Hatch Enterprise

Thanks to our partnership with Pizza Hut UK and Groundwork, we're proud to say that in the first year of the Hatch Fund, Hatch's recent graduates of the New Founder Programme were able to apply for grants of up to £5,000 (depending on what stage their business was at), and after a competitive application process throughout the summer, we’re pleased to announce that 14 founders have been awarded grant funding, chosen on measurable impact the funding had on the business.

To date, almost £1 million has been invested into the New Founder Programme and grant scheme, reaching 764 entrepreneurs across the UK, and we are delighted to announce that almost £40,000 in grant funding was given to successful applicants to the Hatch Fund in our first round of applications. The second round of applications is currently under way, with future windows taking place twice a year.

Access to finance has been a major barrier impacting the founders we support, particularly female founders. The recent Rose Review stated that one in three ethnic minority female founders reported making no profit last year, compared with 15 per cent of white, female business owners, while almost half of Asian and other Ethnic minority entrepreneurs having had to stop working on their business idea due to difficulties accessing finance.

We are proud to have been able to do something to actively challenge those stats, thanks to the support of our partners and people like you.

Did you know that based on the most recent census data, an estimated 22% of the UK's population has a disability? But the Federation of Small Businesses' (FSB) recent 'Business Without Barriers' report showed that 25% of all small business owners self-report as having a disability. So not only are disabled entrepreneurs over indexing in the SME space, they're also accounting for some 8.6% of the UK's annual turnover.

That can only mean one thing to us: it's time to start supporting disabled entrepreneurs a LOT more. Especially seeing as, of the people polled in the FSB's recent report, 17% of disabled business owners still perceived discriminiation as a barrier and 52% of disable business owners said they had experienced a barrier due to their disability or health condition.

We have been doing this through a flourishing partnership with disability lifestyle brand Parallel, which is now entering its third year. Together, we run an annual Purple Sock Day campaign, to raise money to offer free support to disabled entrepreneurs through the sale of sustainable bamboo purple socks - with £3 from every pair going towards supporting our work. We raised over £14k through the first Purple Sock Day, and are expecting to have raised even more in our second year - hopefully allowing us to start offering dedicated grants to disabled business founders.

We're also proud to say that the Ares Charitable Foundation is now supporting Hatch Enterprise with a grant of over £280,000 which seeks to enable the democratisation of access to entrepreneurship for disabled founders in the UK. This funding will make it possible for over 50 disabled entrepreneurs to join a bespoke Hatch business training programme, as well as accessing wider engagement opportunities. This new programme will be designed to respond to some of the unique challenges that some disabled entrepreneurs can face, and help them to build a profitable business model, grow their network, and develop the confidence to pitch their business, as well as apply for a grant. Through running programmes specifically for disabled founders, the intention of the project is not only to be able to tailor the content to best meet people’s needs, but also to develop a community that will sustain past the end of the programme.

This is by far the most important goal of the project, as we would like to get to a stage where no disabled entrepreneur has to feel like they're the only disabled entrepreneur they know.

There has never been a more exciting time to support Hatch enterprise. In 2021-22, we delivered enterprise support to 744 underrepresented founders, more than 500 through our community programme alone. 230 underserved SME business founders also took part in our Launchpad, Incubator and Accelerator programmes - more than ever before! In all, there were 19 cohorts of founders, almost 50% more than in 2020-21.

In the autumn of 2022, we also launched the Hatch Fund, our bold new response to the ongoing challenge of accessing finance for so many of our founders. We have also expanded the reach of the people we support across the UK like never before, with 27% of our recent cohort graduates now being based outside of London.