Enterprising students compete and collaborate at City Hall
Entrepreneurial students come together for two-day boot camp held in the offices of London’s Mayor, City Hall
Entrepreneurial students from Birkbeck, Goldsmiths and SOAS came together on 31 May 2016 for a two-day boot camp held in the offices of London’s Mayor, City Hall.
The event was the third in the ‘Dream. Discover. Do’ series and saw over 25 students compete, collaborate and create in pursuit of a £1000 prize, with a panel consisting of Michael Wilson (Santander), Francis White (Student Hubs) and Birkbeck’s Professor Philip Powell deciding the winner.
‘Dream. Discover. Do’ provides enterprising students with the opportunity to engage with other like-minded students keen to develop entrepreneurial skills. Whether they have the next big idea, want to start their own business or wish to gain a competitive advantage in the graduate jobs market, the boot camp takes students from the classroom and tests them with specific business scenarios.
Over the course of the two-day event, five teams of students conceptualised, researched and pitched their ideas for a hypothetical event at London’s Hyde Park. To help them develop their ideas, students heard from senior managers, social entrepreneurs and start-up co-founders discuss their own paths to success, before offering guidance and advice to the cohort of budding entrepreneurs. Speakers at this iteration of the ‘Dream. Discover. Do’ series included Nick Brackenbury of NearSt, Sophie Scowen of Team London and Birkbeck’s Careers and Employability manager Mohsin Aboobaker.
After conducting market research, creating a promotional video, budgeting and marketing their proposed events, students pitched their business plans to the panel of judges in what proved to be a tight contest. Only after much deliberation did the Red Team, consisting of two Birkbeck Students, three SOAS students and one Goldsmiths student, emerge victorious with their idea for a multicultural Hyde Park festival, called the ‘Juiro Festival’, winning the judges over.
With an exceptional level of quality coming from each team, the biggest success of the event was in bringing together a diverse group of engaged and enterprising students to hear from today’s entrepreneurs and, undoubtedly, give us a glimpse of tomorrows.
You can get a better look at the Red team’s winning idea here on their team twitter account. Look out for future events by following the School of Business, Economics and Informatics on Twitter.
Some reflections from students:
“It was challenging and was great to meet young entrepreneurs from many different backgrounds,” Jane
“It was great to get to practice these things in a relatively low-risk environment, we were challenged but we also had support and guidance” Christina
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