The event will be held as part of Birmingham Tech Week and features three high-profile speakers who will empower the audience to realise their businesses’ potential. The first speaker is Melissa Snover of Nourish3d, who raised the highest seed round funding of any woman in UK history.

The second speaker is Mark Esho MBE, a nationally renowned disabled entrepreneur and inspirational speaker. Lastly hibretOne’s Founder Drew Currie, who is dubbed “the Martin Lewis of grant funding”, will be delivering his powerful talk Show Me The Money.

hibretOne CIC (formerly The Innovation Factory Cooperative)  is a revolutionary not-for-profit organisation that aims to support 1 million entrepreneurs and organisations and award £1m of grants to start-ups every year. 

Founded in 2022, hibretOne aims to revolutionise business funding for entrepreneurs by giving them access to free, clear and concise business funding. The platform offers free business support and online learning with over 5000 online courses, career guidance and an online virtual entrepreneur accelerator program.

Its affordable membership unlocks features such as industry sector intelligence, which provides reports, market research and industry statistics to help entrepreneurs research their market and create an informed business plan. It also offers a business problem pivot tool,  a co-founder finder, a grant searcher and a revolutionary AI-grant writer. 

Drew Currie, Founder of hibretOne said “hibretOne has been designed with aspiring entrepreneurs' needs at its heart. We have a clear vision to make entrepreneurship more inclusive, create career pathways for failing entrepreneurs and reduce the high failure rates of startups.

“Our aim is to be the UK’s No. 1 free entrepreneurship marketplace. With our fantastic partners, we believe this ambition is achievable. With diverse co-founders in gender and ethnicity, inclusion is in the hibretOne DNA and plays a key part in ensuring all entrepreneurs and businesses are supported, particularly those from underrepresented and overlooked communities.”

60% of small businesses will fail within the first 5 years therefore access to clear, accessible information on funding and grants has never been more important. Presently it is hugely time-consuming for founders to discover what funding is available to them. Once they have assessed their eligibility, they have to spend hours writing a grant application. The hibretOne platform takes the stress out of both these factors and lowers the barrier to entry for grants and funding.