Service Overview
Discover supports founders with early-stage, impact-led ideas to explore whether their concept can become a credible and viable venture.
Discover is designed to reduce risk at the earliest stage. It enables founders to test ideas, gather evidence, and build confidence before committing significant time or capital.
Delivery is hands-on and collaborative. We work alongside founders to shape, test and validate ideas, focusing on feasibility, demand and alignment between purpose and opportunity.
Discover is typically enabled through third-party funding, often in partnership with universities, public bodies, or mission-aligned funders. We only deliver Discover where external funding is available, but we actively support founders to identify and pursue that funding, and we have a strong track record of securing it through routes such as UKRI and related innovation programmes. Availability depends on timing and fit, and we are often creative in how opportunities are structured.
While Discover is selective, we encourage ambitious founders with strong ideas to get in touch, even if funding is not yet secured.
Who Qualifies?
Discover is for founders who:
- Are developing ambitious, impact-led ideas aimed at meaningful social or environmental change
- Are exploring novel products, services, technologies, or delivery models with the potential to scale, replicate, or influence systems
- Want to test feasibility, demand, and real-world adoption
- Need evidence to support confident decisions about what to do next
- Are emerging from research, innovation, or applied practice environments
- All Discover ventures MUST be impact-led, with purpose embedded from the outset.
What You’ll Get
As part of our Discover Pathway, we will cover:
- Market and customer discovery
- Feasibility testing and validation
- Value proposition development
- Competitor and landscape analysis
- Mission, vision and values alignment
- Early pilots or prototypes
Objectives of Discover
We use research, testing and real-world feedback to help founders explore ideas with confidence and understand what progress looks like in practice.
By the end of Discover, founders should be able to decide, with evidence, whether to progress, pivot, partner, pause or stop
01.
Test whether an idea can work in the real world
02.
Clarify purpose, mission and values
03.
Identify partners, collaborators and ecosystem opportunities
04.
Understand users, customers and beneficiaries
05.
Validate assumptions through research, prototyping or pilots
Impact in Discover
Impact is integral to Discover. We support founders to:
- Articulate the change they want to create
- Explore how impact and viability interact
- Build evidence that purpose and performance can develop togethe
Not sure if your idea is impact-led? Take our quick quiz to make sure!
What Our Ventures Say
We’ve supported 5,000+ ventures globally. Heres what they have to say
The biggest thing I would say about The Ventures Lab, is that they want me to win, they want my business to succeed.
Rab Meliani
5000+
Ventures Supported Globally
The team works across every area of your business, providing practical support, helping you develop, and offering clear, objective insight.
Andrew Carr
As we grow our business, we also grow the amount of good that we’re able to do in the world.
Isadora Quay
26
Years in business
If you’re thinking of joining The Ventures Lab, do it.
Kate McKenzie
£10M
Available in patient capital
Discover In Action
Today is World Mental Health Day. For this Venture Spotlight from The Ventures Lab, we
Last night, founders and researchers from across Scotland’s universities came together at Barony Hall in
The Social Enterprise World Forum (SEWF) launched its Social Investment Manifesto on the 23rd of
Lets Discover Together
Whether you are exploring an idea, preparing to raise investment, or scaling post-investment, we are here to support you for the journey.
