A representative of a team of students on the Business Enterprise programme who have come up with a business idea for a smoking cessation app has returned from her trip to San Francisco where she pitched the idea to global business leaders.
Their smoking cessation app was just one of five ideas 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.
Ola Clark represented the team which also includes Claire Marsh, Elizabeth Irvine, Lisa Hunter and Lorna Macsween. 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.
From 100 entrants, 20 were then selected to give a pitch of their idea and suitability for travelling to San Francisco at an event at Gogarburn, Edinburgh, which Ola took on. From that, Monomise was then chosen to be one of the five companies which travelled to San Francisco on July 21.
Ola got the chance to visit companies such as HP, Airbnb and RocketSpace. They also had pitching practice with Silicon Valley Bank and then headed to Silicon Valley and visited the offices of Google, Facebook and Apple as well as a master class with Tech Star Mentor Anne Johnson. After this very exciting week of events, the trip culminated with We Are the Future’s Global Start Up Summit, which took place at the RocketSpace Studios.
Ola said, “At this event, I got the opportunity to pitch Monomise in front of various VCs, press and global business leaders which was such an amazing opportunity and has led to us making various new useful contacts.
“The trip has taught me some very important lessons – first of all, I learned how vital networking really is. We attended various networking events and it quickly became apparent how eager people in San Francisco are to help one another to progress their business. I gained a lot of useful feedback for Monomise and gained some very useful contacts. I also learned how important it is to actually go out and make things happen. There are so many start ups in San Francisco that if you have an idea, you need to start trying to pursue it before somebody else does! Finally, I learned how much support there is out there for female entrepreneurs. Initially I thought that being the only female on the trip would have its disadvantages but it was the total opposite. In San Francisco, there is a massive buzz about female entrepreneurs with various events constantly being organised to encourage more female start-ups.”
Ola said she received very useful feedback about Monomise and has allowed the team to identify the real strengths of the business model plus. Ola added, “We also received some very useful advice as to how to approach new business funding opportunities which will hopefully enable us to take Monomise to the next stage.”
She continued, “We are really thankful to We Are The Future and its amazing supporters – for example, RBS and MBN Recruitment. This start up company has given Monomise an incredible opportunity which has led to various further opportunities for the future. I strongly recommend any other budding entrepreneurs to get involved with any similar upcoming competitions and events as they have the potential to really inspire.”