The Second Presentation Round of the Start Your Business Competition Took Place
On Wednesday, 24 April, the second presentation round of projects took place, with 10 finalist teams. After two months of work to move the idea forward, consultation, mentoring by members of the expert jury and with the help of a CZK 10 000 scholarship. The students presented how far they had come since the first presentation day, what they had used the funding for and what their vision was for their project in the future.
"The final ten teams have come a long way in the last two months. Some teams have found that their original plan is not feasible or needs major adjustments, which is a testament to their honest approach. Going through dead ends is sometimes inevitable, and it teaches founders a lot. However, I believe that each of the finalists can be a successful entrepreneur sooner or later. And I am happy that there are several really promising projects among them that can break through soon," said Jakub Losenický from V# Venture Studio, one of the judges, who is also a partner of this year's competition.
Representatives of Masaryk University again sat on the expert jury. "This year's edition of the Start Your Business competition has moved to a new level. Innovative projects with interesting market potential came together and the teams did a huge amount of work between the first and second presentation day. Thanks to validation, the contestants verified the viability of their ideas, some of them already have their first testers and even paying customers", added Alena Šafrová Drášilová from the Faculty of Economics and Administration of Masaryk University.
The first presenter was a student of the Faculty of Informatics Tereza Hrbková, who represented the Citymind project of Filip Prochac's team. The idea supporting communication between cities and citizens by using AI achieved all the goals set in the first round of the competition and even accelerated the user's search for information from 20 to 6 seconds. The team also placed great emphasis on user testing. The DAISY project, used to support dentists in diagnosing and planning treatment for patients, was presented by the Kadlec brothers from the Faculty of Medicine. They presented a dataset of 4,000 images acquired and the possibility of detecting the onset of diseases that the human eye cannot yet detect as a way to advance the idea. Antonín Kadrmas from the Faculty of Informatics presented the advancement of the Buildnet project, dedicated to the modern construction industry and helping companies to digitize not only the attendance of workers but also their activities. The project is now fully operational and has paying customers. The Virtual Safe application to prevent unwanted gun shots by Faculty of Social Studies student Pavel Blažek is currently in the stage of dealing with the patent office to protect the idea.
The Toolia application for creating individual learning materials, developed by the student of the Faculty of Education Tereza Brzá, has been tested among fifteen lecturers. According to their evaluation, thirteen of them would purchase the license because of the significant time savings needed to prepare materials for teaching. Jakub Pitucha, a student of the Faculty of Law, has moved his Jacobs o'Clock project forward by renting new premises to produce stylish "bespoke" watches, focusing on advertising, and his work will be on display, for example, at the Micro Praha travelling stand in December this year. The idea of the Faculty of Science student Eliška Pivrncová's LactoPads, addressing the issue of breastfeeding, led to a new complementary product, LactoCream. Anton Babich from the Faculty of Economics and Administration interviewed more than 50 potential customers of different age groups to check the demand for the planned project Chill Space Brno. The penultimate presenter of the day was Matej Zámečník, a student of the Faculty of Science, who verified with his Spicy Cell project to produce saffron in a bioreactor, among other things, that the expansion of the end product to India is the right direction for this idea. The team of Simon Plhak, a student at the Faculty of Informatics, then came to the conclusion that their buy.safe project was not viable, so they came straight out with a presentation of a new idea called Leestek, which is supposed to advise where, what and how to buy cheapest.
"At this year's Start Your Business I was very positively surprised by the increasing level of projects submitted. More and more projects that focus on advanced technologies in the life-sciences and IT fields are applying for the competition. I perceive this as a positive trend, where the number of projects based "only" on a simple business idea is decreasing", said Radoslav Trautmann, who sat on the jury for the MU Technology Transfer Office. Investor, partner and supporter of the competition Miloš Dendis from Dendis Capital, together with JIC representative Libor Hoření, highlighted the presentation skills of all the students, the incorporation of advice from the mentoring sessions and the tremendous progress of all the presenting teams.
