West Yorkshire Innovative Entrepreneur Award

The Programme

The West Yorkshire Innovative Entrepreneur programme was created by the West Yorkshire Combined Authority to provide the support, guidance and means for entrepreneurial individuals to transform their ideas into high impact, profitable businesses, that could create positive impact within the West Yorkshire region and beyond! Spanning 9-months, it supported individuals to:

• Develop a roadmap to launch their start up

• Develop an entrepreneurial skill set

• Understand the investment landscape and build a bespoke investment plan

• Connect with investors

• Connect with a network of support within the region and beyond

Compost-It’s Progression

Compost-It was one of the lucky organisations selected to participate in this regional programme, and the concept developed immensely during the 9 months. When we entered the programme, our Leeds food-waste recycling service had several weaknesses. We had achieved our goal of creating a reliable, accessible, convenient service, but all the collection was done on foot, using backpacks, strollers, and a cart. The scalability of Compost-It was therefore incredibly limited, as there is only so much food-waste that a human can carry across Leeds on foot! We learned about the importance of financial sustainability to create even greater and widespread impact across the region, to expand the service and meet the accelerating demand. Many people said the only way this would be achieved would be to charge households. This, however, went against our ethos and the reasons why we came up with the idea with the first place. After much thought and consideration, we decided that the way we would achieve this financial sustainability would be to charge businesses a basic cost to recycle their food-waste, and use the profits to expand the free households scheme!

The Competition

After 6 months of learning, adapting, and growing, the ‘entrepreneurs’ on the programme came together for the Innovative Entrepreneur pitching competition, striving to win one of the 3 £5000 prizes for the best pitches. Despite competing against each other, the atmosphere was incredibly supportive. All that time sharing our challenges and accomplishments had brought us together, and we felt like an extended family.

Condensing several months of research and experience into a short, 2-minute pitch was one of the most difficult I have had to do. There was so much I wanted to highlight and share, but my initial attempts ended up being longer than 6 minutes! Luckily I had support from Russell Copley, managing director of Greenborough Management Limited, who was incredibly experienced in refining exciting, complex concepts into brief, powerful presentations.

Despite spending the entire week jittery and nervous about the pitch, I came into the day comfortable knowing that whatever the outcome was, I was proud of the distance I had come since I joined the competition. Somehow, with a lot of luck, Compost-It was crowned one of the 3 winners! Managing to win despite being surrounded by so many other incredible, experienced founders was a major confidence booster, and really helped us believed in the potential that Compost-It has to transform the recycling scene across the nation.

The Prize Money

The prize money was used to contribute towards our most important purchase in our history - a second-hand electric van! The transition from recycling food-waste across Leeds on foot, to being able to do so in a van, created incredible differences in the day-to-day work that we did, as can probably be imagined. Especially during the colder months!