GRC Hub Wins Its First Award!

Our founder, Rob Wilkinson, was recently selected to join the highly respected Northern Max 10×10 Programme, delivered by Greenborough Management Limited. This programme is widely recognised for accelerating early‑stage businesses with strong potential, and this year’s cohort brought together almost 30 ambitious founders from a diverse range of industries. Competition throughout the programme was exceptionally strong, with impressive businesses at varying stages of growth, each bringing innovative ideas, compelling models, and bold visions.

Despite this firm and competitive field, GRC Hub was selected as the overall winner at the final pitch event.

A Rigorous Eight‑Week Programme Designed for High‑Growth Founders

The Northern Max 10×10 programme is known for its intensity and depth. Over eight weeks, founders step away from the day‑to‑day demands of running a business to focus strategically on long‑term growth, clarity, and commercial resilience.

Each week focused on a specialist development area. The modules included:

Week 1 – The Business Model

A deep exploration of value proposition design, revenue validation, customer segmentation, and strategic positioning.
GRC Hub used this week to refine our scalable service model and strengthen how we articulate our core value to clients.

Week 2 – The Business Growth Plan

This module focused on structuring growth over 1–3 years, identifying key levers for acceleration, assessing operational bottlenecks, and designing measurable growth pathways.
It enabled us to sharpen our roadmap and align our expansion plans with client demand trends in governance, risk, and compliance.

Week 3 – Marketing and Branding

A full dive into brand identity, messaging, digital presence, and market differentiation.
This was instrumental in helping us refine how we present our service suite and communicate the measurable value we deliver to organisations navigating GRC challenges.

Week 4 – Customer Insights and Profiling

This week focused on client psychology, decision‑making patterns, needs mapping, and segmentation.
It allowed us to deepen our understanding of the problems faced by HR teams, compliance leads, data protection officers, and senior leadership across the sectors we support.

Week 6 – Funding and Growth

This module explored scaling strategies, funding routes, financial modelling, and investment readiness.
For GRC Hub, this provided an opportunity to build a stronger financial narrative and validate our commercial trajectory as a growing advisory brand.

Week 7 – Pitching for Investment

Founders worked on refining their investment pitch, articulating value propositions, demonstrating commercial traction, and presenting financially sound business cases.
This week served as preparation for the final judged pitch, where clarity, confidence, and a compelling vision would be essential.

The Final Pitch: A Highly Competitive Finale

The programme concluded with a formal pitch event in front of a panel of investors and an invited audience.
Each founder presented:

• Their vision
• Their business model
• Their financial projections
• Their commercial strategy
• Their long‑term ambitions

With almost 30 businesses taking part, the competition was robust and delivered at a high standard. Every founder brought something impressive to the stage from emerging tech platforms to sustainability ventures, healthcare solutions, data‑driven innovations, and product‑based enterprises.

Despite the strength of the competition and the calibre of the founders involved, GRC Hub was selected as the overall winner of Northern Max 10×10.

This recognition is not only a testament to the strength of our business model, but also to the increasing urgency and importance of modernised, accessible governance, risk, and compliance support across UK organisations.

A Milestone Moment for GRC Hub

Winning this award marks a significant moment for our company.
It reinforces the value of the work we’re doing, the challenges we are helping organisations solve, and the strategic clarity behind our growth.

We would like to extend our sincere thanks to:

• Russell Copley,
• Michelle Davis,
• The entire Greenborough Management Limited team,
• And all the fellow founders who took part in the 2026 programme.

Your support, insight, and collaboration made the experience exceptional.

Here Are a Few Photos From the Day