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Business Sheffield
What’s so great about Sheffield?
Sheffield is a fantastic place. If you’re a business owner or a professional in a cutting edge sector, Sheffield has everything you need. It's big enough to offer real opportunity, but small enough to feel that you can make a difference. We have a strong business community with a genuine appreciation of local independents, a rich manufacturing base and a tech sector positioned for great collaboration.
We’re also a city that understands entrepreneurial spirit, and values local business as central to our economy, opportunity for our people, and the pride we all take in being part of Sheffield. Business Sheffield is a department of Sheffield City Council dedicated to supporting businesses. We provide learning and development, funding opportunities, and one-to-one support from a team of business specialists who can offer advice and practical solutions on any stage of your business journey. Since COVID 19 we’re supporting more businesses than ever before, with over 12,000 calls from businesses answered, and over 8000 one-to-one support sessions delivered by our Business Advisors.
Our tech ecosystem
Sheffield is an ideal place to start or scale a tech business, and we’re proud to be part of the growth the sector has seen here in recent years. With particular strengths in technologies for learning, movement, the creative industries and advanced manufacturing, Sheffield offers a varied and thriving ecosystem for tech professionals to grow, collaborate and explore their sector. We’re seeing more and more tech startups being successful in investment rounds with our support, from investors such as Twinkl, NorthInvest, Mercia NPIF, Deeptech Labs, NVM, Deepbridge Capital and HTGF. We’re also home to ACF Investors, UKSE and Northern Gritstone.
Sheffield boasts a great range of tech accelerator programmes, from a branch of Barclays Eagle Labs to TwinklHive and the AWRC. The city is also covered by several accelerators set up by TEAM SY, a £4.6 million ERDF part-funded project focused on growing South Yorkshire’s startup and investment ecosystem. Delivered in partnership between Capital Enterprise and Barnsley Council, these accelerators include GovTech Academy, IoT Engine, AI Academy and P4SY. In addition, the city is home to Sheffield Technology Parks, Hallam iLab and Kollider – tech incubators which support entrepreneurs to take their start-ups to a higher level.
Perhaps best of all, Sheffield’s tech businesses and the organisations supporting them are connected through a range of networks, from the Council’s own Econ.shf to TEAM SY and the Sheffield Incubation & Acceleration Network. Bringing stakeholders together to share best practice and align our offers means businesses have a knowledgeable, coordinated body of supporters behind them as they go about doing what they do best.
How Business Sheffield helps
Supporting tech businesses to get established and scale up is a priority for Business Sheffield. For the last four years we have employed a team of Tech Scale Up Advisors: tech founders who work with us as consultants, using their experience and expertise to support both start-ups and established tech businesses.
Our Advisors work with businesses to scope the full potential of their ideas and make sure they’re set up to achieve them. They’re amazing at helping businesses identify investment opportunities and get ready to pitch: from meeting the right investors to navigating the application process and honing presentation skills, they’ve been there and will be there with practical help as well as advice and signposting.
Between them, they have expertise in recruitment, marketing, market research – essentially everything founders need to strengthen their offer and bring it successfully to market. In their four years with us, they’ve supported over 100 tech businesses and helped them access over £15 million of investment. They also offer regular workshops in partnership with the Cooper Project at Sheffield Tech Parks who provide six months of free office space for tech businesses in Sheffield.
