Corporate partners
Some of the best new businesses may already be hiding inside your organisation.
Large companies encounter problems, unmet customer needs, technologies and commercial opportunities every day.
Some are obvious candidates for internal development. Others don’t fit comfortably within existing structures or aren’t large enough to justify the attention required from a major organisation.
But that doesn’t necessarily mean they aren’t valuable.
Some could become entirely new businesses.
Sky High works with organisations to identify those opportunities and explore whether they could support a standalone venture.
How it works
Give an opportunity to a team built to pursue it.
A corporate partner might bring us a specific problem, an area of unmet demand, an emerging technology or an opportunity that it believes could be developed further.
We don’t assume that every opportunity will become a company. We’ll assess the commercial potential and, where there is a compelling case, develop it further.
We are particularly interested in opportunities where there is a credible path towards a substantial standalone company — potentially one capable of reaching £100m+ in annual turnover.
Sky High can then provide the founding team and the venture-building environment.
You identify an opportunity. We find the people who can build around it.
Why students
Why involve students?
Exceptional students have several advantages.
They are hungry, curious and willing to challenge assumptions. They aren’t constrained by how things have always been done inside a large organisation, and they can devote themselves to a problem without the layers of structure that can slow internal innovation.
That doesn’t mean every student will build a successful company.
It means that, given the right opportunity, team and support, some exceptional students can move remarkably quickly.
Our programme is designed to find those people.
Criteria
What we are looking for.
We’re interested in opportunities where there is a meaningful customer problem or commercial opportunity and where a new venture could potentially create significant value.
That could involve a new product or service, an underserved market, an internal capability with external potential, a technology application or a problem that has not yet been solved effectively.
The starting point doesn’t need to be a fully formed business idea.
It simply needs to be an opportunity worth exploring — and ideally one with room to become a very large business.
Interested in exploring an opportunity?
We’d be happy to have an initial conversation about problems or opportunities within your organisation that you think might have potential beyond their current use.