LAUNCH.ed

With so many business plan and pitching competitions going on it can be difficult for entrepreneurs to keep track of them, so here at LAUNCH.ed we decided to put together a list of competitions that are relevant to Scottish startups. The list is not exhaustive and we are keen to hear about any more that we might have missed, so please email us (j.young@ed.ac.uk) if you can update us!

For each competition we have listed the initial deadline, prize value and a link to the website. In some cases, only the month for the deadline is included because the exact date had not been advertised at the time of writing. We have kept Scottish startups in mind when compiling this list but many are open to entrepreneurs across the UK and we hope that the list is useful to a wide network of people. We would advise you to check the eligibility requirements before applying for any competition because, although many are open to all, they can vary in regard to age, industry area and student status.

The competitions are quite different in terms of application process, prize value and method. Some of them will only require a couple of hours of your time to apply and others may take days, though of course it is up to you how long you spend on your application and to assess if the time investment is worth it. Don’t feel that you have to apply for them all!

If you are an Edinburgh University student, member of staff or recent alumnus (within 2-3 years) and you would like to discuss your business idea or any of the competitions listed below then feel free to get in touch with us at LAUNCH.ed. We run training courses and workshops and several of our companies have gone on to win a number of these competitions.

Pitching & Business Plan Competitions

Competition	Deadline	Prizes	Website
Shell Livewire (monthly)	31/x/13	£1K	http://www.shell-livewire.org/awards/awards-start
LAUNCH.ed Innovation Cup	24/5/13	£5K	http://www.launch.ed.ac.uk/contact.aspx
Young Innovator’s challenge (SIE)	31/5/13	up to £50K	http://www.sie.ac.uk/about-sie/sie-activities/young-innovators-challenge.aspx
Cambridge Elevator Kickstart	14/6/12	Package worth £17K	http://www.cambridgeelevator.com/KickStart.aspx
The Pitch	30/6/13	Package worth £50K	http://www.thepitchuk.com/
UK European Satellite Navigation Competition	30/6/13	£5K + package	http://ukesnc.com/
RBS Enterprising you	19/7/13	£25K, 10K, 5K	http://www.enterprisingu.com/
James Dyson Award - engineering/ product design	01/8/13	£30K + 10K (& 2nd, 3rd)	http://jump.dexigner.com/directory/2498
Discovering startups	15/8/12	package worth £4K	http://www.cambridgewireless.co.uk/dsu/
Edinburgh E Club Santander	November 2013	£1K	http://www.business-school.ed.ac.uk/eclub/competitions
LAUNCH.ed Business Ideas Competition	December 2013	iPad, Kindle, iPod	http://www.launch.ed.ac.uk/contact.aspx
Lloyds TSB Enterprise Awards	January 2014	£10K	http://www.lloydstsbenterpriseawards.com/

Social Enterprise Competitions

Competition	Deadline	Prizes	Website
Santander SEDA	June 2013	£50K	http://www.santanderseda.co.uk/

Business Awards

Competition	Deadline	Prizes	Website
British Innovation Gateway	21/6/13	£100K	https://www.thebigawards.co.uk/
Q Prize	late 2013	£100K	https://qualcommventures.com/qprize/

We hope that this list is useful and good luck!

20th May 2013

Paid placements available for four student entrepreneurs over the summer!

Do you want to work full-time on your business idea over the summer? Do you need a salary but want to avoid working in a bar every night? Then the LAUNCH.ed summer enternship scheme is for you!

Important dates:

31st May: deadline for applications
3rd-8th June: interviews
June/July: start enternship

What is it?

This summer LAUNCH.ed will be offering four students (or recent graduates) £1,000 per month for three months to develop their business venture. The successful applicants will be hosted by LAUNCH.ed and given office space, business support and advice for the duration of their placement.

What would be expected of me?

The successful applicants will be expected to work full-time on their business ventures, in brief they will:

develop a viable business idea.
test a set of assumptions with potential customers.
identify & analyse specific market segment(s) for the business.
develop and implement a business plan.
attend regular business training sessions.
provide regular progress updates.
present a final report after three months.

Who is eligible to apply?

The summer enternships programme is open to all students and recent graduates (<2 years since graduation) from the University of Edinburgh. Applicants must be:

a 3rd or 4th year undergraduate, MSc (completed degree), PhD student (submitted) or recent graduate (within two years).
able to commit to working 35 hours per week at the ETTC offices in Kings Buildings.
Edinburgh University students or graduates only.
only one applicant per company is permitted.
applicants are responsible for ensuring that their own working status is legal.

What’s in it for me?

A chance to develop your business
Business training (market analysis, business planning, customer development, strategy, competition analysis)
Regular meetings with a LAUNCH.ed business advisor
A 3-month salary
Office space in ETTC in Kings Buildings

Are you up for the challenge? Do you think that your business idea would benefit from three months of full-time attention? Would you like to test your ideas with customers and receive tailored business advice? If the answers to these questions are YES! then apply now at:

http://www.launch.ed.ac.uk/downloads/Enternships.pdf

We look forward to working with you!

The enternships are being generously supported by the Santander Breakthrough programme.

16th May 2013

New face at LAUNCH.ed!

We have a new business advisor at LAUNCH.ed! Alison Gee has recently joined the team as a business advisor for student companies. Alison joined Launch.ed in April 2013 and has the role of providing business creation support and advice to students, staff and recent alumni through one-on-one business support, workshops and clinics.

Her early career was in marketing and market research with General Motors and Lucas. A brief interlude of world travel and crocodile counting was followed by a move into the equally exciting and varied world of business start-up and enterprise training. For the last 23 years Alison has been involved with business formation advice, training and micro finance. Latterly this has involved working with the Prince’s Scottish Youth Business Trust during which time she assisted in over 500 new starts spanning a broad base of industry sectors.

Alison graduated with a BA(Hons) in Business Studies (a long time ago) and has more recently been awarded Chartered Institue of Management Accountants diploma.

We are delighted to welcome Alison to the team!

13th May 2013

Edinburgh’s cutting edge tech showcase - EIE 2013

The LAUNCH.ed team had a day out of the office to attend the exciting EIE 2013 showcase last Thursday. Over 60 new Scottish companies were selected to exhibit at the event which was held in the Assembly Rooms on George Street. This year, for the first time, companies from the biotech and cleantech spaces were represented at EIE, in addition to the technology sector.

After a bacon roll and an inspiring morning keynote talk by seasoned entrepreneur Sir Tom Hunter, we watched both video pitches and live pitches (see photo of Alex Cole, Director of Peekabu, above) from the entrepreneurs who were exhibiting. This was their chance to attract the attention of one of the many investors in the audience and answer any questions. There was also a trophy for the best pitch of the day and the audience were asked to tweet their score using the EIE hashtag - congratulations to Mark Simmers of Celtic Renewables who won!

The afternoon was split into three parallel pitching sessions on biotech (run by the Edinburgh Bioquarter), cleantech (run by the Edinburgh Centre for Carbon Innovation) and technology (run by Informatics Ventures) and this was followed by an excellent keynote by angel investor Sherry Coutu who gave some top tips to both startups and investors.

The day was topped off by a drinks reception in the exhibition area followed by dinner and a great interview with Olympic silver medallist Michael Jamieson. In addition to a lot of business card exchanging, chatting and pitching, there was a lively conversation about the event on Twitter; you can read on overview of the comments from this Storify summary of the event.

Well done to Ronnie, Danny and the Informatics Ventures team and the teams from the ECCI and Edinburgh Bioquarter for organising such a fantastic event! We are already looking forward to next year!

2nd May 2013

Innovation Cup 2013: Win £5,000 for your business!

It’s nearly summertime and that means the annual LAUNCH.ed Innovation Cup competition is open for entries! The Innovation Cup is a business competition for researchers, students, and graduates (within 2 years) of the University of Edinburgh who have a business idea or young business venture. There is a £5,000 prize for the winner!

How to enter

The competition is now open for entries and the deadline is the 24th May. To apply, all you have to do is submit a summary of your idea or venture using the Business Summary Submission Template which can be downloaded from here.

Process

The shortlisted finalists will be notified on Friday, 31st May. The finalists will then have two weeks to prepare a 10-minute pitch to present to a panel of expert judges on Wednesday 19th June. The competition will be judged on both the business summary and pitch.

LAUNCH.ed will be joining forces with the Entrepreneurship Club for the final pitches, and we will be hosting a post-pitching party at the Business School from 5:30pm where the winner will be announced!

Key dates

Competition Deadline: Friday, May 24, 2013
Pitching & Judging: Wednesday, June 19, 2013
Awards & Drinks: Wednesday, June 19, 2013

The Innovation Cup is funded by the Open Innovation Project, a three-year, transnational initiative to promote Open Innovation throughout North-West Europe.

Open Innovation Project

logos

26th Apr 2013

thinkfresh launches in Edinburgh!

Congratulations to thinkfresh on their l(a)unch event at the TechCube today! thinkfresh is a lunch delivery service in Edinburgh that brings locally sourced meals to your office. Their menu includes tasty soups, fresh salads, tortillas and healthy sandwiches.

The thinkfresh team are all Edinburgh University students who come from three different continents. Chris, Carr, Alanna and Sana developed the idea for thinkfresh here in Edinburgh and are now working hard to grow the company. thinkfresh only uses locally sourced ingredients and their approach combines sustainability and healthy eating. Using bicycles, they deliver lunches to health conscious customers located in central Edinburgh offices.

If you want to have a thinkfresh lunch delivered to your door then check out their website: http://www.thinkfreshfood.co.uk/ and Facebook page.

16th Apr 2013

Entrepreneurial Events in Edinburgh!

There are several entrepreneurial events going on in Scotland and LAUNCH.ed were delighted to be one of the sponsors for the popular Power of Youth event held at RBS Gogarburn yesterday. Entrepreneurs from Scotland and around the world flocked to the conference centre to network, hear from successful startups and get advice on how to build their companies. According to the PoY team there are apparently 372 sources of finance available for startups in Scotland, a number which surprised the audience. We are hoping to get hold of the list and will post a link on the LAUNCH.ed blog when we do!

This week is World Creativity and Innovation Week (#wciw) so hopefully this will encourage more entrepreneurs to take the plunge and start a business! We thought we would list some of the upcoming events in Edinburgh to help inspire everyone! Events are a good opportunity to learn from battle-scarred entrepreneurs and meet people who you can discuss your business with. A short list of free events coming up in the next two months are listed below:

April

Scottish Converge Challenge Introduction: Are You Interested in Winning £35K in Cash to Boost Your Business? 23rd April at 6pm, LT3, University of Edinburgh Business School.

Gregor Lawson, Morphsuits (see image above) - E Club - 25th April at 6:30pm, Conference Room, University of Edinburgh Business School.

iVTuesday - Alex van Someren, 30th April at 5:45pm, The Royal College of Surgeons, King Khalid Building Symposium Hall, Hill Square, Edinburgh EH8 9DS.

May

Social media: tweets, posts & analytics, 15th May, 1pm-5pm, Auditorium, University of Edinburgh Business School.

Becoming a company director or self employed: understanding the tax system (HMRC), 22nd May, 9am-1pm, LT2, University of Edinburgh Business School.

Living the Dream: Grant Property & Fourth World Art, 23rd May, 6pm, Auditorium, University of Edinburgh Business School.

June

Publishing: Evolution, Disruption and the Future, 12th June, 9:30am - 5pm, Auditorium, University of Edinburgh Business School.

We hope to see you there!

5th Apr 2013

Converge Challenge Competition Launches - 60K top prize!

The Competition

Are you a student or a member of staff at a Scottish university with an innovative idea? Then the Converge Challenge could be for you! The University of Edinburgh is a key partner in this venture and are keen to support anyone with an interesting business concept.

The Converge Challenge has a top prize of £60,000 and is the largest business competition and entrepreneurial training programme in Scotland. It provides training, hands-on mentoring, business support and offers cash prizes up to £35,000. The competition is open to staff and students of all Scottish Universities and Research Institutes. Any industry sector, product- or service-based ideas at any stage of development will be considered.

Deadline

The application deadline for initial submission is Friday 10 May 2013, but organizers are reminding applicants to submit an entry to the Converge Challenge business plan competition as soon as possible. The team behind the competition has brought together a group of experts to support the Converge Challenge applicants and to help them develop their business ideas. Through a combination of training and advice the programme aims to guide them and help them to get their businesses off the ground.

The infographic above, from Heriot Watt University, reveals some of the stats from last year’s Converge Challenge including the number of applications, the percentages of staff/students and geographical distribution of applicants.

More information

We will be holding an event at the Edinburgh Entrepreneurship Club that will cover what the Converge Challenge is about, who can apply and how to apply; we will also hear from a previous winner.

The Converge Challenge website can be found here.

For more competitions relevant to Scottish businesses have a look at our previous blog post: The Competition Zone.

28th Mar 2013

Accelerator pipeline, company formations & pitches

Yesterday we held the last session of our successful ten week Accelerator Pipeline course and the focus was on pitching! Participants could choose to stand up and do either a five minute or a 90 second pitch in front of the group and be in with a chance of winning a prize.

There were several high quality, well prepared pitches yesterday and people applied the principles they had learned throughout the course to their pitches. We were delighted to see how ideas and business models developed throughout the course via a combination of group work, individual exercises and pitching practice.

Congratulations to the following pitching winners:

Five minute pitches:

1st: Finlay Asher (Homegrown)

2nd: Gemma Pirnie (Your New Crew )

3rd: Alesis Novik (Paycoin) & Chuang-Yuan Chiu (Bodyscanner)

90 second pitches:

1st: Virgilio Ambriz-Vilchis

2nd: Georgios Machtsiras

3rd: Jiansen He (KIT)

The accelerator pipeline course aims to help participants to hone their idea, focus on the problem their business is solving, assess the potential market, design their business model, research their competition, plan their route to market, manage customer development and learn how to pitch to potential clients and investors.

We are preparing to run a condensed version of the first half of this course, the Summer Bootcamp, in May 2013. If you would like to discuss your business idea or attend one of our 2-day bootcamps, then please get in touch with us:

http://launched.wufoo.com/forms/q7x3z9/

The accelerator pipeline course is funded by the Open Innovation Project, a three-year, transnational initiative to promote Open Innovation throughout North-West Europe.