Student Finalists Have 75,000 Reasons to Be Excited

Media Release
30 May 2013

Student Finalists Have 75,000 Reasons to Be Excited About Innovation

[Embargoed: Thursday 30th May 7:10pm]

The ten finalists for the University of Canterbury’s $75,000 “dragons-den” style entrepreneurial competition were announced today.

The competition is organised by student-run organisation, Entré, that aims to encourage and cultivate entrepreneurial spirit among university students.
Finalists include products that combine bicycle helmets and locks through to a database for students to see the leaders of the career fields in which they are hoping to enter. They were chosen from a total of 36 entries who were required to submit a sixty second “elevator pitch” to sell their idea to potential investors. They were required to clearly identify the problem they were trying to solve and highlight their idea to create a solution.

One guest judge, Brian Brackenridge, the innovation behind Icebreaker, was very excited by the level of applicants vying for the $75,000 prize; “I would be extremely surprised if a multimillion dollar development did not come of one of these top ten ideas”

Entré CEO, Michelle Panzer, was delighted to see the broad range of applicants that would be moving on to the dragons-den finale.“The ten finalists really represent a diverse cultivation of entrepreneurial spirit”.

The finalists can look forward to business mentoring in the coming months to further develop their idea into something worthy of $75,000 worth of prizes.
The winner of the 75k Challenge will be announed in early September.

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