The Power of 2: Celebrating the co-founders and partnerships on 2/2/22

February is here! January's friendlier neighbour offering lighter nights and longer days and there's plenty going on. A new Lunar year encouraging us to bring out our inner tiger and the month of love reminding us to be kind to each other in the run up to Valentine's Day. Expect to see supermarkets filled with red roses in the coming days.

Today also marks a quirk in the calendar with the date reading as 2/2/22. 

We thought this was a good enough reason to jump on the bandwagon and celebrate the power of 2: celebrating partnerships, co-founders and university friends or course-mates who have started a project, social enterprise or start-up business together.

Here's to the co-creators and those who innovate together. We invite you to learn more about some of the UoB businesses created by two founders below:

Businesses created by partnerships

Frankie Lewns and Paris Lalousis are co-founders of a mental health consultancy called Bloomwise, The pair took part in the Virtual Consultancy Challenge in 2020 creating their idea as part of the competition before developing the idea further and turning it into a registered business. Interestingly, the pair did not meet each other(in real life!) until the first day of their incubator induction in September 2021. 

Windswept Workshops founded by Erin Gilbey and Gabi Songui aim to bring creativity into the hearts of communities through their; online creative writing community, puppetry workshops, photography exhibits and community art displays. They established this social enterprise in 2019 and are currently looking for an intern to join them. 

Students Alex Best and Molly Thomson-Dykes created a burger kitchen in Selly Oak called Burger-Me Up. The restaurant is available through online sites such as Deliveroo, Just Eat and Uber Eats and offer meaty and veggie burgers to a growing customer base.

Medical students Dan Chivers and Michael Trueman created an app based start-up called Commute which helps friends and colleagues accurately split the bill for shared car lifts. The idea was inspired by a hiking trip to Snowdonia and the idea was designed to resolve the issue of splitting fuel costs fairly for medical students who undertook placements.

Snackcess was created in the very first lockdown in 2020 by three friends Kieran Fitzgerald, Joshua Barley and Sonny Drinkwater (ok this one is more like the power of 3!). The trio offer a delivered snack service for company employees and found great initial success with the sudden rise in the emerging working from home culture. They featured on a BBC website feature called CEO Secrets about emerging entrepreneurs who had created innovative ideas during the global pandemic.

If you would like to develop your own idea with a friend or co-founder (or just yourself!), we have start-up support available including a new start-up programme from Wednesday 16 February called Let's get this Start-Up started. There is also funding and advice available and free online tools from companies such as Siemens and Shopify exclusive to UoB students. Visit the B-Enterprising website for more.

Written by Bob Lee

B-Enterprising Team