Want to apply for a share of £800,000 to develop your cyber security idea?

The Cyber Security Academic Startup Accelerator Programme (CyberASAP) is an 11 month programme of support to help academics take their ideas from the lab to the market. The funding competition for Year 5 of the programme, which starts in April 2021, is now open with a deadline of 11am on March 3rd.

There is a webinar briefing at 10.30am on Tuesday 9 February.

More details about the competition and how to apply are here.

The only pre-seed accelerator programme in the cyber security ecosystem, CyberASAP is all about promoting continued innovation and investment in the rapidly growing and vitally important cyber security sector. Now entering its fifth year, the programme has supported over 90 academic teams, from universities throughout the UK, to progress their ideas to various stages in the commercialisation journey, from lab to market. 

Over £6million in further funding has been attracted by previous CyberASAP teams, the majority going to companies formed through the programme, with some paid to universities for pre-spinout projects. Funding came from a range of sources including public sector grants, seed, angel, universities, public companies and private investors. A significant number of the remaining projects are still undergoing development within their universities.

Participation in the programme has been seen as overwhelmingly positive by academic teams from previous cohorts, with feedback including:

“CyberASAP has been extremely valuable in communicating the importance of finding the right product market-fit, encouraging our team to take the time and energy for market validation, and in providing us with valuable feedback to carve out the unique selling points for our project”  – Ivo Sluganovic, University of Oxford

CyberASAP “takes you out of your comfort zone”. – Dr Jorge Blasco Alis, Royal Holloway, University of London

“CyberASAP…. has helped me understand that taking products to market requires a very different approach than traditional research. The market validation bootcamp has allowed us to ask the right questions to the right people, giving us the necessary skills to evaluate how our research-based business idea would fit in the cyber security market”  – Jorge Blasco Alis, Lecturer, Royal Holloway, University of London

Find out about the programme in this video here or visit the CyberASAP page of the KTN website here. 

If you have a cyber security idea and would like help to develop its commercial potential, apply now to join the 2021/22 programme, funded by the UK Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) and delivered through Innovate UK and KTN.

The deadline for applications for CyberASAP 2020/21 is 11am on Wednesday 3rd March.

Meet this year’s teams at Demo Day – February 18th

Interested in seeing the final 14 projects from this year’s programme? Join our Demo Day on Thursday 18 February to watch their pitches and see their Proofs of Concept. Find more information and register here. 

Join us on social: @cyberASAP #cyberasap linkedin.com/showcase/cyberasap