We believe you deserve to know who's supporting you. Here's the team behind Akcela — Norwich's startup incubator.
Founded by founders
Akcela isn't run by consultants, academics, or career programme managers. It's run by people who've started, scaled, and sold companies themselves. That matters. When a founder in our incubator hits a wall — with fundraising, with a pivot, with a difficult co-founder conversation — they're talking to someone who's been through it.
This is a deliberate design choice. We've seen what happens when startup support is delivered by people who've never built a company: the advice is generic, the empathy is thin, and the guidance breaks down the moment reality diverges from the textbook. At Akcela, every person on the team has direct experience with the challenges that early-stage founders face. The advice comes from lived experience, not theory.
The team
James Adams — Managing Partner. James leads the incubator day to day, working directly with portfolio companies on strategy, fundraising, and go-to-market. He built Akcela because Norwich needed it — a hands-on incubation programme led by people with real experience, designed specifically for the kinds of founders that Norfolk produces. James also founded Tech Educators, the largest coding bootcamp in the East of England, and built the Future Tech Programme into one of the region's highest-impact startup support initiatives — now having supported 79 businesses across Norfolk and Suffolk.
Tom Wood — Partner. Tom co-founded Foolproof in Norwich in 2002 and grew it into a 200+ person international UX agency before a successful exit in 2016. He brings nearly two decades of building, hiring, and scaling from Norwich — proof that world-class companies can be built from this region without relocating to London. Tom is also an active angel investor, giving him a dual perspective — founder and investor — that's invaluable for companies preparing to raise. Read more about Tom.
Peter Ballard — Partner. Peter co-founded Foolproof alongside Tom and shares the same depth of experience in building and scaling a company from Norwich to international recognition. Since the Foolproof exit, Peter has been an active angel investor in the regional startup ecosystem, backing early-stage companies and supporting the next generation of founders. At Akcela, Peter works directly with portfolio companies on product strategy, team building, and the long-term decisions that shape a company's trajectory. Read more about Peter.
Kate Yarbo — Partner. Kate is an experienced and exited founder across education and healthcare. She works with portfolio companies on early-stage fundamentals: validation, first customers, and building something people actually want. Kate's focus is on the rigorous customer discovery that separates companies with real traction from companies with nice ideas — and her ability to push founders on their assumptions is one of the most valuable things the programme provides.
Anna Barney. Anna works across the Akcela portfolio and the wider ecosystem, supporting programme delivery, event coordination, and the operational infrastructure that keeps the incubator running. Behind every visible milestone — a company closing a round, a successful pitch event, a new partnership — there's a significant amount of coordination and planning that Anna is central to.
Toby Bennett. Toby supports portfolio companies on the practical, day-to-day challenges of building a company, from research and competitive analysis to workshop delivery and the structured phases of the incubation programme. He's closely involved with the pipeline from the Future Tech Programme into full incubation. Read more about Toby.
What the team has delivered
Between us, we've founded companies, raised money, hired teams, made mistakes, and come out the other side. The collective results of that experience, applied through the Akcela incubation model, speak for themselves:
- 79 businesses supported across the Future Tech Programme
- Over £2.2 million raised in investment by portfolio companies
- More than £435,000 in grant funding secured
- 42 workshops delivered covering all key early-stage disciplines
- An estimated £1 million in commercial deals introduced and completed
- A 10x return on the public investment that funds the Future Tech Programme
Why we do this
Norwich has the talent. The ideas are there. What was missing was the incubation infrastructure to turn ideas into companies — and the kind of people who could deliver that support from experience rather than theory.
That's what Akcela is for. We exist because the region's founders deserve the same quality of support that their counterparts in London take for granted — and because we believe Norwich can produce world-class companies when the right infrastructure is in place.
If you want to meet us in person, come to Fuel Studios or get in touch. We're not hard to find.
You can also learn about what a business incubator does, explore SEIS investment as a funding route, or apply to the incubation programme.
