We awarded the most successful students from the Start your Business competition

A total of 12 student projects were presented in the final round of the Start Your Business competition, of which 8 received funding in the form of scholarships for their further development. The highest support of CZK 100,000 was finally awarded to two student ideas: the sports travel agency Sportbud by students Matúš Longauer and Lukáš Vránek from the Faculty of Sports Studies and the Attachi application for personal relationship management with artificial intelligence elements by Robin Chmelík, a student from the Faculty of Informatics. "The decision to enter the competition gave us a huge boost to start taking real steps in our project. We would like to sincerely thank the organisers and the entire university for directing us to do so," said Matúš Longauer from the top-awarded Sportbud project in his thank-you speech at the awards ceremony.

At the beginning of the third year of the Start Your Business student competition, 39 ideas were registered, and the jury recommended 12 of them for the final presentation round. Before the final round, Masaryk University has already supported all finalists with CZK 10,000 to develop and advance their ideas. "This year, deciding which projects to send on and who will finally get the support was extremely difficult. The students presented themselves in the best light and came up with great ideas and elaborate projects, the bar was really high," mentions one of the members of the expert committee, Alena Šafrová Drášilová, who teaches courses on the basics of entrepreneurship at the Faculty of Economics and Administration.

For the final round of the competition, students had to submit an action plan, a vision of their business development for the next five years and a cash flow plan. Based on the presentations and detailed consideration of how far the student projects had progressed, the judges ultimately decided to award a total of six projects in terms of business potential and a further two in terms of social relevance.

"Masaryk University also strives to develop interdisciplinary competences in students. The labour market is changing and evolving rapidly, so we decided to support students in their entrepreneurial journey through the competition. Thanks to the competition, they will gain invaluable experience and the best ones will be provided with a financial basis for the implementation of their ideas," explains Martin Kvizda, the guarantor of Start Your Business and MU Vice-Rector for Lifelong Learning and Commercial Cooperation.

The idea to support promising student projects through a scholarship came three years ago from the MU Technology Transfer Office, which is responsible for the entrepreneurship agenda at the university. This year's third edition of the competition saw the highest number of entries. The financial support distributed to students to implement their ideas was also the highest so far. Thanks to the Progress | Flowmon partnership, it was possible to support students with up to 600,000 CZK. Another partner of this year's edition was investor Miloš Dendis, who supported the students financially and at the same time provided them with important feedback as a member of the expert committee.

"We perceive that the financial support we give to the competitors is quite high. We considered whether to support more projects in smaller amounts or to select the best ideas and give them more significant support. In the end, we decided for the second option, taking into account projects that did not have such a strong business potential, but were important in terms of social relevance," explains the main partner of the competition Pavel Minařík from Progress | Flowmon.

Between the first and second presentation rounds of the competition, students had the opportunity to take advantage of mentoring and refine their ideas based on suggestions from experts. "I would like to thank you very much for all the feedback and the mentoring opportunity, it helped me a lot in the beginning to get the right direction and I am sure that I will use the acquired knowledge and experience very well," said Sandra Thalerová from the Faculty of Science, who succeeded with her project Makronky Art.

All finalists received their awards and commemorative plaques on Friday, 9 June, from the hands of Masaryk University Vice-Rector Martin Kvizda and in the presence of the competition partners. The next edition of the competition will be announced at the beginning of 2024, details of the competition including a list of successful participants are available on the website podnikavost.muni.cz/en.

List of awardees:

Matúš Longauer and Lukáš Vránek (SPORT) for the Sportbud project (100 000 CZK)

Robin Chmelík (FI) for the project Attachi - Personal AI powered relationship manager (amount 100 000 CZK)

Ondřej Buček (ECON) for the project AndělskáSlužba.cz (amount 50 000 CZK)

Ondřej Sukač (LAW) for the project Galenio (amount 50 000 CZK)

Sandra Thalerová (SCI) for the project Makronky Art (amount 50 000 CZK)

Benedikt Šujan and Dalibor Heblák (ECON) for the project Nášup (amount 50 000 CZK)

Projects awarded in terms of social relevance:

Josefína Slámová and Collective (ARTS) for the project Czech Psychodiagnostic Database (amount 20 000 CZK)

Denisa Jelínková and collective (PED) for the socially inclusive KreatiF studio (amount 20 000 CZK).