Cambridge-US arrow flies straight to the heart of nextgen entrepreneurship
The Vellos-Fifty Years partnership is designed to support and inspire the next generation of entrepreneurs across the UK’s DeepTech and life sciences sectors.
Through its Empower UK programme, Vellos will help young innovators take the leap and become startup founders, offering them essential tools to navigate the startup world and build impactful companies.
Complementing Empower UK is the new Fifty Years mentorship programme called 5050, funded by the UK’s Advanced Research + Invention Agency (ARIA). This initiative provides hands-on company creation support to scientists and engineers across the UK.
Sir Tony said: “This partnership is about more than just support – it’s about finding exceptional people and giving them what they need to change the future. Together, Vellos and Fifty Years are building a pipeline of bold, mission-driven founders who are ready to tackle some of the world’s toughest challenges through science and technology.”
Vellos (meaning arrow in Greek) believes the future rests on scientists, engineers and clinicians with entrepreneurial thinking. It depends on disruptive, out-of-the-box thinking that drives global impact. Its mission is to galvanise the next generation of company founders, giving them the tools to visualise new frontiers and the support necessary to realise their vision.
Sir Tony believes that to build a better future we need to act like an arrow, with purpose, speed and impactful accuracy. Vellos intends to instil entrepreneurial purpose through training programmes, help founders aggressively pursue their goals through its hand-picked venture partners and support the formation of impactful life-changing companies.
Sir Tony says: “Our united mission sparked our joining forces with Fifty Years to develop and support the next generation of founders building civilizationally important companies.”
Sir Tony is Professor of Cancer Biology at the University of Cambridge. His research laboratory at the Gurdon Institute investigates epigenetic pathways and their role in cancer. He is a pioneer in this field and one of the most successful scientists in the world (Ioannidis et al, Plos Biology, 2019). Through his research a drug is currently in clinical trials against cancer.
He is the director and co-founder of the Milner Therapeutics Institute at the University of Cambridge, and the founder and director of Cambridge Gravity.
A serial entrepreneur, Sir Tony is a co-founder of Abcam plc, a research reagents company now owned by Danaher, and two drug discovery companies, Chroma Therapeutics and STORM Therapeutics. He is the founder of a cancer charity in Spain called Conquer Cancer (Vencer el Cancer) which raises funds for cancer research.
