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Summer Startup Update Week Three: Speakers and Speed Mentoring

02 December 2019

From swimmable rivers, to surveys, to speed mentoring, this week has again been jam-packed for the Summer Startup Programme students.

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Caitlin Soal talks to mentor Rod Carr about her Summer Startup venture during the speed mentoring session.

The third week of the UC Centre for Entrepreneurship’s (UCE) Summer Startup Programme started off with a session run by Tania Armstrong. The essence of her advice was to “validate your idea and validate it all the way, and if it doesn’t work, kill it quick”. Tania explained that the more validation an entrepreneur does, the more informed their decisions can be when bringing their product to market.

On Tuesday, we were excited to host Michael Mayell to talk about the varied array of projects he’s been involved in, including Cookie Time, One Square Meal, Nutrient Rescue, DrinkableRivers and Whakamana: The Cannabis Museum of Aotearoa. Michael encouraged the cohort to question their own footprint on this world - "are you a regenerative or degenerative?". 

Geoff Brash ran a workshop in the afternoon to help the students put the idea of validation into practice. This helped students to create unbiased surveys to gather information from potential customers. 

Geoff Brash works with Ngarie Scartozzi during his validation workshop. Geoff Brash works with Ngarie Scartozzi during his validation workshop.

Retail marketing and sustainability was the name of the game on Wednesday. University of Canterbury academic Ann-Marie Kennedy encouraged our student entrepreneurs to consider sustainability when designing their business models, and introduced them to the concept of the circular economy.

On Thursday, we held our speed mentoring session, in which all the ventures received fast-pace advice from a range of experts. It was a very busy and useful day for all the students, with lots of new connections created and ideas shared. 

Justin Stevenson from The Fitting Room finished off the week by sharing his top business tips, including how to effectively set goals as an entrepreneur, and how to structure a business to best promote growth! 

After another busy week, the students were ready for the weekend. After some time to recharge, week four will be focused on marketing and getting each venture’s story out into the world!

The UCE Summer Startup Programme is a chance for students to work on fast-tracking the development of their ideas into realistic business ventures for 10 weeks over the summer. To find out more about the UCE Summer Startup Programme, click here.


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