College students excel at Start Up Weekend
Gower College Swansea students - past and present - performed exceptionally well at the recent ‘Start Up Weekend’ at the Dylan Thomas Centre.
The event was a challenging 54-hour long competition with teams from Swansea University, University of Wales Trinity Saint David (UWTSD) and Gower College Swansea taking to the stage to pitch original, innovative business ideas.
The winning team, Allergy Manager, was led by former Gower College Swansea IT student Nathan Buller, who devised the idea alongside his colleagues from UoWTSD’s School of Applied Computing with support from developers and designers from across the city. Their idea was a smartphone app which would allow dieticians, personal trainers, medical professionals and local pharmacies to work together to combat patients' allergies.
Receiving a special mention was team Autvantage which comprised designers, Swansea University students and Joshua David-Jenkins and Alex Williams from Gower College Swansea. This team was led by Rhys Jenkins, who developed his idea to highlight and train employers on the wide range of skills and talents that autistic members of staff could bring to their business.
Team ‘Set Plays’ included two Gower College Swansea students - Alex Williams and Ryan Evans - and came up with a strong brand and a working demo of their app to help new sports team members learn tactics before they attend training sessions.
Meanwhile, when Ryan was not working and presenting with his team, he was keeping busy by tweeting live from the event and was crowned Swansea’s ‘Twitter King’ in the Global Start Up hashtag battle. With an amazing 22,700 tweets in just one week, @swanseasw was at one point placed first in the list of UK cities, sixth in Europe and eight globally, which is an amazing achievement.
To coincide with the Start Up Weekend, a new fund to help budding entrepreneurs turn their ideas into reality has been launched. The Swansea Seed Fund has been set up to nurture young people aged 16-25 as they develop their ideas from the early stages right through to – potentially - successful business start ups.
“The main aims of the SEED Fund are to improve the prospects of local young people and to give them the confidence to ‘go for it’,” says Sue Poole, Enterprise Manager at Gower College Swansea. “Sharing our knowledge, experience and skills will hopefully help towards the creation of an entrepreneurial ‘talent pool’ within the City and County of Swansea. Who knows? These young people could be the employers and business leaders of tomorrow.”
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The winners of the 2015 Start Up Weekend were:
* First place: Allergy Manager
* Second place: Train Tracks
* Third place: My Night
* Special Mention: Autvantage
The judges included Swansea's own ‘business dragon’ Debra Williams (former MD of Confused.com and Tesco Compare), Anna Bastek (Wolfstone and Voicebox), David Hieatt (co-founder of Hiut Denim in Cardigan) and Dina Henry (Chief Commercial Officer with the Charity Aid Foundation Bank.)