The entrants in this year’s IdeaPitch competition from Student Entrepreneurs Agents of Change spanned two campuses and ranged from early concepts to profitable businesses with the top prize being taken by a young Univeristy of Melbourne startup set on conquering the world.
In its second year, the competition invited students from Monash and Melbourne universities to send in a short pitch video. From there the competition was whittled down in two semi-final rounds and then finally to a select group of eight teams who were given the opportunity to pitch and draw feedback from a team of judges that included members of Melbourne Angels, Dynamic Horizons and Aragon Capital.
This year’s winner of the top cash prize of $1,000 blend popular concepts including technology, vintage shopping and green lifestyle. Melbourne Op Shop Tours, headed up by Jessica Rae, Jenny Jiang and Richmond Glasgow, offers guided tours of the city’s best op shops using city transportation. The business gives you the added benefit of styling help from the MOST team and a low-cost way of sorting the wheat from the chaff. Already the business is planning on expanding to cities around Australia followed by a global move to Europe and the US and are entertaining a strong twitter and online following.
IdeaPitch is separated into two categories to cater to companies who are already running and those still in the idea stage. In the idea category, top prize went to Heart Park, a fund-raising business that auctions prime parking spots with funds going to charitable causes.
As far as the evening’s tech startups, IWannaTutor (who ended up taking second prize in the up-and-running category) is in the process of developing a website set to launch in 2010 that allows students to tap into their social networks to find tutors, buy and sell course notes and find tutors advertising their services.
37Tweets are aiming within 24 months to launch a directory for Twitter applications. Drawing on the idea that there are few ways for people to share, rate and discover new Twitter applications, 37Tweets plan to launch a site that would help developers promote their application and then allow for micro payments to be transferred allowing people to monetize their application.
Student Entrepreneurs Agents of Change are now working on their next event, The Napkin Competition, with a prize awarded based on the answers on a one page “back of the napkin” questionnaire.
[...] put a lot of value on the pitch. With events like Pitch Club, Tech23 and IdeaPitch we hold it as this golden jewel of business that will send investors salivating. But while the [...]