so where are we at with abortion care in England and the UK so one in three women will have an abortion in the UK before the age of 45 and we do know that this women is not inclusive but that's the way data is collected so we will use that term here and last year this meant that 209 000 people had abortions in England so what happened during COVID one of the biggest updates to abortion care was that the UK government or the English the British government allowed telemedicine which meant that you could have both abortion pills at home this improved abortion care the first time in over 40 years I think this improved autonomy of people there were less burden on clinics improved accessibility and less waiting time however although that's a great improvement there are still two problems that we've identified and that we will be tackling when it comes to abortion care the first is that care ends with pregnancy and that sort of makes sense but it means that we're not looking at the whole person we're not looking at their emotional needs the needs for their mental health their social needs there's little to no space to receive other forms of care outside health care and there's little to no space to provide other forms of care outside of health care added to this as I said before there's no care beyond health care so people resort to Dr Google and are met with a lack of accurate and inclusive information there's the perpetuation of stigma which also means why there aren't communities generally around abortion which means that people don't have spaces to talk to share their experience and to support each other and this leads to a lot of isolation around the experiences which is something that I felt personally and also the people that I have supported in these past four years since I've become been an abortion dealer have also shared with me so our solution or one of our solutions why we're here today is a mutual peer-to-peer support platform and it's a virtual space which fosters mutual peer-to-peer support through holistic through a holistic approach and meaningful conversation and this will be for people before during and before during and beyond their abortion and when we say beyond we mean whether they had an abortion last week or like for instance that people come that come and seek care from me had an abortion five years ago or 10 years ago they'll be able to access health care community care and self-care and and like with everything we do at DOPPO the focus is on people not pregnancy or politics and care not choice it will be a meeting space for providers and or people that provide support and people that are seeking support so where are we at right now so between May and June we trained 70 people to support people that have had an experienced abortion 20 of those that was an international group by the way 20 of those are interested in being on our platform and offering virtual support we're currently finalizing the onboarding journey for support seekers to prioritize their privacy and safeguarding because we do recognize that that may be a barrier for them to enter the platform so a little bit about money to join the platform it will be a one pound a week subscription and we based on like my own experience with the people that I've supported and the research that we've been currently doing people are likely to stay on for three months for their own care and beyond to then start providing care to others we already support we all already provide training for people that want to become abortion doulas and that's why I mentioned we just finished training our first cohort of 70 people we provide one to one groups one to one and group support sessions for people that have experienced abortions and we're also looking to create educational and sectionary productive health care lessons for schools teachers and community groups science so our model will be a multi stakeholder cooperative model and our members will be people that have experienced abortion themselves or people that provide holistic abortion care and a small percentage of investors but our ecosystem expands beyond that and we will be looking to engage with teachers schools activists and MPs health care professionals organizations and clinics so if you would like to join us and make the dopo we even bigger and we're looking for support around our financial forecasting we have a huge list of people that are looking to volunteer with us and that we are working on as we build our strategy and continue working on our and services and products and but we would we are looking to monetize to be able to pay them because that's part of our model and you can buy us a coffee and which is our fundraising platform to financially support our work and you can join our cooperative soon and by signing up to our newsletter and I believe the link is also in the chat so please do join us and and thank you very much for listening thank you Satya for that now just wait for all our panelists to be back great Catherine would you like to go first this time yes certainly sorry I just come off mute no thank you for that thanks for sort of sharing your your idea with us and for your very open and candid experience as well personally so you talk a sort of around about of a we so how many people we've got in the team at the moment and so it's currently me and Valeria who's been supporting me with the tech with the training then I'm also working and collaborating with another abortion dealer with the group support we're collaborating with an existing cooperative and so we're working on different things but beyond myself and and depending on what we're working on we're bringing people in and we also have volunteers that like the group that we've trained that are now coming in and interested in our cooperative model and also showing their ideas so yes okay thank you and if you've got an idea of sort of what kind of size you want that team to be I know you've talked around you know building your strategy but how many people do you think will be in your team um the core team so yeah the core team the core team we're looking at around five for now so myself social and marketing and then like two community management of the like of the providers and the seekers I guess but yeah okay no that's great thank you thank you Rose would you like to go then yes that she thank you very much and just been it was festive is just commented in the chat about what a much needed service is it and it's a highly emotive subject matter as you know um there's lots of areas you know are you going to have your young people and you've got age restrictions what you did about safeguarding how can you vet your members so that it doesn't become infiltrated by people with different agendas so I'm just considering that whole piece around safeguarding and welfare and referring people to agencies because I know you're very experienced professional but you are going to come across I'm sure a lot of challenges it just you can't cope with I'm just wondering what I'm or you've got around with you to deal with some of those issues and so this is also why it's been quicker to look at the provider support than the um I guess the people that are seeking support although I work with them one-to-one on a regular basis um and we are interviewing them as part of our research um so the model we're looking at for the platform is a sort of triage model and so to onboard them and it sounds like a lot of work but we'd rather have a smaller community that would go through this model of having a one-to-one conversation with myself or one of the another provider before they're onboarded onto the platform and the providers that will I keep saying providers they don't provide a portion they provide support emotional support that's what I mean when I say providers will all have gone through our training so they're vetted on that side and it's also like this one-to-one call is also to ensure that we're the right platform to ensure support because we don't provide abortions we don't provide pills and we don't want to get into that area of providing healthcare um and I'm a member of community that that's how they work they have a one-to-one call and that's a model that we've seen that works and it also helps them feel safe to know that not everyone is just let in so there's multiple reasons why we're doing that and that's yeah that's what we're exploring right now thank you thank you Martin please yeah um so one thing that I noticed about your in your presentation was that you want a certain number of people certain percentage I suppose of people who receive support to then go on to support other people um do you have an idea of what percentages that would be because I my assumption and maybe I'm wrong my assumption would be that a lot of people who go through their experience um while they may want to you know give support would actually probably want to move on with their lives as well perhaps um so does it matter how many people um want to stay on to give more support and have you factored that into your assumptions of how this will work yeah so I guess there's two sort of answers to that question the first is how we view support and when we talk about support in this sense it's also storytelling it's also like the support we see on forums of I think through that don't worry you're not alone that's we also see that as a form of support not necessarily just hey you can go to this person or speak to that person that that's also the type of emotional support that that people need um so there's that aspect that um we're not looking to convert them to train them to provide other forms of support apart from just that community still being part of the community to answer your question in terms of numbers um when I look at the people that I've supported for example um around between 20 and 30 percent have have either taken the course that we just did for part of that 70 and another a few of them I trained when I piloted um running a training course at the end of last year um and they vocally they were the ones I mean the course came from them because they were saying okay I want to do what you do can you train me and then that's the only that's where the course came from so yes the percentage is maybe not 100 but there are around 20 to 30 that have gone through support or receiving support that are then highly invested in supporting others great thank you again to the panelists and to Zatti we now move on to the last team so we have uh Kirsty and Rich from Wings welcome hey thank you so much I'm gonna share my screen okay great it's lovely to be here hi we are Wings ethical food delivery my name's Rich I have my co-founder Kirsty here with me um this is a journey that started here me working as a delivery rider about three years ago and on quiet days like this I could wait three four sometimes five hours without an order just sitting there not earning a penny and this is the modern gig economy I didn't know how I was going to pay rent there's no line manager to contact and talk about you're just sitting waiting for your phone to buzz and this is a everyday reality for tens of thousands of people in this sector of the economy it's insecure stressful just frankly dehumanizing and we're just coming out of a pandemic which showed just how essential these workers are keeping society going and yet this is the deal that they currently have to put up with so in the past few years these companies like Deliveroo and Uber Eats have really changed the way we eat but it has come at a huge cost like yes to the people working on their platform but also environmentally as they encourage the use of petrol moped over bikes and society operating extractive businesses but business models with no accountability but this is also an opportunity as customers are waking up to this reality we have a chance to challenge these companies directly with a unique value proposition we are the totally ethical alternative good for riders offering employment and a guaranteed London living wage good for society and as the only platform with zero emission vehicles good for the environment too so as I said this started with my own experiences in the gig economy by 2019 I was beginning to seriously look at the idea of a platform cooperative as the most effective way to really make change here 2020 was a crazy year for a lot of people one thing what we did was paused everything we were doing I mobilized with a South London charity and some other folks and we brought together from scratch one of the biggest food distribution operations in in London to meet the food and security needs so within a few weeks we've mobilized over 100 volunteers delivering free food packages that's a ton of food a day feeding about 800 families in South London so it was a very it was a very stressful time it was a very exciting time one of the legacies of that which was was great for me is we brought together the team that's now behind wings and those collaborates I found in that project are the team that are working with me now so since last summer we've been working hard we've been working on our business plans and projections with the support of unfound and other partners we've been working with Camden Council continuing our work in the community delivering free food we've secured a startup grant from Islington Council which is funding our launch and as we move towards that launch we've been recruiting riders and restaurants in recent weeks so where are we headed our immediate goal is obviously to become sustainable as a work cooperative our projection is tell us to do that we need to reach around 60 riders and around 1800 orders per week we have a plan to achieve that operating in North London in the next three years looking beyond that we want to work with restaurant partners on a transition to zero plastic this picture is of a scheme run by another delivery cooperative in Berlin which we are keen to bring to London in the long term we want to look at a community share offer so that customers restaurants and local authorities can all join the cooperative it's a vision where we replace what is what is currently there one of the most exploitative sectors with a truly community-owned infrastructure so that comes to a final point which I really want to go into which is this is such a clear case for the cooperative model right you can look at all these gig employment companies from Deliveroo, Uber, Taxis and Eats, Doordash in the States, Gorillas and New Kid on the Block and there's a very clear pattern where when they start to actually offer a very good deal for the workers right they want to get people on the platform and then it's once they're there once they've scaled that platform and they need to make their business model profitable then they turn the screw and that's to satisfy their venture capital investors and the workers they don't have a say they have no power and this is just a clear pattern and we can't wait for another company to come along and just be better it's clear that this is a structural problem and so we need a structural solution and it's co-optivism because what you're doing is you're putting the control of this technology and the business itself with the workers and that's the way you lock in the interests of the workers and you ensure even at every point of scaling that's what's central in and what drives the business and the time to do this in food delivery is right now. It's sad to say it but I think we're too late now as a society for a co-operative Amazon that this company is too powerful to be challenged by a co-op now but not so in food delivery. Deliveroo, Uber Eats, they're weak and they're under a lot of scrutiny. Deliveroo had a very bad time going on the stock market just a few weeks ago and the time to act is now because it really is a moment with the public awareness coming out of the pandemic when we really can challenge and take a chunk out of this market. So I'm very excited to say on that note that after a year of preparation we are launching this Friday in Finnsbury Park in North London so it's a very very exciting moment for us. We've launched the website you see here we're getting a lot of buzz on Twitter and a little bit of press and in the next couple of days just be looking out for we hope some national press attention as we build up to our launch as I say this Friday. So it is a really exciting time for us after year building up to this point and we want to ask for your help at this crucial moment if you are in our part of North London please do consider ordering from us, if you're not then you can still help us out by getting the word out signing up to our mailing list think like that and finally please do remember to tip your delivery driver. Thank you so much. Thank you Wings that's really exciting to hear you launching on Friday so maybe we can start with Martin now would you like to go first? Sure yeah really interesting idea really very much needed the story kind of writes itself first of why it's necessary yeah really good but you are up against some very ruthless capitalists with very deep pockets and a desire to win at all costs you only have to look at some of the dirty tactics companies like Uber have undertaken over the years to get where they are are you anticipating that because you can be a great offer but in the end you don't win by just being the good guys do you? So how are you anticipating facing up to the competition? Yeah absolutely we're under no illusions these are scary opponents to go up against they're ruthless they've got Snoop Dogg and their adverts they're on the England football team shirts you know they're big big players so yeah we're anticipating it it's going to be really hard. Our strategy such as it is is that we are going to be local that's a sort of market entry strategy just starting in one neighbourhood and spreading gently in north London and then I think that gives us a chance amongst our sort of early adopters to build a sense of community and loyalty and you know these companies are fighting out with you know lots of offers still losing money against each other but I don't think that that shows the fact that there isn't really much loyalty there and what we're offering the authenticity of what we're offering I really think will stand up to these kinds of tactics where whatever they come at us with which will probably be lots of offers subsidising food for their customers I do think that the kind of support that we'll get from the authenticity of our offer will see us through and if it's if it becomes so brazen that they're out to sort of try and squash the nice guy sure I think that then would sort of backfire right and rally people to us so it's yeah I don't think we have a better answer than that but I think that's probably going to be enough. If you don't mind because we're just a tiny bit behind schedule tiny bit if maybe Catherine and Rose you can ask your questions one after the other and then Rich you can answer both of them in one go so Catherine if you would like to go first thank you. Yeah mine's going to be very simple you know I haven't got any further questions to ask it's just a case of good luck for Friday, I'm rooting for you. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah you don't get off that lightly with me I've got a question for you. Rich and Kirsty I think it's brilliant what you're doing I think absolutely as you said it's co-operativism at the best and one of the reasons that is is because you have tapped into co-op cycle and you have used you know the technology and the capability that's already there which you know means forgive the punch you're not reinventing the wheel on this when you really are absolutely giving yourselves the best chance in that tech area but Wings you know one of the co-op cycles that's set up in in my area through the pandemic Charlton bike delivery I knew what it did straight away so how are you going to on Friday kind of marry up Wings and why did you choose Wings as the name and how are you going to kind of mark it and make it really clear to people what you do? I mean sure Kirsty can come back me up on the fact that the numbers struggle for weeks and weeks I like Wings I think we're together with our logo it speaks to sort of you know we wanted to get across that we're good but not in a preachy way so it's a bit playful so I like Wings yeah we need to get on people's radar we're doing that already so we have some separate strategies for doing this we've been active since our launch on social media and really getting you know 100 plus people joining per day and when you're talking about a market entry strategy of such a small area you know that counts for a lot and then word of mouth will do a lot for us so I really think we're getting there just in terms of the awareness we'll get hopefully a big hit when we get the we hope national press coverage and get that and then we have a sort of final advantage which again I don't think Deliveroo and Just Eat Really have which is a different kind of relationship with these restaurants you know we're nicer to deal with they believe in us they believe in this relationship and all of those restaurants some of them have been around years they all have a loyal sort of customer base already exactly in our area so some of the more digital ones have mailing lists and socials and things as well so that's the final plank of how we're how we're getting out there and getting our early customs thank you very best to look thank you thank you thank you Wings and yes good luck and a big thank you to our panelists because we won't be hearing from them again after this session but thank you very much for being here so it's time for me to share my screen here we are so disappeared okay so it's time to vote so I'll just explain briefly how it works well I'll be sharing a link to a platform called Slido on this platform you can choose three teams and rank them in order of preference and then submit your vote and then we will be distributing the money proportionally based on how the votes come in and we will be announcing the top three I'm going to allow the voting to continue for about two minutes just to allow anyone who might struggle a bit with tech to to be able to understand how it works and to vote so use it you know to stretch maybe and get up and it will take us a few minutes then to translate the numbers into prizes so I will share my next slide where you can see how to connect to the Slido and a summary of the teams you can connect to the platform in different ways you can either use a link that Leila will share in the chat or you can just go to sli.do and enter the code or you can use your phone to with the QR code we're really basing this vote on trust so please please vote once okay thank you very much I will put myself on mute now and start the timer okay we are stopping the voting now thank you bear with us a few minutes while we just translate the votes into numbers if you're still with us just a few minutes well a few seconds while we get Rose back on welcome back everyone so Rose's camera isn't on yet just waiting for a few seconds and thank you to the audience for joining us we're really happy to see such a great attendance and for your comments in the chat thank you really for joining us okay over to Rose when you're ready you're muted thanks Vika that's been very very tense and excited here at Holly Oak House and just before I reveal the numbers and we do want to say again thank you to our partners for action and the cooperative bank and thank you to our judges Katherine Douglas and Martin Bryan from Big Revolution now just to be clear everybody will get a share because we are a cooperative of the full £10,000 fund but we're going to announce the top three how much what percentage of the vote that they got and therefore how much of the fund that they will receive and they will be asking that the three platforms that I mentioned now to stay on and say a few words so in third place with 20% of the vote we have wings who will be receiving £2013 in second place with just 21% of the vote just picked you there is Gopo with £2063 and then finally with 28% of the vote total £2,795 is Red Brick Language Guild congratulations to everybody really really well done thank you so maybe we can just go in order just Rich and then Zachi and then Lucy if you would just want to say a few words and then we'll wrap up yeah thanks so I don't have much to say it's it's lovely too of one and thank you to everyone who voted but really this accelerator has been a joy and all the other teams have been lovely so I think everyone deserves it equally and and just shout out to all the great presentations today please do whether you're in London or not please do check us out wings.co-optro and our mailing list that's all I ask and thanks again thank you Zachi yes thank you for the votes but also like thank you to the other teams because we've worked together for 10 weeks and we've worked with each other on each other's projects and presentations and businesses and we're a really cool group and we're all doing very different things but amazing things so yeah my biggest thank you is yes of course people that voted but to the other people that have been working with for the past 10 weeks and also yeah or if you're in Finsbury Park order your foods from wings on Friday and if you need to learn English Red Brick Lucy please um well what do I say thank you so much um everyone um the last 10 weeks have been amazing it's definitely taken us out of our comfort zone um as um you know I was gonna say we're just teachers we're not just teachers at all but we've learned so much we've broadened our skills we've networked with people in co-ops we've learned about cooperation and we've met some fantastic people in the cohort as well and had lots of experience and support from you so we're incredibly grateful to be at this point um so yeah just thank you everybody great well congratulations to everyone and yes as everyone has said all teams have been working extremely hard and we're really looking forward to see your next steps and to support you through the way um and yes please let everyone know that there's an accelerator starting in the autumn and the applications close next Wednesday we're really looking forward to meet the next cohort as well thank you everyone for attending uh and uh our partners uh panelists uh and all the audience thank you very very much goodbye everyone