Monday 28th January (3rd Week)
6:45pm registration for 7pm start
Said Business School

John Bird, was a poor boy, orphan, thief, inmate, artist and poet before going on to found the ground-breaking social initiative that is The Big Issue. Since the inception of The Big Issue in 1991, John has overseen its development into the UK’s most successful social enterprise, stretching from Tokyo to Totnes and helping thousands of homeless people worldwide.

John has become an authority on motivation and the ascendancy to achievement. Amongst the places he has spoken are the UN in New York, Nairobi and Istanbul, Downing Street and Buckingham Palace. Come and see him talk to Oxford Entrepreneurs.

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Dear OE Member,

I can’t believe how quickly this year has gone by! As the sabbatical President of Oxford Entrepreneurs it has been a privilege to work with, what I consider to be the most dynamic and talented committee at Oxford to take the society from strength to strength. A lot of effort goes into running the society and the committee from 05/06 and 06/07, both of which I have had the pleasure of working with, have been outstanding. It is their hard work which has led to our membership nearly doubling; a 100% increase in the number of events hosted, and a 300% increase in entries to our flagship competition – Idea Idol. It has also been a headline hitting year with OE receiving coverage in CNN, ITV News, the Financial Times, The Sunday Times, BBC Radio, the Daily Telegraph, as well as numerous local media outlets. I wanted to briefly outline some of the highlights of this year.

Idea Idol & Varsity Pitch

Without a doubt the biggest highlight of the year has been Idea Idol & Varsity Pitch. Over £10,000 was given away, together with a trip to Monaco, so it is no wonder that we were overwhelmed with applications! Both events were packed with students and the enthusiasm of the participants was fantastic. The event also involved filming our first ever Oxford Entrepreneurs commercial (for Varsity Pitch) which can be seen online at www.varsitypitch.com – thanks to allthose who took part and to Hiroki Takeuchi (Vice-President 06/07) for all his hard work.

Congratulations to Matoke Matoke, Design the Time & Camerge for their success. In a surprise turn of events we were delighted by the announcement by two judges from Idea Idol - Shaa Wasmund and Dan Wagner from Brightstation Ventures that Brightstation Ventures would be funding Design the Time, and we will be closely following the progress of their venture (which I have been told is launching under a new name – to be announced soon!)

Start a Company

This year marked the launch of our new Start a Company scheme which helped to bring together budding entrepreneurs eager to form teams and start new ventures. We have taken on board the feedback received from this year’s scheme and will be working to develop it further to provide more support and events. We would definitely value your input in this, so if you have ideas about how we can help you more then please email Jeremy Moses

Alumni event

We were delighted to be able to host our first ever Alumni Event in London at the 3i Offices. This was a fantastic event with Martha Lane Fox (Co-Founder of Lastminute.com & Oxford alumni) as the keynote speaker. We are keen to engage more with alumni and host more events like this in the future. If you have any suggestions for good Alumni speakers/ways of involving alumni please contact Max Kirby

And in the pipeline…

Over the summer we will be reviewing our External Membership policy. This year has seen a dramatic increase in the number of people applying to join the society from outside the University community. This is fantastic as it enables experienced entrepreneurs, local business people and interested parties to take part in our events and enrich our membership, however we will be working to review our current External Membership and asking people to renew their membership requests. We hope to be able to gather more data about our members to ensure we can facilitate more meaningful interaction and ensure all members are as active as possible within the society. If you have any comments about our membership policy please contact Ting Chen. We will also be adding more resources and features to our website over the summer, so keep an eye out on this website for the new developments!

Acknowledgments

I am extremely grateful to the entrepreneurs and experts who gave their time to speak at our events this year. These include: Peter Jones (Dragons Den), Theo Paphitis (Dragons Den), Martha Lane Fox (Lastminute.com), Michael Birch (Bebo.com), Shaa Wasmund & Dan Wagner (Brightstation Ventures), Ian Livingstone (Eidos), Jim Lawn (Microsoft), Bronwyn Kundhardt (Microsoft), Katherine Mathieson (NESTA), Ian Lobley (3i), Brad Rosser (Inside Track), Jamie Murray-Wells (glassesdirect), Alex Tew (milliondollarhomepage.com), Darius Norrell (Real World Magazine), Charlie Osmond (Freshminds), Cally Robson (ideas-into-action), Kulveer & Harjeet Taggar (Boso.com) and all the other workshop leaders/facilitators who have helped us out.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank our sponsors and supporters without whom none of this would have been possible. They include: 3i, Oxford Science Enterprise Centre, Deutsche Bank, Sleepwell Hotels, Microsoft, NESTA, Business Link, Innocent Smoothies, Cobra Beer, Red Bull, Make Your Mark (in association with MTV & Fopp), Severn Internet, Purple Media, MindBench, Equity Fingerprint, Polecat, and Cherwell. In particular I would like to thank Fiona Reid (our Senior Member) for her ongoing advice and unfaltering support of OE and Jasmin Levy at OxSEC for all her help with running our events at the Business School.

Lastly, it gives me great pleasure to introduce my successor: Alasdair Bell who will be taking over as sabbatical President from me and will be supported by Andy Young (Vice President). Both Alasdair and Andy are experienced members of the Committee and I have no doubt that they will do a great job in leading the team next year. We have a great year to look forward to which will include a bigger Idea Idol, more great speakers and an improved Start a Company Scheme.

If anyone has any comments/feedback about the year please do not hesitate to email me directly at rajeeb.dey@jesus.ox.ac.uk. I wish next year’s committee the very best and look forward to the continued success of Oxford Entrepreneurs.

Have an awesome summer, and for those graduating, good luck with your entrepreneurial ventures!

Raj

Oxford Entrepreneurs is delighted to invite you to its biggest event of Trinity Term – the Summer BBQ!

We have teamed up with Innocent Smoothies, Cobra Beer, Red Bull, & the Make Your Mark Campaign (in association with MTV & Fopp) to give you the chance to put down your books for one evening and attend the best summer party of the term!

Entry will be subject to capacity - book your place now using the form below!

Tickets for the free BBQ will be available for the first 100 people to arrive on the night so make sure you get there early for free food!

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We have a whole host of exciting entrepreneurial internships/full-time job vacancies in start-ups which are looking to attract the brightest and most talented members of Oxford Entrepreneurs. See below for an outline of the latest opportunities:
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Thursday 31st May, 6pm Rhodes Trust Lecture Theatre, Said Business School

Conversations with Investors: A panel of venture capitalists in discussion with an audience about raising funds for start-up companies.
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24th May: 17.30-21.30 Venue: Harwell Conference Centre, 455 Maxwell Avenue, Harwell, Didcot, Oxon, OX11 0RA

This is a presentation with the Oxford Local Network, one of the world’s largest professional institutions (130,000 members) whose scope is engineering and technology.
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Update: Registrations are filling up fast - register now to ensure you have a place

A serial entrepreneur, Stelios has established more than 17 ventures, the first of which was Stelmar Shipping at the age of 25. Stelios floated Stelmar Shipping on the NTSE in 2001 and in 2005 it was sold for approx $1.3 Billion.
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Oxford Entrepreneurs is delighted to invite you to the first ever Oxford Entrepreneurs event for Oxford alumni. The Oxford Alumni Entrepreneurs Networking Evening is held in partnership with the Said Business School, and kindly sponsored by 3i. It will be hosted at the 3i offices in Victoria, London on 30th April 2007.

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As you can see, we’ve just launched a fresh look for the Oxford Entrepreneurs website! The new site should enable us to keep you much more up-to-date with OE news and events. This is the first of several updates that we’re planning, in particular look out for updates to the forum and “Synergy” database over the coming weeks.

As you can see the site is now powered by a blog system that allows you to leave us comments and discuss events with other members. We would really appreciate your comments or feedback. If you have any suggestions or find any glitches please send them to Andy @ it@oxfordentrepreneurs.co.uk

The Internet has already changed the way that we do business and share information. With the emergence of Web 3.0 it is about to undergo an even more profound transformation that will challenge our traditional business practices and established laws.

Come and hear three leading Oxford University academics discuss the next generation of internet technologies as part of the popular Nutshells series.

This event is organised by the Oxford Science Enterprise Centre at the Said Business School. (more…)