ENGINE ROOM - A KICKSTART GLOBAL PROJECT
consulting and banking built their entrances years ago. spring weeks, grad schemes, the milk round - structured, visible, easy for a 20-year-old to walk through. so that's where the ambition flows because it's the only door they can find and have seen as an option.
the companies actually building the future never built one. the early-stage teams working on ai, deeptech, climate, biotech - they hire through who they already know, not through any entrance a student can see from the outside. so a generation that wanted to build something ends up three years deep in work that doesn't lead anywhere, and the firms that needed them most never met them.
this was never a talent problem. it's a routing problem.
the appetite isn't in question. roughly two-thirds of young people say they want to build something of their own - and only around one in six ever start. the gap isn't desire. no one showed them the room, and most have no idea where the room is. the single most common reason young people give for not starting is simply not knowing where to begin! we cannot have that.
exposure is the biggest predictor of who goes on to build. 68% of young people who know a founder - a friend, a family member, anyone - say it made them more likely to start something themselves. you don't decide to become a founder in the abstract. you decide it after standing next to one, watching the thing get made and getting your own hands dirty. put a young person inside an early company for real, and you haven't filled a role. you've made the next founder. you’ve created a future innovator.
and the early company is where the economy actually lives. small and medium firms are 99.9% of british businesses and around 60% of all private-sector jobs. nearly one in every two jobs sits inside a company small enough that a sharp 21-year-old moves its trajectory.
at kickstart we bet on slope over starting point - on how steep someone's trajectory is, not where they happen to be standing today. the most undervalued asset in the country is a young person with steep slope and no door. this programme is another door for young talent.
you don't need permission, a perfect cv, or a finished idea. you need real exposure and a reason to get your hands dirty early.
you get first access to the steepest-slope talent in the country - the people who'll be running things in five years, while they're still hungry enough to outwork everyone.
this door was never built. so we're building it - during global entrepreneurship week, alongside the organisations below who decided the next generation of builders was worth backing.
a kickstart programme, in collaboration with [LOOKING FORWARD TO HAVING YOU JOIN US!]