The annual Be Your Own Boss competition run by Warwick University’s Entrepreneurs Society saw students Jean Malissard and Simon Cohen, and graduate Jonathan Bevan, win the Early Stage Business category, with their uni4ya.com web site, in last month’s final.
The site is an online interactive directory of suppliers, discounts and other information, allowing local businesses to target the student market. Malissard said the competition provided, “an excellent opportunity to display our creativity and hard work,” and buoyed by the win he now plans to extend the site to cover other universities.
Malissard is also part of the team behind creativia.co.uk, with friends Dobromira Boyadjieva and Vladimir Tsekov, which took home the runner-up prize for its take-away coffee cup sleeves featuring advertisements, for use at conferences, exhibitions and other events.
In the business ideas category, Alex Chamberlein won the main prize with an idea for supporting the charity services sector, while Christie Sarri’s alternative luggage system secured the runner-up place.
Other finalists across the two categories included tugenda.com, a search box aggregator; a showcase of student art at turntothebside.com; an online raffle system; and an alternative sports betting system.
The competition was sponsored by Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Accenture and the Warwick Business School Enterprise Hub, and was supported by the National Consortium of University Entrepreneurs (NACUE). The eight finalists were competing for a prize fund of up to £2,000 plus business support, in front of an audience of over two hundred students and a panel of experienced judges.
The competition organisers Michael Stones and Dominic Phillips said the event was a, “testament to Warwick’s entrepreneurial spirit”. NACUE Midlands Co-Chair, Kostas Mavroulakis, said, “Students’ involvement with enterprise society activities signals their willingness to consider an alternative career option, or to develop enterprise skills to stand out to employers.”
Warwick Entrepreneurs is a student society with more than 500 members which encourages and supports students in setting up their own businesses. To date these include e-resistible.co.uk, needyseed.com, myonepage.com and theuniexpress.com.
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