📍 Venue: SISTER – Renold Building, 32a Altrincham Street, Manchester, M1 7JR
Summer is over. It's time to reconnect, refocus and look ahead. Join Manchester's innovation community as we explore the opportunities shaping the months ahead - from emerging technologies and funding calls to partnerships, investment and new routes to growth. Hear from founders, investors, researchers and innovation leaders on what's next for the ecosystem, then connect with the people and organisations who can help turn ambition into action. Whether you're building, scaling, researching or investing, this is where the next season of innovation begins.
Powered by Advanced Research + Invention Agency
Step into a space where every conversation could spark something new. Enjoy music, refreshments, and a lively atmosphere designed to bring people together, whether you’re exchanging ideas, discovering collaborators, or simply sharing a laugh. This is the perfect moment to unwind, connect, and let serendipity guide your evening.
Join us before the main event to explore the Innovator Showcase, where you’ll have the chance to meet the talented startups. Be the first to experience the innovative technologies and forward-thinking ideas on display.
🍌 ChewChew is an award-winning snack company creating healthier, more sustainable treats from organically grown bananas.
What is Venture Café Manchester and Why Am I Here?
New to Venture Café? Join this quick, interactive introduction to discover what we do, how the Thursday Gathering works, and how you can make the most of your time with us.
Our mission is simple: to connect innovators to make things happen. We bring together people, ideas, organisations and opportunities, while amplifying the work happening across Manchester’s innovation ecosystem.
Find out how to connect, learn, share and get involved - and how you can help amplify Manchester’s innovation ecosystem.
Grab a beverage, bring a friend and plug in!
This workshop looks at how and why equity crowdfunding can play a part in your story. Decide whether a campaign is right for you, learn how to build and run it, and make the most of your new community afterwards.
From working on 60+ investment rounds raising a combined £40M+ through equity crowdfunding, to designing and leading campaigns with bands like Duran Duran and Manic Street Preachers to leverage their audiences for concert film releases, Vimesh Roopun has distilled 7 years of experience engaging fanbases into a practical approach for impact scale-ups tapping into community.
Venture Café is a global movement built on a simple but powerful belief: isolation is the enemy of innovation.
Through our weekly Thursday Gatherings, founders, researchers, investors and innovators come together to share ideas, explore new technologies and build meaningful connections. As ecosystem activators, Venture Café Manchester is creating a central hub for the city’s innovation ecosystem, driving visibility, collaboration and community.
And if you’d like to get more involved with Venture Café, there are plenty of ways to join our network:
🤝 Become a partner
🎤 Speak at an upcoming Thursday Gathering
🙌 Join our ambassador team
💬 Connect with us on LinkedIn
📩 Sign up for our weekly newsletter
Join our Lightning Pitch session where you’ve got just 60 seconds to introduce yourself and share your business or idea with the room. It’s fast, fun, and a brilliant way to meet fellow founders, spark conversations and get your idea out into the Manchester startup community.
Manchester was the birthplace of multiple Industrial Revolutions, manufacturing and computing. From the textile mills of Lancashire to the Baby computer at the University of Manchester.
How can Manchester harness the work being carried out in the local business AI Ecosystem and academic institutions and take its rightful place as a leading player in the AI Industrial revolution?
A growing organising team has been establishing the Manchester AI Guild to play a key role in building a healthy, functioning AI Ecosystem in Greater Manchester.
The Manchester AI Guild has two direct ambitions:
- Serve SMEs and enterprises in Manchester, the North West and across the UK, driving growth through sustainable AI adoption.
- Actively collaborate with other stakeholders to create the next generation of solutions.
Thus establishing Manchester as a global centre of competence for AI Innovation and responsible deployment; shaping a thriving, prosperous, future local AI ecosystem.
Greater Manchester has no shortage of ideas, talent or ambition. But what needs to happen next to turn more of that innovation into successful businesses, investment, jobs and long-term economic growth?
Bringing together perspectives from local government, academia, investment and the wider innovation ecosystem, this panel will explore where Greater Manchester is making progress, where the gaps and barriers remain, and what needs to change.
From connecting research and capital to creating the right conditions for founders to start and scale, we’ll ask what Greater Manchester should prioritise now – and what a stronger, more connected innovation economy could look like next.
This interactive workshop, led by Adrian Quayle and Mihran' Hovnanian, centres on delivering businesses outcomes and helping organisations obtain value from AI.
Supporting the broader community to benefit from an AI which is widely shared rather than
concentrated in a handful of large, mostly non-regional providers? Learn from one another? Solving problems collectively, and creating growth, not just efficiency.
Come ready to share what you need, what you contribute and shape with us the AI community in Manchester.
📍 Venue: SISTER – Renold Building, 32a Altrincham Street, Manchester, M1 7JR
Summer is over. It's time to reconnect, refocus and look ahead. Join Manchester's innovation community as we explore the opportunities shaping the months ahead - from emerging technologies and funding calls to partnerships, investment and new routes to growth. Hear from founders, investors, researchers and innovation leaders on what's next for the ecosystem, then connect with the people and organisations who can help turn ambition into action. Whether you're building, scaling, researching or investing, this is where the next season of innovation begins.
Powered by Advanced Research + Invention Agency
Step into a space where every conversation could spark something new. Enjoy music, refreshments, and a lively atmosphere designed to bring people together, whether you’re exchanging ideas, discovering collaborators, or simply sharing a laugh. This is the perfect moment to unwind, connect, and let serendipity guide your evening.
Join us before the main event to explore the Innovator Showcase, where you’ll have the chance to meet the talented startups. Be the first to experience the innovative technologies and forward-thinking ideas on display.
🍌 ChewChew is an award-winning snack company creating healthier, more sustainable treats from organically grown bananas.
What is Venture Café Manchester and Why Am I Here?
New to Venture Café? Join this quick, interactive introduction to discover what we do, how the Thursday Gathering works, and how you can make the most of your time with us.
Our mission is simple: to connect innovators to make things happen. We bring together people, ideas, organisations and opportunities, while amplifying the work happening across Manchester’s innovation ecosystem.
Find out how to connect, learn, share and get involved - and how you can help amplify Manchester’s innovation ecosystem.
Grab a beverage, bring a friend and plug in!
This workshop looks at how and why equity crowdfunding can play a part in your story. Decide whether a campaign is right for you, learn how to build and run it, and make the most of your new community afterwards.
From working on 60+ investment rounds raising a combined £40M+ through equity crowdfunding, to designing and leading campaigns with bands like Duran Duran and Manic Street Preachers to leverage their audiences for concert film releases, Vimesh Roopun has distilled 7 years of experience engaging fanbases into a practical approach for impact scale-ups tapping into community.
Venture Café is a global movement built on a simple but powerful belief: isolation is the enemy of innovation.
Through our weekly Thursday Gatherings, founders, researchers, investors and innovators come together to share ideas, explore new technologies and build meaningful connections. As ecosystem activators, Venture Café Manchester is creating a central hub for the city’s innovation ecosystem, driving visibility, collaboration and community.
And if you’d like to get more involved with Venture Café, there are plenty of ways to join our network:
🤝 Become a partner
🎤 Speak at an upcoming Thursday Gathering
🙌 Join our ambassador team
💬 Connect with us on LinkedIn
📩 Sign up for our weekly newsletter
Join our Lightning Pitch session where you’ve got just 60 seconds to introduce yourself and share your business or idea with the room. It’s fast, fun, and a brilliant way to meet fellow founders, spark conversations and get your idea out into the Manchester startup community.
Manchester was the birthplace of multiple Industrial Revolutions, manufacturing and computing. From the textile mills of Lancashire to the Baby computer at the University of Manchester.
How can Manchester harness the work being carried out in the local business AI Ecosystem and academic institutions and take its rightful place as a leading player in the AI Industrial revolution?
A growing organising team has been establishing the Manchester AI Guild to play a key role in building a healthy, functioning AI Ecosystem in Greater Manchester.
The Manchester AI Guild has two direct ambitions:
- Serve SMEs and enterprises in Manchester, the North West and across the UK, driving growth through sustainable AI adoption.
- Actively collaborate with other stakeholders to create the next generation of solutions.
Thus establishing Manchester as a global centre of competence for AI Innovation and responsible deployment; shaping a thriving, prosperous, future local AI ecosystem.
Greater Manchester has no shortage of ideas, talent or ambition. But what needs to happen next to turn more of that innovation into successful businesses, investment, jobs and long-term economic growth?
Bringing together perspectives from local government, academia, investment and the wider innovation ecosystem, this panel will explore where Greater Manchester is making progress, where the gaps and barriers remain, and what needs to change.
From connecting research and capital to creating the right conditions for founders to start and scale, we’ll ask what Greater Manchester should prioritise now – and what a stronger, more connected innovation economy could look like next.
This interactive workshop, led by Adrian Quayle and Mihran' Hovnanian, centres on delivering businesses outcomes and helping organisations obtain value from AI.
Supporting the broader community to benefit from an AI which is widely shared rather than
concentrated in a handful of large, mostly non-regional providers? Learn from one another? Solving problems collectively, and creating growth, not just efficiency.
Come ready to share what you need, what you contribute and shape with us the AI community in Manchester.