© Laura Ferguson
We were really pleased – and not too surprised – to hear that Laura Ferguson, UK Director of Capital Cell, has been named one of the ‘50 Movers and Shakers of BioBusiness’.
The industry accolade comes in BioBeat’s annual report celebrating bioscience’s female leaders and entrepreneurs. BioBeat is a collaborative innovation platform for bioentrepreneurs.
Laura also made a select group of 16 ‘Rising Stars’, in the Financial Enablers category, for her leadership in establishing Europe’s first equity crowdfunding platform specialising in life sciences.
After launching Capital Cell UK in June 2017, Laura and the team raised £650,000 for the Cambridge-based business. That involved significant UK angel investment and building partnerships with MedCity, NHS Innovation and others.
Our support to help Laura get here saw her as a successful finalist in our first Pitchfest , run by EEN in the East of England in partnership with the Knowledge Transfer Network. She also signed up for our Innovate 2 Succeed programme, where together, we reviewed the business to ensure it was in the best shape possible for growth. Together, we:
- clarified the strategy and the key priorities to enable the business to achieve their goals which were agreed across the team. This challenged their ambitions and ensured they put the resource and structure in place to grow at the desired pace.
- identified steps to roll out their business in the UK.
- challenged their value proposition for the key audiences
- investors looking to use Captal Cell as a tool to find suitable business investments
- businesses looking to raise finance.
