AA Summer Programme 2026
Opening the Door to Future Founders and Funders
This July, Angel Academe members got together again to run a week-long summer programme giving 16–18-year-olds an inside look at the world of startups and angel investing.
The idea was born in 2025, when a group of AA members started discussing a simple question: How can our incredible network come together to give young people meaningful access to the world we operate in? Deborah Gruenberger then took the lead on shaping that idea into the first Founders & Funders programme last summer, with a large group of Angel Academe members helping bring it to life.
The response was so positive that Deborah and Isobel McDermott-Spencer decided to run with it again in 2026, spending more than six months building on what we had learned, refining the format and making the programme significantly stronger.
One of the biggest changes was who could take part. In 2025 we tested the concept with a cohort recruited through our inner circle. This year, Isobel reached out to schools across London and introduced an application process. The result was 18 entrepreneurial, ambitious students from 13 schools, with more than 70% of the cohort female.
For five days, they were immersed in a world most teenagers rarely get to experience first-hand. The week took them from founder mindset to investor mindset through panels, group exercises, candid conversations, Q&As and hands-on challenges. They heard the realities of building businesses, then crossed to the other side of the table to look at how investors assess opportunities, what makes a company investable, and why access to funding is still so uneven, particularly for female founders. Along the way came plenty of career stories and conversations that don’t tend to make it into classrooms.
It was a real community effort.
Angel Academe members Dan Hawker, Khyati Sundaram, John Souter, Yee Mun Thum, Simon Hopkins and Tracey Rob Perera all gave their time to speak and work with the students. In addition, we brought in Anna Jones, Sholto Lindsay-Smith, Hector Dominguez, Donna Arenson and Steven Brown from the wider startup and investment community.
The students also loved experiencing three very different Central London working environments, thanks to our generous venue hosts. We started the week at x+why, before moving on to DC Advisory and Kingsley Napley, both Angel Academe sponsors. (And judging by the number of selfies, DC Advisory’s famous lobby chandelier may have been the real star of the programme.)
The week culminated with the students becoming angels for the day.
Dr Georgia Fleet, founder of Angel Academe portfolio company Zonova, pitched her business to the group. John Souter helped bring Georgia into the programme, while Verity Baldry created a dummy data room so the students could investigate the opportunity properly.
After the pitch and a lively Q&A, they worked through a simplified deal memo, with Tracey, Deborah and Isobel mentoring the teams, before presenting their investment decisions. (Seventeen out of eighteen chose to invest.)
The feedback from the students was tremendous. One came up to us at the end of day two to pitch her own business ideas. Another told us he had decided to change his intended degree from Politics to Business. Every participant said the week had opened their mind to something new.
Mission accomplished.
So, what’s next? Quite a few of the group have stayed in touch and even created their own WhatsApp group. We plan to stay connected too, particularly as some participants have already asked about mentoring, work experience and where they go from here. If anyone in the Angel Academe community would like to help support one of those next steps, Deborah and Isobel would be very happy to hear from you.
Maybe somewhere down the line one of this year’s group will become a founder, an investor or even an Angel Academe member themselves.
For now, 18 young people got access to a world they hadn’t seen before… because the Angel Academe community was willing to open the door.