Victory
On Tuesday night I won a prize for best use of innovation in the NBR Audacious Business Plan Challenge!
How did this happen?
This isn’t my first such victory. Last semester I was a winner in the Audacious Idea Competition with a concept for a Facebook application called MeetYouThere. It’s like a teaser for this competition. My entry this time around was a web application for small and medium sized businesses called Consumeron. I wrote a business plan and gave a 55 second pitch to become one of 10 finalists. I then did a Dragons Den style presentation, not like on television though, these dragons were really friendly.
On Tuesday I attended the prize giving for the competition in the Dunedin Town Hall. Craig Smith, last years winner, spoke about the progress he’s made in the last 12 months. I love speeches with extended metaphors and this one was especially good.
Barry Coleman, CEO and owner of the National Business Review, was the guest speaker. Barry was a real television dragon on the New Zealand version of Dragon Den and also made an appearance at the Bear Baiting event held at the university earlier this year. Among other things he talked about how entrepreneurs are 4 times more likely to have dyslexia than the general population which is, um, awesome.
Then it was time to give away some prizes. Valued at $40,000, the total prize pool was broken down into $20,000 for first place, $10,000 for second place and 5 category prizes valued at $2,000. Deloshan Nawarajan took away the first prize, keep an eye on his site: oceanmarkets.com. I won a category prize for innovation made up of cash and in kind business support for Consumeron.
The road ahead
Having had my belief in Consumeron vindicated by a panel of experienced judges I’m going to continue working on it alongside my studies. I have some money, but I need more so if you have too many yachts and would like to throw some investment funds my way I will gladly accept. Contact me by email or on 021 2979714.
If you’re less rich but would still like to follow my progress head over to consumeron.com and subscribe to the Consumeron mailing list. You’ll be the first to hear about a related project I plan to launch later this year.
I’d like to thank…
Everyone who supported me, gave feedback on my plan and drove me to Audacious events in the pouring rain: George Benwell, YiYan Chuah, Emma Clarke, Nijel Nigel Jemson, Daniel Kirk, Andrew Long, Ryan Priemus and my parents.
