NESTA

NESTA is the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts - an independent body with a mission to make the UK more innovative.

One of NESTA’s key aims is to support young innovative technology businesses in the UK and the broad early stage ecosystem to help create the next generation of growth companies. We do this in a number of ways:

• Using our research capability to bring issues of concern to the attention of industry groups and policy makers.
• Helping to catalyse support and networks for early stage companies through partnering and investing with others like the BBAA, Seedcamp and Springboard which all help to build the UK start up ecosystem.
• Bringing together entrepreneurs, investors, Angels through a variety of engaging events that cover key sectors and trends.
• Investment – we have a portfolio of direct investments in 30 technology businesses and have fund investments in 5 other early stage UK focused funds including Pentech Ventures, IP Group and the UMIP Premier Fund.  We have helped create companies like Skimlinks, Basekit and Gnodal by being prepared to invest at an early stage.