First held in 2015, and in its third year, the 2017 Leap Conference is back. It will see Toro Orero - the Managing Director of DDF - among the presenters and panelists.
DraperDarkFlow is a silicon valley venture capital fund. With Tim Draper, a prominent Silicon Valley Venture Capitalist, among its backers. Under its portfolio, DDF has Nigeria's Paystack, Sliide Airtime and more.
Leap Conference is key to the Global Entrepreneurship Week celebrations in Uganda. It draws together over 400 youths. These are graduates and enterprising students from Uganda’s top Universities. The two-day event has an intensive programme of practical support for identifying and developing business ideas.
As the name suggests, the Leap Conference seeks to challenge and inspire the youth to take the “Leap”. The leap is into the world of business and entrepreneurship.
The conference also offers an opportunity for networking with a diverse range of young people from a variety of backgrounds. The theme for this year is design thinking.
Although it is a free event, those that will make a donation of UGX. 15,000 on the first-day stand a chance to pitch for $5,000 worth of seed investment from DraperDarkFlow.
"If your business is investment ready, registered and your products ready to hit the market, then for a donation of 15,000 Ugandan shillings, you will be one of the few delegates invited to the second day of the conference for a chance pitch for $5,000 worth of seed investment from DraperDarkFlow and free incubation space from Makerere University Business School," says the communication.
The majority in attendance will be students. But the event is, as the official communication says, "definitely open to having some (very strong) non-student participants".
The keynote speech will come from Dr. Ian Clark. He is currently the Chairman of Clark Group, which has interests in education, hospitality, and agribusiness. The full list of speakers confirmed can is here.
The event will take place from 16 Nov 2017 to 17 Nov 2017 at Makerere University Business School. In case you'd like to attend, you can sign up here. But, signing up for the event is open until the 12th of November.
NASE was started by entrepreneurial students from Kingston University, London, with support from the University of Surrey – home of the Centre for the Digital Economy (CoDE) and SETsquared, the world’s best Business Incubator.
In partnership with Makerere University Business School (MUBS) and DraperDarkFlow, they are the organizers of the 3rd Leap Conference.