The CDT Den is the ICB’s own version of the Dragons’ Den competition. Registration to enter the CDT Den competition is now open! Please note that it is free to enter and we strongly encourage you to do so. It really is a wonderful opportunity and one which opens many doors, both in the short and long term career wise. To register, please send an email to Hannah Cameron (h.cameron@imperial.ac.uk) by 12 noon on Thursday 24th November 2022 at the latest, with the names all your team members and a provisional team name. If at this stage you have not formed a team, but are interested in entering, please e-mail Hannah to let her know you would like to register and that you are looking to join a team, or form a team.
Teams who enter the ICB CDT Den will go through a series of training sessions spread out over the course of 6 months, designed to develop your entrepreneurial skills, and which will culminate in the final pitch to our ‘dragons’!
What distinguishes this from a conventional student business game is that we have obtained seed funding of £10,000 that will allow the winning team to begin the development of their project. The winning team will also receive dedicated mentoring from a leading entrepreneur. Thus this is not a paper exercise but a real competition. In previous years this competition has spun out ICB led companies such as FA Bio, FreshCheck and Anywhere HPLC.
The competition is structured so that all competitors, not just the winners, gain valuable skills during a process that comprises bespoke workshops covering concept validation, business opportunity analysis and writing business plans/pitches.
This course is for those of you wanting to get some business experience; maybe you are interested in being an entrepreneur, maybe you are looking for a team or maybe you have an idea in mind already (you don’t need to at this stage). The first training session of the course will be on 28th November 1-5pm, in the MSRH. You don’t need to have a team or an idea to come along to the first training session.
Part 1 of the programme:
Monday 28th November 2022, 13:00-17:00
Monday 12th December 2022, 09:00-12:00
Monday 16th January 2023, 13:00-17:00