What started as a class challenge in New Venture Planning - to develop an innovation-driven enterprise with a positive social impact - has led to some positive progress for a group of students.
Ciaran Jenkins, Aidan Brennan, Stephanie Gibson, Josh Baxter and Dominic Woods are 1st and 2nd year students who took the New Venture Planning class at the Hunter Centre for Entrepreneurship.
They recently came third in a 'Dragon's Den' type competition run by the University of Strathclyde.
Ciaran explained that their business idea came about as many of the group are very keen on a variety of sports.
"Initially, as many of us play 5-a-side football we came up with the idea of an app which would make the process of booking and finding a game easier. However after research, we realised this had already been done to an extent. After a brainstorm considering all of the different possible applications of our idea, we realised that using the app to get females into 5 a side football was something that had never been done before."
For the competition, the team had to first submit an application form. They were then shortlisted for a qualifying pitch, consisting of a 5 minute pitch and 5 minutes of questions. Following this, they were then selected as one of three groups to compete in the final, with a maximum investment of £3000. The final had an identical format to the previous round, but instead the team was speaking to 100 University donors, who then voted for a winner.
Ciaran added, "Unfortunately we did not win the final,
however we still received £500 of investment. Following the final we were
approached by some donors who said they really liked the idea, and we have
since met with them to discuss how to secure further investment and how to take
the company forward. Our ultimate goal is to launch the app to the market."