Name: Oliver Cressall
Job Title: Founders’ Associate
Pathways Programme: Pathways to Marketing 2025
Organisation Summary: Venturenomix is a leading consultancy specialising in research, development, and innovation (RDI) grant writing. We support ambitious businesses across the UK and Europe in identifying, applying for, and successfully managing competitive grant funding opportunities. With a sector-agnostic approach, we work across a diverse range of industries, though much of our focus is on cutting-edge technologies, including AI, healthtech, renewable energy, deeptech, and more. Over the past 15 years, we have secured over £100 million in non-dilutive funding, enabling breakthrough innovations to scale and commercialise effectively.
How did hosting an intern via the Professional Pathways programme benefit you and your organisation/department?
As a specialist consultancy in Research and Development Grant Funding, we often work on complex, fast-moving projects that demand both analytical thinking as well as clear communication – to say our intern rose to that challenge would be an understatement!
They contributed to the creation of the content for two client-facing sector pages, aimed at helping SMEs better understand their eligibility for major UK and European innovation funding programs, such as Horizon Europe or Innovate UK. This involved conducting funding landscape research, interviewing our team member to understand the nuances and drafting the accessible content which saved us hours of time.
Not only did her work strengthen our online presence and educational outreach to UK SMEs, it also contributed to our wider mission of making complex R&D funding pathways more accessible to early-stage businesses.
Given the Professional Pathways internship is 35 hours in total, how would you recommend ensuring both you and your intern gain as much as possible from the experience?
We knew that it was essential to be organised and intentional from the outset, both for the sake of our own team as well as for the intern to get the most out of it as possible.
We structured it across a single, full-time week in which we had a morning catch up to ensure they knew the tasks for the day and felt comfortable. We had a very simply overview on the Monday as to what was expected and when the regular check-ins would be. We felt that it was important to understand what she wanted to focus on, then we tailored tasks to her strengths and interests whilst giving them exposure to new skills like stakeholder interviews and content creation.
Overall, clear communication, early planning and treating the intern as a trusted contributor helped us deliver a meaningful, mutually beneficially experience.
Why would you recommend hosting an intern via Professional Pathways?
We’d absolutely recommend hosting an intern via Professional Pathways. The programme is incredibly well-run, with practice support from the team and a smooth onboarding process that makes it super easy to get started – even for smaller, time-pressed teams like ours!
What really stood out was the quality of the candidate that we worked with. She brought professionalism and genuine enthusiasm to every single task. In a specialist field like R&D grant funding, it can be hard to find talent with the right mix of curiosity, communication skills and attention to detail – the programme matched us with someone who excelled on all these fronts.
Beyond the immediate benefits of the work that was delivered, the experience gave us a chance to support the next generation of professionals and reflect on how we communicate our own work. It’s a low-barrier way to contribute to skills development and grow our own team’s mentoring abilities.