Mitt

Mitt are a student led project who received funding through ACT Now and are part of the Venture Catalyst Challenge 2018! 

Hi, we're Mitt! We are building comfy, functional and affordable prosthetic arms. 

Engineers Josh and Nate speak to us about Mitt and their bright future! 

Where did you draw your inspiration for your enterprise? 

It all happened by chance. We were introduced to an incredibly talented designer – Alex Lewis, who was also a quadruple amputee. That means no arms and no legs. He talked brutally honestly about how rubbish current prosthetic limbs are and how much they reduce his quality of life. As young engineers that’s all the inspiration we needed to try and make the situation better for people like him.

What does the future look like for Mitt? 

Oh man – really bright. We’re in contact with clinics, health insurance companies and we’re very close to filing a patent. The really exciting thing is that we’re currently planning a month long pilot of our prosthetic arms with the four biggest limb loss charities in the UK. All this and we started three months ago, its bonkers.

How do you manage your enterprise alongside your studies? 

I’ll be honest, really poorly at the moment. So far nothing has slipped but when you’re so passionate about something; and it’s getting so much traction, with everyone you talk to getting super excited about it too – it’s hard to pull yourself away from it and go submit that piece of coursework. But to be honest at Imperial we’re pretty used to juggling far too many things at once.

How has ACT Now funding impacted your enterprise? 

Profoundly. Directly it’s allowed us to afford some long distance travels to meet customers and potential partners, as well as given us the funds to launch a really nice website (which you should totally check out *wink* it's wearmitt.com). But indirectly ACT Now funding has done so much more. It gave us the confidence that our idea might actually be worth pursuing and pushed us to apply for the Venture Catalyst Challenge… which we got accepted for! And since then we’ve just come leaps and bounds. So, honestly, thank you to the ACT Now programme.

Why should students take a chance on their own social enterprise ideas? 

As students we’re in this golden perfect time in our lives where we have all this energy, ideas, and naïve hope for the world – while having zero responsibilities; no mortgage, no family, no nothing. So why not give it a shot? It will likely fail – and that’s fine. It’s not like you’ll regret it, you will have already gained so much knowledge and experience from trying. And if it succeeds? Well then you will have made a meaningful impact on the world straight out of uni – pretty worth the risk if you ask us.