A Leading Private Business School in South America

It is widely acknowledged that one of the critical elements missing from the South American innovation ecosystem is seed and early-stage private equity capital. To address this, a consortium of a leading private business school, a leading private university in South America, and an active promotor of social transformation, a private financial foundation partnered with Oxford Oracle to design an accelerator programme in the region, involving international benchmarking and tailoring of the programme for the South American ecosystem.

The partners agreed that South America be chosen as the first chapter of Oxford Oracle's international network of early-stage technology accelerators, the Oracle Accelerator. Having formed a strong consortium: a leading private business school bringing the local presence and expertise in business management, experience in entrepreneurship and innovation, and high-value networks in South America and beyond. a leading banking foundation in South America delivering industry know-how, as well as invaluable resources and connections. Oxford Oracle brought expertise and access to the physical, intellectual and financial elements of the Oxford innovation ecosystem, and global networks and market access for the projects. The accelerator programme consists of a three-day intensive bootcamp, followed by a mentored acceleration programme of 16 weeks in duration. Support for each project is tailored to maximise the attractiveness of the business propositions to secure investment. The programme developed the project management team (through upskilling and additional personnel where appropriate), validated and developed the business models, and facilitated a step change in the development of the business to further de-risk the opportunity, and develop the project to be fully investment-ready. Oxford Oracle partnered with a leading private business school University in South America, Connect South America (regional tech transfer organisation), and a leading banking foundation in South America (Foundation for a Financial Institution) to deliver an accelerator programme for the South America region. Applications were invited from universities and independent technology entrepreneurs from across the region and were selected down to around 35 projects which were then put through an intensive three-day bespoke boot camp in South America. From this process, we selected our Final Fifteen projects to be accelerated in a 16-week taught and mentored programme to become investment ready'. Final Pitch Day was in Dec 2019 where we invited local and international investors to join the pitching session remotely with a view to making seed investments. This pioneering international accelerator programme was financed by the public and private sector in South America.

Fifteen projects graduated from the accelerator having achieved the agreed step change in development status and participated in a final pitch day, to which Oxford Oracle recruited 25 international investors to view the final pitches online, in addition to the 40 regional and national investors who attended the event in person. In total 13 expressions of interest for investment in the final 15 projects were received, 9 of these from Oxford Oracle's international network of investors. Five follow-on conversations have taken place and two project teams are currently in negotiation to finalise their investments.