Micro-grants
Small, practical grants to cover the first real costs of getting started: equipment, a website, stock, a course or a market stall.
Highs & Lows Ventures
Your business, built around your stability
Ventures gives young people living with bipolar disorder micro-grants and mentorship to start their own businesses, on their own timelines. It's funded by a share of the profit from every bag of Highs & Lows coffee.
Why it exists
Work that bends to fit you
A standard nine-to-five isn't built for the highs and lows of bipolar disorder. Running something of your own can be: you set the pace, the hours and when to step back. Structure, purpose and control over your working life can be protective, and Ventures wants to make that route easier to take.
Mentorship
Time with people who have built businesses, to help you shape the idea, find your first customers and plan around your wellbeing.
Your timeline
No pressure to scale and no deadlines that ignore your health. Progress is measured against your own goals, not anyone else's.
How we work
Our principles
Stability comes first
Your health always matters more than the business plan. Pausing is allowed, and it isn't failing.
Led by lived experience
Ventures is shaped by people who understand bipolar disorder, not designed for them from the outside.
Small and practical
Real help with real costs, kept simple: no long forms and no jargon.
Your story stays yours
What you tell us is kept private. We'll never share it or use it publicly without your clear permission.
Where the money comes from
Every bag helps
Ventures is funded by Highs & Lows coffee, roasted by Skylark, a non-profit roaster, and in small batches by us. When you buy a bag, subscribe, send a gift or pay it forward, part of the profit goes into the Ventures fund.
- You buy coffeeA bag, a subscription, a gift or a Christmas order.
- A share of the profit goes to VenturesSet aside from every bag we sell.
- Young founders get a startAs micro-grants and mentorship.
Living with bipolar and have an idea?
Ventures is just getting started. Tell us a little about yourself and what you'd like to build, and we'll be in touch as places open. You don't need a business plan, just an idea.
Need support now?
Call Samaritans free on 116 123, any time, day or night. For information and peer support about bipolar disorder, Bipolar UK and Bipolar Scotland can help. If you're in danger, call 999.
Ventures payments go to Rokad Enterprise Ltd. Highs & Lows Ventures is not a registered charity.