BuildaThon 2.0 in Manchester

David Levine: “Back in January we had a huge impact; 120 founders in one place for 2 days looking to secure part of a £1m investment pot. Building, iterating and creating. Probably one of the most impactful things I’ve done for a long time. And one that means I get numerous messages a week asking when are we going again.

And the answer is (provisionally) Oct 12th and 13th 2026. This time though we’re doing something differently:

• We’re targeting a more technical founder profile – people already working in tech, other startups or working with deep tech and science IP inside universities. Fewer businesses, earlier prejudging and preselection, and more time upfront with each team. The Buildathon becomes the end of the build process, not the beginning.

• Less Vibe coding more accelerated coding – we want founders using Claude Code, Cursor and Codex as force multipliers rather than starting from scratch.

• BuildAThon as the end of a phase not the beginning – we’re going to highly curate applications, work with the businesses in advance and give investors tons of transparency and engagement with founders in advance. That means investors can spend time digging deep into the businesses across the two days rather than going from one to the other.

• One stream – Last time, we split into Build and Scale streams. This time, we’re focusing on a single stream so we can work with the right founders and make sure every team gets the attention, support and focus they need.”