Oxford Entrepreneurs is an Oxford-based British student society which was founded in 2002 to encourage entrepreneurship among students at University of Oxford and established the Oxford Entrepreneurs Incubation Centre in 2009 for Oxford student startups in space provided by the institution. Its successes include PlinkArt – a mobile app that recognises well-known artworks – which was also Google's first UK acquisition.
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Mission
Oxford Entrepreneurs offers a range of student-targeted services. It arranges for successful, inspiring entrepreneurs to come to Oxford to offer advice and inspiration to budding entrepreneurs. OE also offers networking events and practical workshops in skills pertinent to entrepreneurship. In September 2009, the student society opened the doors to its Oxford Entrepreneurs Incubation Centre, which is based at Keble College, Oxford, and already hosts three companies started by recent Oxford students: LabMinds, Zoombu and Plink.
Along with advice from some of these early Presidents (Goodson, Taggar, and Makharinsky), several UK universities including the London School of Economics, Imperial College London and Oxford Brookes University adopted OE's entrepreneurship society template, i.e., OE's website technology and a particular branding style called "Bouncewithit". Based in the Said Business School with strong ties to OxCEI (Oxford Centre for Entrepreneurship and Innovation) OE has pioneered a nationwide student entrepreneurship movement, working with many partners including the National Council of Graduate Entrepreneurs, SIFE & Make Your Mark to inspire and stimulate entrepreneurial activity, across the UK and internationally.
Companies founded by its members
Kulveer Taggar and Harjeet Taggar were founding members of San Francisco-based Auctomatic, an auction and marketplace management system for individual sellers on such sites as eBay and Amazon. Auctomatic received investment from Paul Buchheit, the lead developer of Gmail, and went on to be acquired by the Canadian firm Live Current Media for $5 million in April 2008.
Bob Goodson founded Quid,a private software and services company specializing in text-based data analysis.
David Langer and Andy Young founded GroupSpaces, an Oxford-based company that provides free web-based tools for groups to operate efficiently. GroupSpaces secured six-figure investment from angel investors in January 2008 and has attracted over 70 blue-chip advertisers. The site, which has half a million memberships registered across sports clubs, charities, university societies, national associations and other groups, has secured $1.3m from Index Ventures's seed fund and leading Silicon Valley angels in 2010.
Tom Blomfield, Hiroki Takeuchi and Matt Robinson founded online bank payments platform GoCardless in 2010, four years after leaving Oxford. The company received a place on Y Combinator in 2011, leading to a $1.5m Series A.
Thomas Whitfield founded "Oxford BioLabs", an Oxford-based company focusing on the research and development of novel health & beauty therapies. Their hair loss treatment TRX2 reached market in 2011. The company received funding by NESTA and the National Council for Graduate Entrepreneurship (NCGE).
In 2012, former President Husayn Kassai and Vice President Eamon Jubbawy founded Onfido, a global identity verification and background checking company, and have raised over $30m in funding.