Startup competition Beta Business Days & FSE great success

On Thursday February 6^th, the first edition of the Startup competition for FSE students took place. This event was organized by the Beta Business Days , in cooperation with the business developers from the Faculty of Science and Engineering. Dr. Victor Stoica, business developer at the FSE, challenged the 60 participating students to develop a product and a business plan for their own hypothetical startup around a patent owned by the FSE. The winning team, who won EUR 400, consisted of Master’s students Felix Boie, Owen Terpstra, Michelle Scharte and Mariano Perez Chaher.

The 60 participating students, coming from all degree programmes of the FSE, worked together in 13 teams. Their task was to develop a startup around a technique developed by Prof. Francesco Picchioni to remove salts or metals from contaminated water. The teams had about three hours to work out a product based on this technique and think about how they could build a company around this product. Besides FSE’s business developer Victor Stoica, Peter van Kampen, business developer at Northern Knowledge and Corina Prent, Director of RUG Holding B.V. were present to provide coaching support.

Opening

The event was opened by Tim van de Rijdt, Chief Business Officer at Mosameat, the Dutch company that produces cultured meat. Van de Rijdt gave the students an inspirational talk about what it's like to 'live the startup life' and presented Mosameat as the perfect example of a successful startup stemming from university research.

Great success

The evening was a great success. With 13 participating teams, lots of ideas and products came along. The winning team was selected by an experienced jury consisting of Rob Timmermans, vice-dean of the FSE, Annemieke Galema, director of Northern Knowledge and Tim van de Rijdt.