Wazoku Funnel helps turn university students into entrepreneurs

UK universities including Bath, Bristol, Southampton, Exeter, Surrey and City University London are using a new software platform called Wazoku Funnel, to help budding entrepreneurs get feedback on their business ideas from real-life investors.

Wazoku Funnel is a cloud-based Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform based on Wazoku’s Idea Spotlight technology. Students can use platform to share their ideas with investors, mentors and advisors, who can then vote on, comment, provide feedback and help develop the ideas further.

“The Wazoku tools address some key issues for enterprise educators – providing self-directed idea-testing for entrepreneurs, monitoring the progress of students’ ideas, and enabling ways for students to share their ideas with our communities of experts,” said Dave Jarman, head of enterprise education at the University of Bristol.

Working with UK venture capital company Find Invest Grow (FIG) and RBS EnterprisingU (a university business plan competition), Wazoku Funnel has already helped bring nine student start-up ideas to fruition, raising more than £20 million in funding.

According to James King of Find Invest Grow, there is no other platform in market that allows such comprehensive development of student business ideas.

“Universities are full of emerging business minds and talent but good ideas nearly always need a little encouragement to reach their full potential,” added Simon Hill, CEO of Wazoku, adding that the tool helps “establish the university’s entrepreneurial credentials”.

Wazoku Funnel available now for university business schools, incubators and enterprise departments to bu, from £1 per user per month.