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We hatched, we grew...
and now we are 2!

Cambridge Incubator

As most of our readers know we turned 2 years old this week!

There was of course birthday cake but to celebrate we asked our very own Benjamin Storey to write a few words about this momentous occasion for us.

Wednesday 9th May is the two-year celebration for the Eagle Lab Incubator on Chesterton Road, Cambridge.

As another year passes since our infamous launch, it becomes a time to reflect and reassess how our ecosystem and even the international economy has changed over such a short period of time.

Back in 2016, we opened the first bank-led incubator in the UK: full of optimism and prosperity for Cambridge businesses. A mere 45 days later, we learned of the Brexit vote outcome and many business leaders predicted a much bleaker outlook for British businesses which would act to hinder our ambitions. Over the two years which followed, instead of the poorer outlook, the Chesterton Road members and the wider Cambridge ecosystem have showed little distress from wider felt impacts within our national economy.

British early-stage and high-growth businesses continue to grow and our Eagle Lab incubator is ecstatic to be part of it. Since we opened, our incubated businesses have created 80 new jobs onsite, raised over £120m of external finance, won countless industry national and international awards and one even received a Golden Globe and Oscar nomination.

We are very proud we have had five fantastic businesses graduate from the Eagle Lab (Prowler.io, FiveAI, Cambridge Spark, Token Market and BlackbirdOne) and super excited about some of the fantastic businesses continuing to disrupt their markets and grow with us. 

We expect the graduates list to continue to grow with some impressive businesses and individual’s onsite. To our members, you are truly inspirational to us, facing adversity and challenging it head on. We are proud to be part of your journey as you really are the flourishing backbone to British business.

For us, the successes of Cambridge’s Eagle Lab incubator has shown us a model which we are looking to replicate nationally to assist business growth in other regions of Britain. We currently have fifteen open labs and we will continue to invest in incubators and accelerators in more UK territories throughout the rest of 2018 and beyond. One of the fifteen is the recently opened LegalTech incubator based in London, which has been inspired and assisted by our four onsite legal businesses (Wavelength Law, Prose, Aalbun and Keltie).

Since last year, we expanded the size of the incubator with the addition of 60 new seats all in private offices. Chesterton Road Eagle Lab currently has 120 members and 45 resident companies, ranging from 1-16 employees. We still have some seats available in our co-working and hot-desk space and we regularly expect churn of businesses moving out of the private offices, so if you are looking for an incubator to help grow your business, please come for a tour.

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Finally, our event schedule continues to offer breadth and depth of insight and opportunity for local businesses. All the events we run are free to attend, and since we opened, we have run over 220 events with well over 5000 cumulative attendees. Check out our forthcoming events here.

We would like to thank all of our members, community, speakers and attendees to events for making the Eagle Labs such a great environment to work in and grow in.

A final and important thank you must go to our partners Cambridge Judge Business School who continue to provide a valuable executive education support network to our members and community.

Cambridge Incubator

With 24/7 access and a range of support services, including access to mentors and funding opportunities, we can help you grow and scale your business.

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Cambridge Eagle Lab Reception

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It wasn't me
Eagle Labs turns two
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