BUBA is an
acronym for
Bristol University Business Angels, and is a company set up by the Research and Enterprise Development (RED) unit of the university, and run by students, which is dedicated to providing investments for student ideas.
The company has the support of the university, its many graduates and many local companies. For example, a task management system was donated by
Spidergroup, a company run by Bristol University
graduates, in exchange for 50% of resale profits. The resale profits come from the fact that other universities have expressed an interest in the concept, as an alternative to traditional
entrepreneurship lecture series.
BUBA offers marketing, legal and planning services aswell as simply funding. There are student directors from many different
faculties thanks mainly to a scheme called SPARK, which provides a fast-track entrepreneurship training course during the summer for Bristol students.
The funding is obviously a large part of the appeal of BUBA, as they currently have £30,000 to invest in ideas submitted by students via their
website. The organisation is still very new, their largest project in their initial year was "
Null Hypothesis", a comedy science magazine written by students, that is currently outselling
New Scientist in
Borders around the U.K..