The Entrepreneur club marks the launch of our new alumni initiative designed to provide ongoing support to our founders beyond LYVA Labs existing programmes. It brings together past and present cohorts and portfolio companies through small, expert-led sessions focused on the real challenges of scaling innovative businesses – offering practical insights, hands-on support, and access to a growing peer network across the Liverpool City Region. Its creation follows strong demand from alumni themselves, who called for more targeted, in-person engagement centred on funding, investor access and sector-specific expertise, as well as continued support from LYVA Labs.
The first Entrepreneur Club session is aimed at strengthening grant readiness and improving application success. Led by LYVA Labs CEO Lorna Green – an experienced Innovate UK grant assessor – the opening talk offered guidance on identifying funding opportunities and navigating the application process, highlighting common pitfalls, frequent mistakes and the key hurdles applicants must overcome. Participants then built on these insights with dedicated one-to-one support from LYVA Labs advisors during a practical workshop, working directly on their own grant opportunities using the LYVA Labs grant master template to refine work packages, identify suitable partners and strengthen application content.
For those of you who couldn’t join us – or simply need a refresher – here's what to keep in mind when creating a strong grant application.
Be human and specific: Generic or AI-generated responses lack the credibility and nuance assessors expect. It is increasingly obvious when applications rely too heavily on ChatGPT-generated text.
Make grants part of your strategy: The strongest applications are rooted in your core business plan – not bolted on to chase funding.
Start early and avoid last-minute submissions: Competitive bids typically require 100–200 hours over several months, so don’t just wait for a call to open. Applications submitted in the final two weeks have been shown to have a 12% lower success rate.
Answer every part of the question: Structure responses carefully and address each element in full to maximise your score. Strong applications consistently score highly across all sections – use the published scoring criteria as a guide.
Build the right partnerships: Collaborative bids can have up to a 34% higher success rate than single-applicant proposals.
Use appendices effectively: Visuals, risk registers and supporting data can significantly strengthen your case and help evidence key claims.
Align with funder priorities: Ensure your project clearly supports wider policy goals and strategic sectors, with well-defined, measurable outcomes.
Lorna’s session explored how grant funding sits within the UK Government’s wider Modern Industrial Strategy, and how UKRI and Innovate UK will align their upcoming calls with this ten-year strategy, which sets out a plan to increase investment across the “IS-8” – eight high-growth sectors, four of which – Advanced Manufacturing, Life Sciences, Clean Energy, and Digital & Technologies – are directly aligned with LYVA Labs’ portfolio:
Locally, in the Liverpool City Region, £150 million will be received from the Local Innovation Partnerships Fund. More broadly, the National Wealth Fund will expand to £27.8 billion, while the British Business Bank increases capacity to £25.6 billion, enabling a two-thirds rise in support for innovative businesses, and £4 billion specifically earmarked for IS-8 investment, to leverage £12 billion in private capital, alongside direct equity investments of up to £60 million to anchor high-growth firms, backing for new fund managers and cornerstone funds, and a further £2.6 billion in regional debt and equity programmes.
The Entrepreneur Club will continue to expand its practical, ongoing support through a tight-knit peer network across the Liverpool City Region. That means more mentoring, hands-on workshops, peer-led masterclasses, investor introductions, regular meetups and expert masterclasses. If the Liverpool City Region is to realise its ambition to be one of the North’s most innovative hubs, it will rely on strong, sustained connections between founders, knowledge and support.