This is not a grant scheme with a mentoring add-on. This is a genuine co-founder relationship. Here is exactly what that means.
Most support for graduate entrepreneurs is not enough.
The typical offering looks like this. A small amount of money. A workshop or two. A mentor who is available for an hour a month if you are lucky. A network event where you collect business cards from people who are too busy to help you. And then you are on your own.
That is not enough to turn a good idea into a real business. Not for most people. Not without the safety net of family money, existing connections, or prior experience of building something.
A hands‑on co‑founder model.
EmergIT is designed around a different premise. The graduates we support do not need less help than a first-time founder who went to the right school and knows the right people. They need more. And the only way to provide more is to be genuinely involved—not at arm’s length, not occasionally, but as a real co-founder who has as much reason to want the venture to succeed as the graduate does.
That is the model. And everything else follows from it.
Here is what the EmergIT co-founder relationship actually includes.
The grant—£5,000 in two tranches.
Every graduate accepted onto the EmergIT programme receives a £5,000 grant to fund the early costs of building their venture. The grant is paid in two tranches tied to milestones:
- Tranche 1—£2,000 on reaching your first milestone
- Tranche 2—£3,000 on reaching your second milestone
Milestones are defined by the type of business you are building:
- Service business: Milestone 1 is your first paying client. Milestone 2 is your first month of consistent revenue.
- Product business: Milestone 1 is a working prototype with documented user testing. Milestone 2 is your first paying customer.
- Digital platform: Milestone 1 is a live MVP with first active users. Milestone 2 is your first 100 active users or first paying customer—whichever is more relevant to your model.
The grant is unconditional—it is not repayable, it does not come with strings attached, and it is completely separate from the revenue share arrangement described below.
Grant spending is tracked through a simple three-tier approval process. Small day-to-day costs are self-certified by you. Medium purchases require your co-founder to sign off. Larger or unusual items require EmergIT director approval.
The co-founder relationship.
Your EmergIT co-founder is not a mentor who gives advice and disappears. They are not a coach who asks you questions until you find the answer yourself. They are a co-founder—someone who is actively involved in your venture, who challenges your thinking, opens doors where they can, and brings real experience of building things to the problems you are facing.
In practice, this means regular structured sessions focused on where you are right now—not a generic curriculum, but a working session on the specific challenge in front of you this week. It means someone who will tell you when your pricing is wrong, when your target customer is not who you think it is, and when you need to pivot before you spend any more time going in the wrong direction.
It also means someone who has real incentive to help you succeed. The revenue share arrangement means your EmergIT co-founder benefits when your venture generates revenue. That alignment is not accidental. It is the whole point.
AI tools and platform access.
From day one, you have access to the EmergIT platform and the AI tools we have built and curated for the specific challenges of early-stage venture building. These are not generic AI subscriptions. They are tools configured for the tasks you will actually face: customer research, competitor analysis, financial modelling, copy and communications, legal document drafting, and more.
An AI-augmented co-founder is not a replacement for human judgment and experience. It is a force multiplier that means you can move at a speed that would have been impossible five years ago.
Mentor connections.
At the right moment—not as a default first step, but when the timing makes sense—we connect you with experienced founders, professionals, and sector specialists who can open doors that would otherwise be closed.
These are not people who agreed to be listed on a database. They are people who have been through what you are going through and want to be genuinely useful.
How the revenue share works.
When your venture is trading and generating real revenue, EmergIT CIC takes a small percentage of that revenue for a defined period. The exact percentage and duration are agreed at the start of the programme and set out clearly in your programme agreement.
This is not equity. We do not take a shareholding in your business. We do not sit on your board. We do not have approval rights over your decisions. The revenue share is a time-limited commercial arrangement that reflects the value of the co-founder support you have received—and it ends.
Why we are being this transparent about it.
We are being transparent about this on this page, before you apply, because we think you deserve to understand the full picture before you commit.
The revenue share is also the mechanism that makes the programme sustainable. EmergIT CIC is not dependent on a single grant that runs out. The revenue share from ventures we have supported funds the grants for the next cohort. When you succeed, you are directly contributing to the success of the graduate who comes after you. We think that is a good thing.
To be clear about what this is not.
We are not a business school. We do not run workshops on lean methodology or design thinking. We do not issue certificates. We do not run pitch competitions.
We are not an accelerator looking for the next unicorn. We are not interested in the most ambitious idea in the room. We are interested in the graduate who is most likely to build something real and sustainable, whatever size that ends up being.
We are not a charity asking you to be grateful for support. We are a co-founder asking you to build something worth supporting.
The programme opens Autumn 2026.
If this is what you have been looking for—register your interest now. We will contact you the moment applications open. If you think you might be right for the founding sprint instead—read the role descriptions and apply now.