NEF+ develops the entrepreneurial leaders of the future.

We build leadership and business success instincts from years of development. These instincts are born out of varied exposure, experiences, and thousands of decisions.

NEF+ is a fast-track programme. We speed up the learnings and opportunities you need to achieve high growth within exciting startups and scaleups. We split our participants into two categories:

  1. Early-stage founders
    You’re a founder who’s launched an MVP or have launched one already. You’ll be at the stage where you want to move forward with your business but need help getting there. Improve your leadership skills, gain access to partnerships and funding opportunities, and put ideas to the test. The NEF+ programme and community offers the resources to help you fast track your goals and grow your business.
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  2. Scaleup talent
    These participants are already employees inside scaleup companies. Founders of the scaleup will nominate these gifted individuals. During the programme, they’ll gain support on specific projects to promote growth within their scaleup. Working alongside inspiring and supportive founders will offer insight into what it takes to lead a business and grow teams.
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on the photo (from left): our co-founder and trustee Dee Stirling with 3 of our alumni: Nomshado Michelle Baca, Yang Liu, Kike Oniwinde

We designed NEF+ to develop entrepreneurial leadership skills. Our programme is for founders of startups and high-potential talent within scaleup companies.

Whether we’re founders or future leaders within scaleups, we’ve learned the importance of: 

  • ‘entrepreneurial leadership’; it’s both a mindset and a set of skills required to grow ideas
  • interpersonal skills, critical thinking and the ability to manage high-performing teams
  • independent and quick-thinking in high pressure and fast-changing environments

Becoming a participant of the NEF+ programme is a fast track to startup and scaleup success. We are the home to some of the UK’s most innovative minds, big thinkers and future leaders.

Our programme is only the beginning of our cohort’s journey. Here at NEF+, you’ll unlock opportunities to grow and gain a lifetime’s worth of connections within our supportive network.

Our strong alumni community play a crucial role in leading and helping one another during the programme and far beyond. Founders within our alumni have gone on to grow some of this country’s most successful and groundbreaking businesses. Become one of our participants today and follow in their footsteps.

Apply now

Peer-to-peer experience

NEF+ is a peer-to-peer learning and development initiative uniquely combining early-stage founders with scaleup talent.

The combination of early-stage founders and scaleup talent in a single cohort accelerates personal development and skills acquisition through:

  • unique and new perspectives from real business situations
  • a broadened exposure to varied industries
  • exposure to the challenges you may face at the next stage of your venture, or role

Learning programme

Our bespoke NEF+ programme delivers specific learning objectives so that you can:

  • embrace and develop your leadership skills
  • carve out a growth mindset for future sucess
  • understand critical thinking, problem-solving and decision making
  • discover the people skills you will need to people manage and create high-performing teams
  • broaden your horizons and expand your network
  • test and develop your ideas
  • build relationships with your peers
  • contribute to idea generation

For entrepreneurs building a business

You’ll leverage the learning objectives to:

  • support your business
  • achieve product-market fit
  • create a clear roadmap for future growth
  • create value propositions that attract customers, new talent, partners and investors

For talented employees already within scaleups

Participants will leverage the learning objectives to:

  • gain support for a specific project selected within your scaleup that promotes growth
  • understand, consider and engage in opportunities for your scaleup
  • embrace and develop leadership skills to support your growing teams as you scale

The values of NEF+

With ten years of experience developing talent and running our fast-track programmes, we’ve learned a thing or two! Below, we’ve distilled the values that underpin the NEF+ programme.

We commit to:

  • developing entrepreneurial skills and approaches for future business leaders
  • encouraging participants to go beyond their comfort zones and seek new perspectives
  • encourage enthusiastic participation, support and connections by uniting people with shared characteristics and complementary skillsets
  • creating strong themes and accessible structures to allow talent from varied backgrounds to understand and share perspectives

In addition, all NEF+ participants benefit from our unique combination of programme features:

  • ongoing access to high-value digital playbooks to maintain knowledge
  • real-life business challenges to test out learning that participants can apply to practical situations
  • engaging and collaborative content with the option for further individual exploration
  • accessible support via expert one-to-one coaches and experienced mentors throughout the programme
  • encouraging individual projects and reflective learning