Richard Branson has encouraged UK startups not to fear leaving the European Union, as he called for more companies to offer suggestions on how technology can be used to improve the country's trains.
"If a dreadful decision gets made for a country, we can't all just give up," Branson told WIRED while speaking about Virgin's Platform-X accelerator. "We've got to get out there and work our butts off to make sure the pain on the British public is lessened as much as possible".
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Branson continued to say he believes startups will "be the companies that create the most jobs" in the coming years. His views echo the sentiments of other leading company founders and venture capitalists.
The business tycoon's comments come as he called for entries to Virgin Trains' startup accelerator. The Platform-X scheme, which was first launched at the start of May, is asking for people to propose ideas that can use Virgin Train's £25 million innovation fund.
"We've put aside a big chunk of money so if someone actually comes up an idea that's going to cost a lot of money to do but actually makes sense for the travelling public and for trains, we'll spend it," Branson explained.
Companies picked to take part in the accelerator will take part in a five-week embedded scheme at King's Cross station in London. While in the accelerator, any selected firms will not relinquish any equity and will work with executives from both Virgin Trains and the wider company.
For Virgin, the idea behind the accelerator is to help develop technologies that could be used across its train network. Other rail firms, such as Germany's Deutsche Bahn have previously developed their own accelerators.
To be accepted into the accelerator, companies must enter ideas into any of four category areas. These entail ways to improve passenger journeys, ways that the company can increase its passenger database, change how decisions are made behind the scenes, and a 'wildcard' category that isn't limited by any specific criteria.
The entries will be judged on the quality of their concept, what they could do for Virgin Trains, how they can scale and whether they would improve journeys for passengers. "At the end of the day, I've gone to the startup community because I don't know what the answers. I'm hoping they're going to come up with the answers," Nicola McGuiness-Brown, head of innovation and business excellence at Virgin Trains, tells WIRED. "To innovate in this industry we really need to improve the customer experience side of thing".
McGuiness-Brown continued to say that one of the projects worked on by Virgin's innovation team, in partnership with the University of Sheffield, has been to create a system for "ultrasonic axel testing". This means train wheels don't have to be completely removed to be tested for cracks or damage.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
