Hello everyone,
As we approach the end of 2017, and the end of Mission 1 “Match Phase”, we wanted to give you a short update on our progress at Zinc and thank you for all your help.
We kicked off our first 6 month programme on the 2nd of October, with 54 Founders who had come together with the common mission to improve the mental and emotional health of women and girls across the developed world. We are now half way through this programme.
We started with 2 weeks of bootcamp delivered by top entrepreneurs, tech experts, mental health top researchers and clinicians, innovation leaders and others. Since then the Founders have worked incredibly hard, looking at the mental and emotional health needs of women and girls, finding fresh insights into how they can meet those needs, imagining new solutions, and choosing their co-Founders. We are delighted to say that from the 54 strangers who arrived in October, we have created 21 new businesses. They will now move into the second half of the programme, the “Hatch Phase”, spending the next 12 weeks designing, prototyping and testing their new products, as well as establishing their new businesses.
We are really excited by the diversity and potential of the new business ideas, which tackle mental and emotional health needs from lots of angles, including new therapies, money, employment, couple relationships, safety, music, chronic physical diseases, parenting, personalised medication, young women’s sexual pleasure — to name a few.
It has been humbling and inspiring to have so many great people coming forwards to help with this mission. We now have more than 150 experts working with our new businesses, giving their time, expertise and support to our Founders. We are so grateful for all their help. A particular thanks to our 16 Fellows for their help in steering the mission, as well as working with the Founders. We simply couldn’t have delivered this programme without the support of Camden Council, who have provided us with a wonderful location, a role in London’s Knowledge Quarter and the opportunity to engage with local communities.
We’re delighted that we have a growing wider community of supporters who believe in our ambition to build high-growth commercial businesses that tackle the most important social problems. Our community events were vastly oversubscribed and included the Mission 1 launch event in partnership with Silicon Valley Bank, an Open Ideas event in partnership with WeWork, and a Technology Community event at Camden Town Hall. In general, we are privileged to have so many people visiting Zinc, meeting the teams and building connections.
We’re looking forward to announcing our Second Mission and expansion plans in 2018. Please follow us Twitter, FB, Instagram , LinkedIn, to keep up-to-date with events and news.
We wish you all very happy holidays, and thank you again for all your support thus far.
Best wishes,
The Zinc Team and Zinc Mission 1 Founders
