Four optional criteria — OC1 (Innovation), OC2 (Voluntary contributions), OC3 (Significant contribution), OC4 (Academic research). You need to convincingly evidence two of four. Tech Nation rejects more applications on optional-criteria mistakes than on the mandatory criterion. The latest guidance tightened OC1 and OC2 significantly — watch the updates below.
The rule: two out of four
- Pick the two you're strongest on. You don't get extra credit for trying to evidence three or four.
- Two well-evidenced criteria beat four weakly-evidenced ones — every time.
- Stretching to four signals to assessors that you don't know your own strengths.
OC1 — Innovation as Founder, Senior Executive, or in a New Digital Field
OC1 has two mutually exclusive paths. You pick one. Your role determines which:
Founder or senior executive
- Formal accounts covering 12+ months (audited preferred) with P&L, balance sheet, director signatures.
- Evidence of product in market with revenue beyond your salary.
- Customer/sales data by country and channel.
Technical employee (not founder)
- Granted patent with verifiable ID on Google Patents.
- Patent applications, filings, and provisional patents do NOT qualify.
- Granting typically takes 12–18 months from filing.
OC1 — does this count?
I'm CTO of a SaaS company that's been live for 18 months with audited accounts showing £400k ARR across 40 paying customers.
I filed two patent applications in the last year as the named inventor while working at a large tech company.
I'm a founder with a Companies House registration, a great pitch deck, and a £200k seed round closing.
I'm a Principal Engineer named on a granted US patent (verifiable on Google Patents) for a novel ML inference technique.
OC2 — Recognised Contributions Outside Your Occupation
OC2 tests voluntary, non-paid activity that benefits the wider sector. It must NOT be on behalf of your employer or its products.
Four activity types Tech Nation accepts:
- Open source contributions — consistent, multi-year track record on GitHub or Stack Overflow. Sudden activity right before the application is flagged as application-timed.
- Conference speaking — main stage at 100+ attendee events, via a real CFP, not slots bought through your employer's sponsorship.
- In-person structured mentoring — programmes with selection criteria (e.g. Code First Girls cohorts, YSYS, Founders Factory mentor programmes).
- Op-eds in named publications — The Register, Wired UK, InfoQ, IEEE Spectrum. LinkedIn/Medium/Substack do not count.
OC2 — does this count?
I've mentored 12 junior engineers on ADPList over 18 months with strong ratings.
I'm a cohort mentor on Code First Girls' London Sprint, meeting mentees in person every fortnight.
I spoke at three internal company events and one breakout session at QCon last month.
I'm a named maintainer on a 4k-star OSS library, with steady commits going back 4 years.
OC3 — Significant Technical, Commercial, or Entrepreneurial Contribution
Where OC1 is about innovation (new things), OC3 is about impact (existing things that worked because of you). latest guidance pushed this criterion further toward measurable, attributable outcomes.
- If you write code or manage developers: high-impact products you led, OSS contributions peer-recognised as advancing the field, or key engineering work in a startup's core product with personal attribution provable via GitHub history, architecture diagrams, or named technical role.
- If you're in a non-coding product/commercial role: personal role in company growth, investment influence, strategy delivery, or founding a successful product-led company.
OC3 — does this count?
I was Engineering Lead on the team that built our payments platform — it processes £40M annually for 200 enterprise customers.
I led the platform rebuild from monolith to microservices as tech lead of 8 engineers; my design of the event-driven data layer cut p99 latency from 1.2s to 180ms.
As Head of Growth, I closed three enterprise partnerships worth £1.2M ARR in 12 months.
I have three reference letters from senior managers describing my team's strong contributions to the company's success.
OC4 — Academic Contributions Through Research
OC4 is the cleanest criterion to evidence if you have an academic background. The latest guidance leans harder into peer review or editorial vetting — self-publishing carries stigma even when the work is technically strong.
- Papers in top-tier peer-reviewed journals (with DOI, indexed)
- Presentations at peer-reviewed conferences with proceedings
- Competitive peer-reviewed research grants you led or co-led
- Articles in industry publications with a documented review process
- Merit-based awards from distinguished organisations, paired with first-class degree or distinction
- Undergraduate or MSc thesis work (explicitly excluded)
- arXiv preprints with no peer review, standing alone
- LinkedIn articles, Medium posts, Substack newsletters
- Personal blog posts (no matter the readership)
- Conference posters at small or unreviewed events
Research should be endorsed by a recognised academic expert — either through peer review of the publication, or via a direct supervisor's endorsement letter for unpublished work.
How to choose your two
- Engineers with strong OSS and conference speaking → OC2 + OC3.
- Founders with audited accounts → OC1 + OC3.
- PhDs who moved into industry → OC4 + OC3.
- Product/design leaders → OC2 + OC3 (with strong personal-attribution evidence).
- Patent-holding researchers → OC1 + OC4.
If you ran our free check, the report shows your best-fit two based on your CV and answers — that's the starting point.