Participating business ideas include kitchen furnishings, architectural products and accessories. 

On Tuesday afternoon, the first meeting of the eXpress programme with cake. The eXpress pre-incubator programme consists of six business development workshops including topics such as business models, business economics and branding.

For this autumn's round of the programme, 18 business ideas have been accepted and many of the participating entrepreneurs are studying, or have recently finished their studies at Umeå University and mainly at the colleges on the arts campus. Another part of the entrepreneurs have roots in the regional business community and another part have moved to Umeå from Stockholm and Barcelona to participate in the programme. Common to all entrepreneurs' business ideas is that they are included in the cultural and creative industries.

-"The opportunities available in the labs here at Sliperiet attract many people to the incubator," says Oskar Riby, head business coach for the eXpress programme.

The aim of the programme

The aim of the programme is to prepare entrepreneurs for the entrepreneurial journey ahead and to create a framework for starting and running their own business. An important aspect of preparing entrepreneurs is to get participants to go out and meet their potential users and customers to meet the needs of the market.

-"We work from day one to get the entrepreneurs to go out and meet their intended users and customers to validate if there is an interest in the product they want to create and if anyone is willing to pay for it," says Joakim Bergbom, business coach at eXpression Umeå.

The next meeting of the programme is on 25 September, when the work on entrepreneurs' business models will be deepened.