Deadline: 02-Jul-21
Nominations are now open for the 2021 Barclays Entrepreneur Awards to celebrate disruptive, innovative businesses through a regional heat, followed by a national final held in London.
Barclays aims to recognise founders and their businesses drawn from across the country, who amid the pandemic have gone from bedroom to (virtual) boardroom, from homemade to self-made and have succeeded in bringing together their creativity, passion and innovation. And in turn, helping to activate and stimulate the economic recovery and drive social change.
The Barclays Entrepreneur Awards consist of eight award categories, ranging from start-up through to international expansion. For the first time, a number of Barclays partners who provide services to help businesses thrive have taken the opportunity to sponsor a category.
Categories
There are eight award categories to choose with helpful tips on preparing your nomination submissions included in the criteria’s below. Entrepreneurs can enter multiple categories so please do read them all before submitting your nomination(s).
- Start-up Entrepreneur: This category recognises entrepreneurs who have started new, fast-growing businesses. The judges will be looking for ventures that identify and exploit a market opportunity, or start-ups that have developed disruptive solutions or approaches. They invite you to nominate outstanding entrepreneurs who have:
- Founded a new business: started a new business or venture which has the potential to grow rapidly by exploiting a gap in the market.
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Innovative solutions: created a business or venture by identifying and exploiting a market opportunity, or by developing an innovative solution or approach.
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Propensity for scale: have a clear, scalable model, which can be replicated across the UK and/or internationally.
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Founder-owned: the business is substantially founder owned (i.e. the majority shareholder is not a corporate or venture capital firm).
- Entrepreneur Icon: This award recognises entrepreneurs who have successfully turned their vision into reality. They are celebrating those individuals who have achieved their goals by building teams, forming key strategic alliances and overcoming the challenges, in scaling their business to deliver significant growth. The judges will be looking for individuals who have demonstrated active support and are recognised as role models for current and future entrepreneurs. They invite you to nominate outstanding entrepreneurs who are:
- An Entrepreneurial Icon: successfully scaled one or more businesses and demonstrated how they have turned their business visions into reality by building teams and forming strategic alliances
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Scale-up leaders: led their business through significant growth. Success can be evidenced through their history in scaling businesses, raising investment and successful exits
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Role models, offering support and mentoring: demonstrated active support and mentorship for other entrepreneurs, whilst also being recognised as a role model for current and future entrepreneurs.
- International Expansion: This award recognises businesses that have established an impressive trading footprint and market growth in international markets over the last 3 years. Judges will consider export sales growth, sustainability and global reach. They invite you to nominate outstanding entrepreneurs who have:
- Achieved high-growth: experienced rapid growth by exporting to foreign markets over a sustained period of the last 3 years.
- An established exporter: led the business through rapid international growth, by building a strong international trading footprint, business and revenue model, establishing the business in the UK and exporting to foreign markets.
- Ownership: received external investment from a third party or grown the business organically.
- Scale-up Entrepreneur: This category recognises entrepreneurs whose businesses are growing rapidly. The judges will be looking for disruptive ventures with strong management teams, which have received external or internal organic investment to help scale their business. They invite you to nominate outstanding entrepreneurs who have:
- Achieved high-growth: experienced rapid growth of at least 20% year-on-year for 3 years, in terms of revenue and employees.
- An established business: led the business through rapid growth periods by building a strong management team, business and revenue model, establishing the business as a disrupter in the market.
- Ownership: received external investment from a third party or grown the business organically.
- Social Entrepreneur: This category recognises entrepreneurs whose companies have delivered transformative social or environmental change. The judges will be looking for individuals who serve as role models for the future generation of social enterprises. They invite you to nominate outstanding entrepreneurs who have:
- Driven social change: founded their business in order to address a societal need. The business is having a positive social or environmental impact on society as a whole in the UK or abroad.
- Direct positive impact: founded, developed and implemented the initiative directly, with the sustainable benefits of this clearly measured and documented.
- A sustainable/responsible business model: built a business that is commercially viable, sustainable and scalable.
- Timescale: The business had made significant/particular progress/overcome challenges in the past year to make this a pivotal point in the businesses: growing impact and reach, becoming financially sustainable and growing client base.
- Turnover: less than £10m turnover.
- Eagle Labs Innovation: For this category, they are looking for applications from companies from within the Eagle Labs ecosystem who have shown real innovation and created products or services that have positively transformed their industry or community, and are now operating, sustainable and viable businesses on the road to big things. They invite you to nominate outstanding entrepreneurs demonstrating:
- Accelerating UK Business – This business has created growth and opportunity in the wide eco-system, showing a proven impact on the community.
- Industry 4.0 – This business has leveraged the latest technologies in to bring their ideas to life, developing designs to solve business or societal challenges, reduce supply chain complexity or demonstrate working prototypes to gain funding etc by translating Rapid Prototyping ideas into viable propositions.
- Enabling Innovative Collaboration- This business has worked collaboratively across the Eagle Lab network to create business disruption in their associated market outside of their own business. They have supported established organisations on their digital transformational journey and engendered/created a culture of intrapreneurship within traditional businesses.
- Rise FinTech: This award recognises a company that is leading the way as a FinTech disruptor and is building the future of financial services.
- Barclaycard Next Level: For this category, they are looking for applications from existing Barclaycard Business customers. The Barclaycard Next Level Award recognises the entrepreneurs and small businesses who have overcome a significant challenge, adapted the way they trade or grabbed their big business growth moment using their Barclaycard Business product. They invite nominations from:
- Existing Barclaycard Business customer (those with a Barclaycard card machine or online payment gateway to process card payments and/or a Barclaycard Business card(s))
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Small businesses that can demonstrate significant growth since using their Barclaycard product
Criteria
In order to nominate yourself, or someone else, the business nominated must satisfy the following criteria:
- Have a UK business
- Be registered / established in the UK
- Have a UK based trading address
- Have a UK based key official or senior manager
- Be able to evidence UK trade
For more information, visit https://events.barclays.com/ehome/entrepreneurawards2021