The programme
The Sky High Founder Programme
Six months. One opportunity. A company to build.
Our first initiative, designed to identify and develop exceptional founders while they are still at university.
The programme runs for six months and is built around a simple idea: rather than asking students to come up with an idea and then teaching them how to develop it, we provide the scalable opportunity and ask them to build the business.
That means the programme begins with people, not pitches.
Step one
We start with exceptional people.
We are not looking for students who have already decided that they are entrepreneurs. Some of the people we select may have run businesses before; others may never have considered doing so.
What matters is their potential.
We look for people who are intellectually curious, commercially minded, ambitious, resilient and capable of taking responsibility. We want people who learn quickly and who are prepared to work hard when there isn’t a clear answer in front of them.
Students can apply individually or with an existing team. We encourage individual applications because we want to build teams deliberately rather than assume that the people who happen to know each other will make the best founding team.
Step two
Then we form the teams.
Selected students come together at induction, where we get to know their skills, experience, interests and strengths.
We then form the founding teams.
The objective is to create teams with complementary capabilities and the potential to work effectively together. Once the teams are established, we introduce them to the opportunity they will be working on.
We don’t expect you to find your co-founder. We help create the founding team.
Step three
We provide the opportunity.
Sky High identifies commercial opportunities through our own research, our network and relationships with businesses and other organisations.
Corporate partners may also bring us specific problems, opportunities or areas of unmet demand that they believe could support a new venture.
We are particularly interested in opportunities where there is the potential to build a substantial standalone company — potentially one capable of reaching £100m+ in annual turnover.
Not every opportunity will become a great company. That’s part of the process. Our job is to identify opportunities with enough potential to justify serious exploration and give talented people the chance to pursue them.
Once the team has been given its opportunity, responsibility moves firmly to the founders.
The idea may start with us. The company has to become yours.
Education
The education sits alongside the building.
Our education programme is designed to give founders the knowledge they need to make better decisions as the company develops.
Strategy
Customer discovery
Market validation
Business models
Sales
Marketing
Finance
Operations
Leadership
Growth
Product
Fundraising
The programme isn’t built around teaching these subjects in isolation. The education is connected directly to the companies the students are building.
If you’re trying to acquire your first customer, you need to understand sales. If you’re deciding which market to enter, you need to understand strategy. If you’re considering raising investment, you need to understand what investors are looking for.
You learn the theory. Then you have to make it work in the real world.
Pace
The pace matters.
We are deliberately building Sky High around speed.
The objective isn’t to spend six months making a polished business plan. We want teams to get out of the building, talk to customers, test their assumptions and find evidence as quickly as possible.
There will be things you get wrong. There will be ideas that don’t work. There will be uncomfortable conversations and decisions where the answer isn’t obvious. That’s part of building a company.
Our aim is for every team to reach its first customer within six months.
Expectations
What we expect.
The minimum commitment is 20 hours a week, in addition to university.
That commitment is not a suggestion. We are asking students to treat the venture seriously while continuing their degree.
The programme is demanding because building a company is demanding. We want applicants to think carefully about whether they are genuinely prepared to make that commitment before they apply.
Cohort 1 schedule
A six-month programme with three Birmingham events.
Founders are expected to attend the opening and final events face to face, with the programme continuing online every other Wednesday in between.
Wednesday 4 November 2026
Opening event
Face to face in Birmingham.
Wednesday 11 November 2026
Second event
Face to face in Birmingham, followed by online sessions every other Wednesday.
Wednesday 21 April 2027
Final event
Face to face in Birmingham.
Where it can lead
Six months is the programme.
At the end of six months, the strongest teams may be invited to continue with Sky High. This next phase is reserved for exceptional ventures that have demonstrated enough potential to justify further support.
Selected founders will work with us on investment readiness, pitching, fundraising strategy and introductions to investors.
The longer-term objective is to help the best companies move from early validation into serious growth and, where the opportunity and team justify it, towards the scale required to become £100m+ turnover businesses.
It doesn’t have to be the end of the journey.
Cohort 1 applications are now open.