Students on the Business Enterprise programme who have come up with a business idea for a smoking cessation app were delighted to hear that their idea has been chosen as one of just five to be pitched at the Scottish Start-Up Summit in San Francisco.
The Scottish Start-Up Summit in San Francisco is part of The Scottish Start-Up World Tour which will see inspiring entrepreneurial events run over the next two years in six countries. All the summits are not-for profit events organised by We Are The Future.
The summit is about inspiring Scottish and American entrepreneurs over a week long period in one of the world’s most exciting entrepreneurship environments. Start-ups will have the opportunity to engage with the world's leading organisations as well as learning from Scottish and US entrepreneurs based in San Francisco.
As only one from each team can go, Ola Clark will be representing Monomise. The others – Claire Marsh, Elizabeth Irvine, Lisa Hunter and Lorna Macsween - will be waiting anxiously at home to hear how she gets on.
Elizabeth explained, "Monomise is a smoking cessation programme that consists of a carbon monoxide reader and motivational app. The reader's purpose is to calculate the levels of harmful carbon monoxide in the user's body, with results being transferred onto a motivational app that tracks the user's progress over time and rewards the user for positive progress. The main focus for Monomise is to help individuals sustain their progress and keep off cigarettes for good!
"We came across the San Francisco Summit Competition through other SIE events we have been involved in, such as the Young Innovators Challenge and the SIE Student Enterprise Summit. We were immediately interested and had to compile a video explaining why we were suitable candidates to attend in order to progress to the next stage."
The video obviously worked as they were whittled down from over 100 entrants to just 20. These finalists then had to give a pitch of their idea and suitability for travelling to San Francisco. Only one team member was needed for this part of the challenge so the team selected Ola and she travelled to Edinburgh where she participated in the final pitch which took place at Gogarburn.
Monomise was chosen to be one of the five companies which will travel to San Francisco on July 21 where finalists will have several opportunities to engage with some of the world’s leading organisations, improve on their ideas and gain vital experience and contacts that will be greatly beneficial in the future.
"Monomise would like to thank everyone from ‘We are the Future’ for giving us this opportunity and believing in our business idea. The Enterprise Hub at Strathclyde has also helped Monomise greatly in our journey, particularly Joshua Sauter and Tony Hamill who have been excellent mentors. However, Monomise would have never considered taking things further if it wasn’t for our lecturers, Dominic Chalmers, Erik Monsen and Lucrezia Casulli who guided us at the very early stages of our idea and encouraged us to pursue Monomise as a business."
More about the San Francisco Summit can be found here.