The 2023 NovaUCD Student Enterprise Competition, an intensive four-week mentoring programme for student entrepreneurs, has kicked off at University College Dublin (UCD) with nine early-stage ventures and a total of 17 participants.

The participating ventures are focused on a wide range of business ideas from medical devices to sustainable packaging to event management to health and fitness.

Develop and grow startup companies

The entrepreneurship programme, now in its ninth year, is run by NovaUCD, startup hub at UCD, as a framework to support undergraduate and postgraduate students who want to work together to develop and grow startup companies.

The aim of the competition is to assist the participating students in refining their startup ideas through a series of structured workshops, including taught content from industry experts, interactive workshops, regular mentoring and pitching sessions.

Tom Flanagan, director of enterprise and commercialisation, NovaUCD said: “Over the next month we will be working with the student entrepreneurs as they begin the process of converting their business ideas into startups. Our objective with this annual competition is to provide the students with the knowledge, confidence and opportunity to launch and grow their startups to compete on a national and international stage.”

The four-week mentoring programme, which uses the Lean Startup and Business Model Canvas approach, includes a series of structured workshops and interactive workshops delivered by Raomal Perera and Caitlin Hafer, Lean Disruptor.

Prototyping and environment mapping

Topics such as, customer development; value proposition; working in teams; design thinking; prototyping, environment mapping; financial planning and effective fundraising and pitching, will be covered.

At a final workshop, to be held in mid-June, each participating venture will pitch to a judging panel. Based on evaluation of the presentations an overall winning team will be selected and will be awarded a €5,000 cash prize, the second placed team will be awarded a €3,000 cash prize and the third placed team a €2,000 cash prize.

More than 50 early-stage ventures and nearly 150 students have completed the NovaUCD Student Enterprise Competition to date.

Former competition participants include Charlie Gleeson, who took part in the 2019 competition with an e-scooter business idea which he then developed into Zipp Mobility. The company which he grew to launch e-scooter and e-bike services in locations across Ireland, the UK and Poland was recently acquired by ZEUS Scooters.

Fifteen postgraduate students and two undergraduate students are participating on this year’s programme.

The sponsors of the 2023 NovaUCD Student Enterprise Competition are; AIB, AMD, Arthur Cox, Deloitte, Ericsson and Goodbody.