Building a community of Accelerators & Incubators: Start-up Connect workshop insights

Purpose of the Start-up Connect workshop

The UK’s start-up ecosystem thrives on the strength of its accelerators and incubators. However, these organisations often operate independently, missing opportunities to share knowledge, resources, and best practices. The Start-up Connect workshop held on June 27th, 2025, was designed to bring together a subgroup of the community to explore how collaborative working could strengthen the entire ecosystem.

The aim was to understand what matters most to these organisations and to start to understand how we could work together to build a sustainable network that would deliver real value to start-ups and members.

Workshop participation from the Start-up ecosystem

The workshop brought together 25 attendees representing a diverse range of organisations including universities, corporate innovation hubs, catapults, government-backed programmes, and privately funded accelerators. This cross-sector participation reflected the breadth and diversity of the UK’s start-up support landscape.

Key findings: What matters to UK Accelerators & Incubators

Through interactive polling and group discussions, participants identified five core priorities for the community:

Enabling Collaboration and Partnerships – Members see value in forming partnerships between organisations running incubators and accelerators.

Mapping the Landscape – Bringing transparency and visibility by mapping the UK’s incubator and accelerator ecosystem was identified as an important foundation for collaboration.

Improving Start-up Deal Flow – Organisations seek to increase both the quantity and quality of applications from right-fit start-ups, enhancing programme viability.

Identifying Funding Opportunities – There is strong interest in collaboratively identifying and accessing both public and private funding opportunities for programmes.

Sharing Best Practices and Knowledge – Members want to learn from each other’s successes and challenges in delivering programmes and services to start-ups.

Community commitment: How members will contribute

The workshop revealed a strong willingness to actively support the community’s development. Participants expressed interest in contributing across multiple areas:

• 40% of organisations are willing to provide facilities and host community gatherings.
• 36% of organisations are prepared to deliver workshops and share case studies.
• Just under 30% of organisations volunteered to facilitate group conversations and resource sharing.
• 20% of organisations expressed interest in event leadership and organisation.
• 12% of organisations offered to help keep the community focused on its long-term goals.

This diversity of commitments demonstrates both the depth of engagement and the varied strengths that members bring to the community.

Recommendations for building community

The enthusiasm and concrete commitments from the workshop provides a strong foundation for the incubator and accelerator community.

The recommendations from the workshop include:

1. Constructing a map of the landscape with the aim of increasing visibility and bridging gaps in the ecosystem.
2. Creating a dashboard highlighting upcoming programmes, with the aim of creating visibility of the pipeline of programmes being delivered by incubators and accelerators and helping to catalyse collaborations with each other.
3. Exploring working groups to provide smaller, focused spaces for members to connect and deep dive around shared themes. This is aimed at addressing common challenges faced by the ecosystem.
4. Running in-person, whole-community events that serve as the main gathering point for the network, bringing together incubators and accelerators from across the UK. This is aimed at enabling networking opportunities to build and strengthen relationships amongst incubators and accelerators.

By working together, the UK’s accelerators and incubators can amplify their individual impact and create a more connected, effective start-up support ecosystem.