OxFounders turns 2! 🎂🎉

This October, OxFounders Global celebrates our second birthday!

It's been an incredible journey since we held our very first event in Istanbul on 27 October 2023.

We've been to 10 countries, across 5 continents, meeting some of the world's brightest entrepreneurial talent building the companeis of the future.

Across these two years, we've reviewed over 1,000 startup pitches, created more than 50,000 ecosystem connections at our events - involving investors from over 120 firms and representing more than $60bn AUM - and are proud to say that over 40% of all our selected pitching teams went through to investors' dealrooms post-event.

It's also been a journey that has seen us take on new and exciting projects, namely by starting to work with governments and universities to tackle the structural obstacles holding entrepreneurial ecosystems back.

As part of this work, we launched a major project in June 2025 in Nigeria, with Triple Helix Nigeria and the Nigerian government's National Content Development and Monitoring Board (NCDMB), to design effective policies aimed at unlocking the country's entrepreneurial potential in universities. 13 institutions have already signed up as pilots for our project, and we're incredibly excited about the impact we can achieve in this space.

We've also started creating content, and we're thrilled to have been given the chance to interview luminaries of the global innovation landscape in our OxFounders Global Podcast, including investors at top firms like Sequoia, Balderton, and Creandum, professors of innovation at Oxford University, leading entrepreneurial public figures like Matt Clifford and Brent Hoberman, and leaders of institutions making huge impact, like Station F. Since launching our podcast in 2024, we've had over 10,000 listeners across platforms, and we're only just beginning.

We're also about to debut our Substack, which will feature our brand-new Gamechangers Interview, featuring the organisations that have changed innovation policy around the world. Our first guests are Michael Buhr (Director, C100) and Sarita Runeberg (CEO, Maria 01).

Over the last 2 years, we've been proud to share our vision across several major media networks, including the national Arise TV Nigeria (over 100m viewers worldwide), The Hindu, Uzbek State TV, Emprendedor, Fortuna Magazine, and others, as well as giving guest speeches at universities in the UK and aborad, including most recently at Warwick University.

We can't wait to see where this project will take us next. But in the meantime, celebrate our second birthday with us.

🥳