StartUp Factory scores a success
Published: 17 December 2018
Twelve teams of student entrepreneurs pitch their best ideas
The first-ever StartUp Factory was organised by the Adam Smith Business School, the School of Computing Science, and the students’ Entrepreneurship Society and Tech Society on the weekend of 2-4 November.
It saw 12 teams of students from UofG's Business and Computing Science Schools as well as the Glasgow School of Art compete to pitch the best business ideas. Business, design and technology were equally represented in the team composition, which created powerful entrepreneurial synergies.
The StartUp Factory also saw the invaluable contribution of around 20 mentors (professionals and academics) who helped the teams prepare for the grand finale - the StartUp pitches.
The panel of judges, composed of Cathy Craig (Commercial & Memberships Director at Entrepreneurial Scotland), Brian Kerr (a founder partner of Scottish Equity Partners) and Evelyn McDonald (CEO of Scottish EDGE), awarded "FastTrack" - an online class attendance platform - with the first prize of Amazon vouchers and £1000 worth of start-up costs.
In second place was "SeeMe" - a start-up with the bold ambition of making donations to people who are begging more meaningful. Third was "Hoglet" - a platform for agile sharing of car parks.
“The StartUp Factory was the first event of its kind organised at the University of Glasgow, which makes us very proud of what we have achieved," said Dr Ivano Bongiovanni, Research Fellow at the Adam Smith Business School.
"The contribution of everyone - funders, mentors, volunteers, and student associations - was phenomenal and we thank them all very much. Without them, this wouldn’t have been possible. The entrepreneurial ideas were of great quality, to the point that the judges asked us for extra time to make their final verdicts. All the participants found this initiative extremely inspiring. Some even asked if we could organise one StartUp Factory per semester! We’ve already started planning for next year’s event, when we will try to include more Schools at the University and have even more students and teams. Stay tuned for more news!" he added.
First published: 17 December 2018