Where entrepreneurship sits
Entrepreneurship is not an end-stage programme. It is a networked support system embedded across the whole journey.
Open events, bootcamps, labs, making courses, volunteer programmes and links to funders all feed into entrepreneurship. They are not separate programmes that happen to sit next to it. The venture track brings that support together and makes it stronger, instead of adding a business course at the end.
Research on entrepreneurial ecosystems says the same: people start businesses because of the conditions around them, not because of one course taught on its own[34, 35].
Support comes in two forms.
Direct support
Help finding funding, use of equipment and tools, mentoring, and incubation (structured early help for a new venture).
Indirect support
Matchmaking: connecting founders to external funders, networks, volunteers and experts, and linking local makers to opportunities elsewhere.
Indirect support is harder to see. As well as giving help ourselves, we connect people with others who can help them. Over time, that network is worth more than any single programme.
Shared resources every founder can use
A founder does not go through a single fixed programme. Instead, they draw on a shared set of resources that other founders are using at the same time.
| Resource | How it helps a new venture |
|---|---|
| Labs | Shared equipment, and people working on the same craft, for learning through real problems and for building prototypes, wherever the lab runs. |
| Mentors and trainers | Coaching and specialist knowledge, more and more often from alumni. |
| The funder and partner network | Introductions, outside funding, and links beyond the region. |
| Seed funding | A startup challenge with a capped award, and seed grants from the incubator. |
| Replication | The MakerSpace franchise: a local partner provides the space in another community, and we provide the design of the space, the standard for running it, and a licence to run our programmes there. |
| Alumni and the ventures the pathway produced | Proof that it can be done, role models, and help given back as mentors and partners. |
How a founder moves from education to a venture
At each step, something has to be true before the founder moves on to the next one.
| Stage | What happens | What is needed to move on |
|---|---|---|
| Education | Core skills and ways of thinking, in the STEAM programmes or any of our other teaching. | Curiosity, and a basic level of skill. |
| Discovery | Open events, bootcamps, first projects. | The learner chooses to go further. |
| Lab work | Take on a real local challenge in a lab. | A tested prototype. |
| Grassroots innovation | The prototype becomes a local solution that has been checked with the community. | A tested prototype, proof that the community wants it, and a committed team. |
| A first version | Design thinking, planning the business, telling its story, with specialists brought in where the work needs them. | A working first version and an idea for the venture. |
| Incubation | Seed funding, mentoring, workspace, contacts. | Launched, with revenue and impact being tracked. |
| Sustaining | The venture keeps trading, alumni come back as mentors, and the approach is repeated elsewhere. | Feeds back into the shared resources. |
Challenge-based learning, where learners work on real problems, runs through every step. Specialist help is brought in whenever the work needs it. Neither is a step of its own.
We know most about the step from a tested prototype into venture work. For the step after it, from a first version to a launched venture, we do not yet have enough information to say how many make it, so we publish no rate.
What gets incubated
In one incubation cohort, eleven ideas were supported. Eight were agriculture, food or materials businesses, among them spice, mushrooms, handicrafts from upcycled glass, aloe vera and peanuts. We also run software work and an artificial-intelligence curriculum, yet only one idea was digital.
This follows from the rule that a problem must come from the community. The problems that pass that test are the ones a Batticaloa community actually has.
In this region, the main thing holding people back is earning a living, not a lack of skills. So this mix of ideas fits the mission.
So we do not describe our incubation as tech or deep-tech. Our software team’s projects are paid work for clients, a separate activity, and are not counted as incubated ventures.
We do not yet know whether later cohorts have the same mix, so we do not assume either way.
Ownership: what we claim
A page of company logos under our name suggests that we own those companies, and usually we do not. So we follow these rules:
- We do not call the ventures a portfolio. That word suggests ownership. We played different roles in different ventures, and a role is not ownership. They are ventures the pathway produced.
- A venture that separates from us is independent by default. Only the venture leaves. A lab never becomes a subsidiary.
- A company founded by an alumnus after they left is theirs. We do not count or list it. What we count is the venture that person built while they were with us.
- An organisation a co-founder ran before DreamSpace Academy existed is closely connected to us. Its success is never independent proof that this work succeeds.
- We will publish a count of ventures once we have agreed how to count them. We are working out what role we played in each venture and which ventures to include.
How we report outcomes
We report successes, partial results and failures. Reporting the partial results and failures is what makes the successes believable.
| Category | What it looks like | Why it is reported |
|---|---|---|
| Success | A business started, revenue, work created, production kept going, impact on the community. | It shows what is possible. |
| Partial | A prototype built but not scaled up, funding paused, or something used locally but never sold. | It gives a realistic, fuller picture. Most real outcomes are here. |
| Failure | Abandoned, funding not kept up, training that did not match the local economy, or the learner left. | It makes the whole account believable. These are problems found while doing the work. |
Research is clear that making things builds only some of the skills needed to start a business. The rest needs dedicated programmes and incubation on top of it[6, 32, 36]. That is why we run venture programmes and incubation of our own, instead of hoping that entrepreneurship will happen by itself.
How DreamSpace Academy was itself incubated
DreamSpace Academy itself went through the kind of support we now offer. We were founded through an incubation programme run by another organisation, which involved:
- a short, structured programme ending in a pitch;
- a soft loan (a loan on easy terms), not a grant;
- a centre set up as a social enterprise run by a local entrepreneur, not as a branch office, with the entrepreneur left owning it.
That fits our own definition of an impact venture, an idea another organisation set out before we did. An impact venture comes out of a real community, has a believable way to pay for itself, and could not have got there without help at the start.
The two approaches are built the same way, but we do not claim we set out to copy the earlier one, or that we are repeating what was done for us. Nor do we claim to have completed that incubation, and we give no figures for it.