CUE wrapped up one of its most successful business creation competitions at the Grand Finale last evening. This year saw a total of over 300 entries throughout the year and a 50% increase in the number of entries for the final 5K stage of the competition.

The evening began with an opening address from John Bird, Founder and Editor-in-Chief of the Big Issue, and included talks from Mike Lynch, Founder of Invoke Capital and Autonomy and Nils Frers, Founder of studentreadinglists and last year’s CUE winner for Software Start-up of the Year, Carpe Diem Young Entrepreneur of the Year and the Angel prize.

14 Finalist teams also got the chance to pitch their ideas to a panel of Dragons – Darrin Disley, Paul Anson and David Richards – in a fast paced Dragon’s Den segment, with a special Angel Prize up for grabs.

Over £30,000 of cash and £5,000 of in-kind awards were given out last night. Apart from the rise in quantity of entries, the quality of entries was also significantly improved. With so many strong entries, the judges decided to award 2 prizes for Technology Start-up of the Year and 3 (instead of 2) prizes for Carpe Diem Young Entrepreneur of the Year.

The winners are:

Technology Start-up of the Year

AQDOT

Microencapsulation is currently a multi-billion-per-annum industry with established applications in food, cosmetics, pharmaceutical, and personal care products. The current unmet consumer demand is to produce sustainable and inexpensive capsules that can be triggered to release bio-macromolecules. To address this critical industry challenge over the next decades, AQDOT has developed an innovative technology to produce microcapsules with greatly simplified manufacturing procedure and unprecedented ability to encapsulate and release enzymes, antibodies and other high value materials. We are currently building a prototype for the consumer products that will act as a demonstrator for the many other possible applications.

OpSalva

Reconstructive surgeries represent a significant component of any major hospital’s operating theatre load. Whether reconstruction is required due to trauma, occupational accidents, cancer or congenital deformities, one of a variety of surgical flaps is likely to be used. These surgical approaches have revolutionised patient care but, despite clinicians’ best efforts, are associated with a well recognised failure rate. Failure of a surgical flap can be disastrous for the patient due the the addition of donor site morbidity on top of morbidity due to the failed reconstruction. However, flaps that can be identified as ‘struggling’ before they reach critical failure can be salvaged. Our product would enable clinicians to monitor the health of a flap from the inside out, changing the way reconstructive surgery is performed forever. Through the use of an implantable device, surgeons would receive real time feedback on the health of their patient’s reconstruction. This in turn would enable highly informed clinical decision making leading to better patient outcomes. Simply, ambiguity would be replaced by knowledge. In medical practice that is a powerful commodity.

Software Start-up of the Year

MyTeech

MyTeech is an online educational software system that allows lecturers to host in-lecture quizzes that students can respond to on their mobile devices. Additionally, the system allows students to push real-time feedback to lecturers regarding their level of teaching, which can be used for appraisal purposes. This has been shown to greatly boost the engagement levels of students and to increase the interaction level in lectures. With student ownership of smartphones tending towards 100%, this eliminates the need for expensive hardware devices, whilst enhancing education with modern technologies. Since launching in February, 20 lecturers have signed up for the system across four universities throughout Europe, and over 500 students have used MyTeech as part of their daily teaching.

Social Enterprise Start-up of the Year

Nutriservices Healthcare

According to Dietitians in Obesity Management the obesity problem has dramatically changed the weight management field, causing urgent reconsideration of dietetic practices. Nutri-Services Healthcare (NuSH) is a cost-saving intervention against the escalating problem of obesity in the UK. It is an online weight loss and health management system including professional dietetic care. NuSH also provides evidence-based research to effect policy and public health changes.

Carpe Diem Life Science Start-up of the Year

Floceleris

Alzheimer’s disease is the most common cause of dementia in adults and affects over 28 million people worldwide. However, there are currently no biomarker tests for pre-symptomatic detection of the disease. We are developing a diagnostic and prognostic blood test for use in individuals at risk of Alzheimer’s disease. This test will be used at first by the pharmaceutical industry to facilitate drug discovery, and later for early diagnosis and for monitoring the subsequent evolution of the disease in elderly patients.  We are seeking £2.2 million seed- funding for start-up cost, initial clinical trials and the development of a screening platform.

Carpe Diem Young Entrepreneurs of the Year

Fraser Atkins (MyTeech)

Elliott Verreault (Project Policy)

Theo Nanidis (ChiroCam)

Angel Prize winner

Fraser Atkins (MyTeech)

Congratulations to all the winners and thanks to all the participants! We hope to continue seeing you on the Cambridge entrepreneurship scene next year!

First off, thanks for all the entries to the CUE 5K competition! We will keep you updated on a separate post.

Now, another exciting announcement: we are looking for a team of 4 students to participate in NACUE’s Student Apprentice competition in Cambridge this weekend (4th-5th May).

Teams will have to complete three tasks: selling, consulting and business planning. It will be a great opportunity to show all you’ve learned throughout the CUE competition, interact with other university entrepreneurs from the East of England and meet potential future mentors. The winning team will go on to the National competition in London for a chance to win £5000 (and national publicity).

If you’re interested, please email maria.maldonado@cue.org.uk with the names of the 4 team members and a short paragraph on why you think you’d make the best National Student Entrepreneur Apprentices, by Wednesday 1/5 5pm.

For testimonials of previous competitions, please see http://www.nacue.com/2012/12/kclbc-apprentice-final-my-experience/

Thank you!

At last night’s CUE 1K Awards Ceremony, 11 Winners and 11 Runners-up were announced. There was an especially high quality of entrants this year, hence the increase in the number of prizes awarded from 7 last year to 11 this year. Winners received £1K and runners-up will receive free entry into the 5K Competition and be paired up with mentors to help them improve on their ideas.

CUE 1K Winners

1.       AQDOT

Microencapsulation is currently a multi‐billion‐per‐annum industry with established applications in food, cosmetics, pharmaceutical, and personal care products. The current unmet consumer demand is to produce sustainable and inexpensive capsules that can be triggered to release bio-macromolecules. To address this critical industry challenge over the next decades, AQDOT has developed an innovative technology to produce microcapsules with greatly simplified manufacturing procedure and unprecedented ability to encapsulate and release enzymes, antibodies and other high value materials. We are currently building a prototype for the consumer products that will act as a demonstrator for the many other possible applications.

2.       Cambridge Nanosystems

Cambridge Nanosystems aims to become the leading supplier of high quality Single‐Walled Carbon Nanotubes (SWCNTs) by a novel, patented method based on Floating Catalyst Chemical Vapour Deposition (FCCVD). The company is a spin-out from the Department of Material Science and Metallurgy and seeks to obtain first commercial sample of reproducible, long and highly conductive SWCNTs at low cost by the end of the year 2013. These nanotubes will be particularly suitable for improving the performance of copper in electrical applications.

3.       HemoTest

Sickle-cell disease (SCD) is a WHO Public Health Priority that constitutes one of the main causes for child-mortality in Sub-Saharan African countries due to the unavailability of cheap, low-infrastructure diagnostics. HemoTest, a patent-pending paper-based microfluidics device, is a frugal point-of-care diagnostic for sickle-cell-trait status that could alleviate morbidity and mortality associated with SCD and its related disease, malaria, in resource-limited settings. We plan to continue HemoTest-prototype development and approval in partnership with malaria-related-NGO grants and distribution channels, with the aim of becoming the major SCD diagnostic in Sub-Saharan Africa and beyond.

4.       PDH Therapeutics

PDH Therapeutics will become the market leader in the processing of Asian therapeutic natural products for use in the global nutraceuticals and functional food markets. The company has developed a proprietary enzyme-based technology to extract bioactive ingredients from Asian medicinal plants. This technology produces greater yield, is more economical and is more environment-friendly as compared to conventional extraction methods. The initial target clientele will be nutraceuticals and functional food companies as well as health supplement manufacturers. The main revenue stream will be through product sales.

5.       Purit Technologies

Purit Technologies Ltd (Purit) is a UK biotechnology company that has developed a technology platform that enables a faster, cheaper and more scalable solution for the purification and isolation of biopharmaceuticals. Porous micro-capillary film (MCF) is a versatile, low cost, and robust material which can operate at higher flow rates and pressures than traditional packed bed columns providing a route to the industry’s first ‘plug and play’ (and throw away) downstream processing solution. The market for columns, supports and ancillary reagents in the chromatography sector was $6.6 billion in 2011 and will reach $8.9 billion by 2017 (growing at a CAGR of 4.1%)1. Purit is well positioned to address this market via a business model that comprises OEM licensing, materials supply and direct product supply.

6.       Smart Blade

Blade failures account for 12% of wind turbines’ downtime according to reliability studies by EU ReliaWind and contribute to 16.5% of turbines’ operation and maintenance costs. SmartBlade is a patent-pending condition monitoring technology which can reduce the failure rate of blades by 60%, hence increasing wind farm revenues by more than 1.6%. The product, comprising of a number of ultra-compact nanosensors and our BladeSoft application software, offers straightforward retrofit into new wind turbines as well as existing ones. This is a relatively new market and we expect to take a 10% market share by 2017, equivalent to installation onto 800 turbines, generating revenues of £15.2million.

7.       IntelliScheduler for Doctors

Like waiting at the doctor’s office? No one does. IntelliScheduler for Doctors is a smart, cloud-based scheduler that reduces patients’ wait-times and dynamically updates appointments in real-time. Using proprietary machine learning algorithms, IntelliScheduler statistically learns doctors’ behaviors and patients’ arrival habits to predict when patients will actually be seen. It gracefully handles service-time variations, delays, and emergencies to minimize patients’ frustration and doctors’ unbilled time. It also allows patients to leave waiting rooms by text-messaging estimated wait-times. By increasing customer satisfaction and likelihood-of-return, IntelliScheduler raises doctors’ revenues. IntelliScheduler can provide customizable, easy-to-setup, privacy-compliant software for over 250,000 US/UK physician offices.

8.       Nunuza

Where do people sell their products in the developing world? Nunuza is creating a program that enables people in developing nations to buy and sell things. We are developing an SMS based system that is accessed using the simplest of technology; a normal cell phone. In a nutshell: An easy-to-use E-Bay®.

9.       Visual Intellect

We provide insights into the UK housing market by turning large data sets into understandable, visual maps. These insights help decision makers in the property market make the right investment and policy choices. With 40% projected growth in global data generated per year, Big Data is a rapidly growing market. McKinsey estimates the European public sector administration to be worth $250 billion per year. We secured our first contract, which will deliver visual analysis of open data to inform a government report.

10.   HubCiti

HubCiti is a social enterprise that creates a direct digital bridge between the poverty- stricken third world and online supporters and donors. It allows people in developed countries to fund and remotely partake in running farming businesses in my village of Kyaka in Uganda. HubCiti is creating a real-life FarmVille. The farms create jobs for the poorest in Kyaka, empowers them to earn a wage, create wealth and attain improved standards of living, rather than depend on hand outs. HubCiti provides an engaging and enjoyable interactive learning opportunity for donors by offering those online the opportunity to have a hand in creating a successful agricultural business, while practically and collectively tackling the challenge of poverty.

11.   Written Medicine

DrugInfo Ltd (Trading as Written Medicine) is a fledgling company aiming to increase patient access to information and medication awareness. The literature in the UK and elsewhere points to health inequalities between the majority population and the ethnic minorities where the latter are disadvantaged by their inability to speak or understand the majority language. Our aim is to reduce this inequality by providing written translations to these minorities. Our business is established on the concept of personalised medicine.  We will sustain this by keeping the patient at the forefront of our innovation and always aim to deliver the best service.

CUE 1K Runners-Up

1.       Calvitium Solutions

Global sales in hair loss prevention products have risen by 80% in the last 4 years to £0.5b in 2011. Calvitium Solutions has developed a patentable product with specific mode of action, ameliorating potential side effects and is reasonably priced. Our product will be patented in major markets including Japan, USA, and UK. Our core expertise will be production, intially at Babraham Incubator, and our licencee’s expertise (eg. Unilever) will be used for marketing, distribution and selling. Our expected sales in the first 5 years of production is £135m, capturing 1.92% of the market share. We will exit via acquisition.

2.       Detect-All

Detect-All is a Cambridge based start-up striving to empower allergy sufferers through the creation and development of the world’s first portable, personalised, real time allergen detection device. With the explicit aim of producing a user friendly, highly sensitive device, Detect-All will remove the guesswork allergy suffers face on a daily basis. In doing so, millions of people affected by allergies worldwide will be protected from potentially lethal situations.

3.       SIM Prints

Accurate patient identification is essential for providing care to patients. However, in many developing countries, patient records do not exist or are difficult to reliably manage with community health workers operating under the difficult conditions of the field. Leveraging the new wave of mobile-phone enabled health applications, SIM-Prints is a prototyping hardware and software that can ID patients using fingerprint recognition biometrics connected to mobile phones. This technology will allow faster and more reliable patient identification for vaccination drives, HIV/AIDS screening, Tuberculosis drug adherence, and a number of other critical applications.

4.       SITT Alarm Clock

SITT Alarm Clock brings the pleasure of sleeping to a whole new level, gently solving the main problem of one’s precious dream time - the wake up moment. By combining the processing power of the newest smartphones, an advanced SITT sensors and a reasonable price, it promises to become one of the most attractive solutions for guaranteeing a better and more energetic day for its users. The SITT alarm will be positioned as a top quality, reliable yet affordable device first and foremost for busy people. It is a device that we designed for ourselves.

5.       Natural Informatics

Natural Informatics Limited was formed in the second quarter of 2012 after receiving a seed loan from Downing Enterprise to research and develop a wireless non-contact physiological monitoring platform for use in connected health and wellbeing applications. Although the technology has potential to add unique value in many applications, the initial focuss is on generating revenue by selling a monthly subscription service in the sports and fitness market.

6.       EchoBox

EchoBox lets bloggers distribute and monetise their blogs on smartphones. More and more people are using smartphones to read their news and blogs. To counter this trend, news outlets have created beautiful mobile apps. Bloggers, on the other hand, do not have the financial means or the know-how to create great mobile experiences for their readers. EchoBox solves this problem. We distribute a blogger’s blogspot posts on our mobile app and forward our ad revenues back to the blogger (after taking a cut). EchoBox will only take two minutes for the bloggers to set up and will be free for their readers to download.

7.       Handsome.ly

Handsome.ly is a waitlist system for people that are interested in getting a haircut with a chosen salon soon. With a simple click of a button on a computer or phone, the salon can bring customers to you when it’s quiet, or fill out last-minute cancelled appointments. For providing this time flexibility, the salon offers the customer a discount. We’re tying together the needs of customers and salons to make a service that is valuable to both. Salons get to maximise their capacity and the customers can afford to go to the higher-end salons.

8.       Project Policy

ProjectPolicy is a tool that lets businesses, universities, think tanks and individuals understand free public data. Founded in Cambridge, Project Policy aims to draw together different sources of data and make the data easy to digest.

9.       SnipEat

Are you tired of cooking at home? Do you always cook the same meals? Do you dislike the quality of takeaways food? Find restaurants too expensive? SnipEAT is THE solution! SnipEAT is an online platform that allows you to purchase quality restaurant’s meals at an affordable price in a few clicks. How is this possible? Top-up some credits and use them to eat delicious discounted meals. The service allows you to takeaway, seat in or get your food delivered to you. SnipEAT, eat better food everyday!

10.   Nutri-Services Healthcare

According to Dietitians in Obesity Management the obesity epidemic has dramatically changed the weight management field and caused an urgent need for the dietetic profession to re-consider current approaches. Nutri-Services Healthcare (Nu-SH) is a practical, cost-saving intervention against the escalating epidemic of obesity in the UK. It is an online weight loss and weight maintenance programme designed to recreate the experience of one-to-one dietetic consultations in combination with the successful aspects of commercial online weight loss programmes. Nu-SH also provides evidence-based research through a rolling programme of high-quality intervention assessment.

11.   GoTo

Road congestion, car emissions, strain on parking facilities and increasing fuel costs are problems in cities around the world, both in developed and undeveloped countries. However, with an average of only 1.5 passengers per car journey in Europe, there is an immense scope for using cars more efficiently. GoTo will facilitate as many shared car journeys as possible in order to reduce emissions, make travel more affordable and create a more mobile population, lessen road congestion and the strain on parking facilities, and promote cooperation amongst people.

Thanks to all participants, mentors and judges for their time and effort! We look forward to the full business plans for the final stage of the competition.

CUE’s £1K Award Ceremony promises a banquet of exhilarating business ideas, including pitches and poster presentations from all entrants of the £1K competition. Up to 10 £1K prizes will be given out during the evening.

If you submitted an entry, this event is not to be missed! You will find out if you are part one of the 10 best entrepreneur teams, you will have the chance to pitch in front of the audience and you will be able to network with mentors for the final stage of the competition.

For business professionals and those further along in their entrepreneurial journeys, join us to learn about the most promising new ideas coming out of the University of Cambridge this year. The competition participants will get the chance to tell you more about their ideas during the elevator pitch segment and the poster session.

If you did not submit a 1K entry or have not thought much about entrepreneurship before, this event promises an exciting and potentially inspirational evening! The opportunity to hear from and network with oustanding entrepreneurs may provide the motivation you need to embark on your own entrepreneurial journey.

There will be free food, drinks and the chance to network with the senior executives and representatives from Horizon Discovery, ARM, RedGate, Cambridge Angels, Cambridge Enterprise, venture capitalists and CUE mentors.

This event is free and open to all, so please sign up now to avoid disappointment, as we do expect a large crowd!

See you soon,

CUE Team

Agenda of the evening:

18:00-18:30 Registration

18:30-18:45 Introduction of CUE and the Business Creation competition

18:45-19:15 Keynote speech from Laurence Kemball-Cook from Pavegen

19:15-20:00 Pitching session for 1K teams

20:00-20:15 Comments from the judges

20:15-20:30 Winner announcements

20:30-21:30 Networking and poster session

Speaker Profile:

Laurence Kemball-Cook is the founder and CEO of Pavegen, a technology company that has developed paving slabs that converts the kinetic energy from footsteps into electrical power. He originally developed the technology whilst at Loughborough University in 2009 and has taken the technology across the world and manages a team of 25, headquartered in London. This electrical energy can be stored in on-board batteries, or used immediately for applications such as lighting, signage, wireless data-collection and charging docking stations. The first of these Pavegen tiles were installed to power lighting at the West Ham tube station in line with the London 2012 Olympics.

Having recently taken centre stage at the United Nations in New York City, Laurence has also given 3 TED talks, in Palm Springs, London and Rio de Janerio. Most recently, he was awarded the Individual Energy prize at the World Technology Awards in 2012, which recognises individuals doing ‘innovative work of the greatest likely long-term significance’.

In order to better prepare our members for the exciting world of entrepreneurship, CUE will be hosting an entrepreneurship skills training session touching on the broad areas of pitching, management and raising finance.

While not directly relevant to writing business plans, these skills will be extremely useful for all aspiring entrepreneurs as they develop their budding businesses.

Speakers include Adelina Chalmers (Founder, Presenting Good Practice), Guy Newcombe (CEO, Archipelago Technology Group) and Paul Anson (CEO, Lumejet).

This event will also see the launch of the McKinsey Venture Academy, an exciting social enterprise competition for students.

Please register at:

http://cueskills2013.eventbrite.com

30/1 18:30 LR4 Dept. of Engineering

We are pleased to confirm that our 1K competition judges Dr Mike Arnott and Dr Martin Clark will  be speaking at our 1K Training Session next Wednesday about what they want to see in the 1K executive summary competition. Their talks will be followed by a short IP primer from Martin Lipscombe and surgeries with the CUE mentors, covering topics including Market research, Finance, Intellectual Property, and Legal— basically everything you need to know at this stage of the competition!

So please join us next Wednesday (28/11) at 6:30PM, in Lecture Room 4 of the Engineering Department.

Registration here.

Pizza and drinks will be provided.

See you there!

We hope you enjoyed our Co-founder Speed Dating event and all the SVc2UK activities. The second half of November is also packed with interesting events for all you budding entrepreneurs!

21/11 6PM My First Million: Your chance to be a Dragon

27/11 8PM Enterprise Tuesday: CUE Discussion Group with Dr Tony Raven- Successful Entrepreneurship: Luck or Hard Work?

28/11 6:30PM CUE 1K Training Session

Please see below for details and don’t forget to register- places are limited!

My First Million: Your chance to be a Dragon

21/11 6PM, LR4 Engineering Dept.

With the Dragon’s Den MyFirstMillion software from Dialectyx, participants will get to try their hands at being on the opposite side of the investment table and play the roles of Dragons. You will view actual pitches from Dragon’s Den, decide on which companies you want to invest in, find out what the Dragon’s decided, and learn the fate of the companies after several years of operations.

Through this, participants will get a feel of the key points that investors consider, and will be able to better structure their own business plans to target these points. In addition, the team who makes the most prudent investments with the greatest returns will stand to win attractive prizes!

Pizzas and drinks will be provided.

Enterprise Tuesday: CUE Discussion Group with Dr Tony Raven

27/11 8PM (after the lecture), Board Room of Eng. Dept. (2nd Floor)

“Luck or Hard Work? Which is more important for a successful entrepreneur?“.

Led by the CEO of Cambridge Enterprise, Dr Tony Raven, we will be discussing the key aspects of exploiting a business idea and the roles that serendipity and sheer hard work have to play during the commercialisation process.

Tony brings with him a wealth of experience, both as an entrepreneur and a consultant. Apart from his current role, he was the founder of Summit Technology, the market leader in laser refractive surgery, co-founder of Sagentia Group, a technical and management consultancy listed on the London Stock Exchange, and founder of Diomed Inc, world-leader in therapeutic medical diode lasers. He also played a role as Director of Research and Innovation Services at the University of Southampton.

We will also be making a special note of the role of the CUE business plan one of the most successful business plan competitions in the world where free training courses and mentoring are provided just to help you turn your idea into reality -  all within less than a year!

Refreshments will be provided.

CUE 1K Training Session

28/11 6:30PM, LR4, Eng. Dept.

To enter the competition you must submit a 1500 word Executive Summary by the 20th of January. This training session will help you write the best possible entry.

Two of our competition judges will talk about what they want to see in the 1K business creation competition, followed by surgeries with CUE mentors, covering topics including Market research, Finance, Intellectual Property, and Legal, basically everything you need to know at this stage of the competition.

Pizza and wine will be provided.

A Cambridge University entrepreneur, who has created technology to detect weapons, drugs or explosives at airports and other high risk environments, has won £15k cash and consultancy in CambridgeElevator’s inaugural KickStart competition.
Nicholas Tan’s company TeraWandaims to be the leading manufacturer and supplier of handheld Terahertz screening devices – allowing security personnel to easily and consistently locate weapons, drugs or explosives at airports, seaports and a range of other high-risk environments.

Marketing chief for Cambridge University Entrepreneurs (CUE), Tan believes he can steer his technology to commercialisation in a year or so thanks to the development capital and IP expertise earned in the inaugural KickStart competition run by Cambridge UK-based startup network, CambridgeElevator.com He is working on accelerating a miniaturised version of the device.

Young Cambridge University entrepreneurs dominated the latter stages of the competition, which was backed with £10k cash from globally renowned product innovation hothouse Cambridge Consultants and PEM Technology, the technology arm of local accountancy practice PEM – plus £5k’ worth of IP input from patent and TM attorney Mathys & Squire.

Since CambridgeElevator launched the competition with its own arrival on the scene last November, entries have poured in from as far afield as India and Africa. More than 50 global entrants made the shortlist.

Tan explained: “Terahertz radiation can be used to identify illicit drugs and explosive substances, which give specific colour signatures when irradiated.

“In addition, this radiation can pass through soft materials like clothing and paper and, unlike X-rays, is harmless to humans. As such, handheld terahertz scanners can fill a void in the $130 billion global airport security equipment market by allowing security personnel to easily identify and locate drugs or explosives hidden under clothes or in luggage without invasive methods or sniffer dogs which are potentially unreliable.

“TeraWand’s scanners can also find a secondary market in postal facilities for mail screening.”

Runner up was VocalIQ, headed up by Blaise Thompson, who is supported by Cambridge University’s celebrated ‘Dontrepreneur,’ Steve Young.

VocalIQ aims to become the leading provider of of voice interfaces for computer systems. By using novel statistical models of dialogue, VocalIQ can dramatically improve the performance of voice-based systems.

Founded in March 2010, the company has developed its technology along with a prototype system allowing small businesses to provide 24-hour phone bookings. The company’s algorithms explicitly model the uncertainty caused by speech recognition errors. Automated call centres, mobile applications and in-car navigation are three application areas.

Third placed was Sean Cheng’s venture, Heliomobil – a solar energy startup developing low-cost, out of the box heliostats for residential and small scale utility solar power markets.

Heliomobil is providing affordable and easy-to-use supplemental technologies for residential solar energy collection systems that reduce initial investment costs, increase energy savings and promote global solar energy adoption.

CambridgeElevator CEO, Richard Kirkby, presided over the presentation ceremony at Cambridge Consultants. He was joined by Cambridge Consultants CEO, Brian Moon; Chris Walklett from PEM Technology and Alan MacDougall of Mathys & Squire – plus representatives of 20 shortlisted companies.

Kirkby said: “CambridgeElevator only launched a little over six months ago but the buy-in from the startup community globally has been very encouraging. The same goes for entry to the inaugural KickStart; having three high profile technology players as sponsors clearly helped but KickStart from day one struck a chord with startups covering a diverse and exciting array of technologies.

“We sincerely hope that the entrepreneurs that were not successful on this occasion go on to prove us wrong because there are no losers when one sees such widespread and passionate commitment to innovation.”

The winners of the CUE Business Creation Competition 2012 are:
Technology start up of the year - Cam Battery
CamBattery develops a novel battery technology based on lithium and sulfur, the combination of these two elements can yield the highest energy density of any rechargeable batteries. Our technology is based on a continuous roll-to-roll process for carbon nanotube-sulfur composite production. CamBattery products will enable the advancement of consumer electronics and electrical vehicles, which are being hold back by the amount of energy stored in the batteries available in the market.

Life Science Start up of the year -Desktop Genetics
Desktop Genetics is building a robot capable of performing automated DNA synthesis. The SynthBot has been specifically designed to run the time consuming, repetitive reactions needed to synthesise DNA, thereby preventing costly mistakes and allowing users to focus on the experiments that really matter.
SynthBots communicate with each other and computers over a network, sending and receiving DNA data like a fax machine, so that collaborators will always have the latest version of your DNA. SynthBots allow users to translate their designs into physical reality the same day, enabling rapid proof-of-concept, more comprehensive drug searches, and more time making breakthroughs.

General Innovation Start up of the year - Cambridge Interactive Video Solutions
Cambridge Interactive Video Solutions aims to become the leading player in the global online advertising market by making clickable video technology available to general public.
Our goal is in 2 years to provide a disruptive monetisation solution for users of generic video sharing sites such as Youtube, Vimeo, Metacafe. Each user will be able to attach meta data in the form of textual information or hyperlink to an object of interest in any uploaded video.

Social Enterprise Start up of the year - Wedu
Local leadership is critical for local development. Wedu has developed a sustainable business model to provide education financing options and mentorship for underprivileged university students with high leadership potential in Least Developed Countries (LDCs), especially girls. We want to initiate a positive cycle of developing local leadership talent by identifying students committed to working on local issues, helping them to complete university and giving them access to a global network of mentors. We use social collateral to incentivise students to return to serve their communities, mentor future leaders and repay the financing into our revolving fund to serve more students.

Software Start up of the year and Angel Prize -Student Reading lists:
studentreadinglists.com makes compiling, validating and sharing course resources between educators, administrators and students a seamless and cost-effective process. The web tool delivers a fully integrated solution at a price that clearly outperforms alternative offerings.
By offering an integrated web solution for university staff, reading lists can be managed and students can access their course material in all media forms from a central location. Through the aggregation of students’ atomised demand for course media, studentreadinglists.com enables buyers and sellers the opportunity to benefit from group purchasing.

First step Forward prize -Drop Tech:
Drop-Tech provides an automated system for continuous screening of multiple samples for both absorbance and fluorescence assays. This system saves time, samples and reagents and provides quantitative data in assay volumes of around 50 nano-litres. The Drop-Tech system provides the miniaturisation of nano-litre liquid handling robots with the detection and analysis of multi-mode plate readers. This easy-to-use screening system will be used for validation and characterisation of hits, by providing the ability to screen multiple parameters in a combinatorial fashion.

First Step Forward Prize -Old Bond:
Old Bond is a start-up company introducing in the UK the world’s first spinning animated pictures and video on bicycle wheels, a breakthrough in outdoor advertising. Offering environmentally friendly advertising, we use a unique hi-tech system, Video Pro, to transfer advertising video-clips, images and logos from a computer onto the wheels. The new technology transforms a bike into a work of art and opens up unique opportunities for advertising. Our bikes with videos and images on the wheels have been a true sensation on the streets mesmerizing crowds and delivering advertising message.

Young entrepreneur of the year
Nils Frers
Steven Marsh

Angel Prize: Student Reading Lists

Congratulations everyone!

“Cambridge’s brightest student entrepreneurs are having their feet thrust to the flames in a Dragon’s Den-style pitch to international angel investors…Into the den venture 21 teams that have made the CUE £40k Entrepreneur Challenge. Those not turned to toast or too badly singed will also hope to pick up thousands of pounds in the CUE competition… the June 14 finale at the West Road Concert Hall concludes “possibly the most successful business creation competition we have ever held, with over £40,000 in cash and prizes will be handed out to the winners…”

Read more at Business Weekly

Here is the list of prizes we are giving out for the CUE £5K competition this year. We have many prizes to give out, worth over £40K, thanks to the generosity of our sponsors! Seize your chance to win!

• Up to five £5K winning teams across the four streams.
• One £7.5K prize for the best life science team
• Two £2.5K prize for the best entrepreneurs
• One Angel Prize
• One free place on Ignite program.

Special thanks to all our sponsors and collaborators: Horizon Discovery Ltd, Carpe Diem, EPSRC, RedGate Software, Cambridge Angels, Cambridge Science Park, Ensors, Cambridge IP, Center for Entrepreneurial Learning, Cambridge Enterprise.

Information about Ignite Program:

Ignite is an intensive, one-week training programme for aspiring entrepreneurs and corporate innovators to trial and prepare business ideas for the commercial environment. Comprised of a blend of practical teaching sessions, expert clinics, mentor sessions and experienced advice and support from leading entrepreneurs and innovators, it will give you the tools, contacts and confidence to transform your idea into a successful business project or venture. Ignite attracts a diverse range of projects which can be broadly categorised as being from the high-tech sector or life sciences sector. The next programme runs from 1^st to 6^th July 2012.

CfEL is offering one free place to a winner of the CUE £5k Business Creation Competition.  Ignite is designed for people with technology related business ideas.  The winning team should select one person to take up the free place and this person should complete our online application form www.cfel.jbs.cam.ac.uk/programmes/ignite/form_apply.html  Please contact Frances Bycroft, Programme Manager, via ignite@jbs.cam.ac.uk if you have any questions.

The winners of the Cambridge University Entrepreneur’s £1K challenge are (in no particular order):

Cambridge Biocompatibility

Cambridge Biocompatibility is developing new bio-compatible coatings for all forms of orthopedic and prosthetic surgery that will increase the lifetime by at least a factor of five and reduce recovery and aftercare costs by a factor of 10. Total product lifetime savings will be the major pricing driver for this new portfolio of biocompatible coatings. We are requesting £100,000 venture capital and expect a company valuation of £60million within 5 years.

CamPores

Ultracapacitors and pharmaceutical filters underlie very different industries, but are the most promising applications of our technology – a method to produce a novel nanoporous material. The manufacturing process is cheap, quick and easily scalable and the pore size can be reliably tuned from 5-100nm with a high degree of uniformity across the substrate. In polymeric form, the substrate has already attracted interest from leading filtration companies. As a porous metal-oxide, it will be a key component of hybrid ultracapacitors, a fast growing industry with applications in grid management and hybrid cars.  Other applications include fuel cells and enhanced Lithium-ion batteries.

RealiaWind

Reliability is vital in the growth of the wind industry, especially offshore, and to realise EU’s targets for 2020. ReliaWind has developed a novel and patent-pending condition-monitoring system for wind turbine drivetrains, enabling 40% reduced maintenance cost for offshore installations. The product, comprising a number of sensors and the analysis hardware/software, offers straightforward retrofit into new wind tur-bines as well as existing ones. This is a relatively new market and we expect to take a 5.5% market share by 2017, equivalent to installation onto 2500 turbines per year, generating revenues of £60 million.

Old Bond

We are a start-up offering the world’s first spinning animated ads on bicycle wheels; a real breakthrough in outdoor advertising. Being environmentally friendly, we will use an innovative system, Video Pro, to transfer video-clips, images and animated logos from a computer onto the bike wheels. With such new technology transforming a bike into a work of art, drivers can run an ad on any path or put it at some popular spot around the city. It would be hard to create better advertising for businesses, concerts, festivals or cultural events than eye-catching ads on running or stationary bikes.

Wedu

Local leadership is critical for local development. Wedu provides education financing options and mentorship for underprivileged university students with high leadership potential in the Least Developed Countries (LDCs), especially girls. We seek to initiate a positive cycle of building and developing local leadership talent by identifying students committed to working on local issues, helping them to complete university and giving them access to a global network of mentors. When students return to serve their communities, they become mentors to other future leaders while repaying the financing received into a revolving fund to serve more students.

Green Tutor

GreenTUTOR provides a platform for online training. We focus on the sustainable built environment. Market research indicates rapid growth of the £9bn global e-learning market of which our target segment –e-learning teaching– showed the highest growth. GreenTUTOR has access to over 350 researchers and professionals in the area of sustainable development through an established network (www.greenbridge.org.uk), which will be our starting point to enter this market. Thanks to easy access to Ivy League Tutors, we benefit from low barriers to entry. Our proposed tuition service, flexible, virtual, one-to-one and multilingual, enables global outreach and thus high-growth rates for this venture.

Cambridge Interactive Video Solutions

Video data is increasingly used for research, performance analysis and documenting personal events. More than 48 hours of video are uploaded on YouTube every minute. Cambridge Interactive Video Solutions uses interactive video segmentation technology developed at the CUED to provide tools for cutting out objects in videos with arbitrary backgrounds, and analysing their properties. Revolutionary machine learning algorithms progressively understand the need of the user from only a few mouse strokes. Cut-outs are used for scientic studies: animal behavioural studies, live cell image sequence analysis, performance analysis of sportsmen: pose, motion patterns, general public video editing applications: object removal, enhancement, annotation.

The runners-up of the Cambridge University Entrepreneur’s £1K challenge are (in no particular order):

Cambridge Stem cell Systems

Cambridge Stem Cell Systems will become the major supplier of custom-made human brain neural stem cells and functional neural tissues to academia, biotech and pharmaceutical industries. We will provide solutions to establish patient cell-based systems for brain disease modeling and drug screening by 1) generating a collection of patient-derived neural stem cell lines from common neurological disorders, such as Alzheimer and Parkinson’s diseases, and produce stem cell lines of rare diseases on demand; 2) producing optimized neural stem cell culture reagents and tools to suit the research; 3) providing consulting services to help design patient cell based drug discovery platforms.

Heliomobil

Heliomobil makes affordable solar-tracking heliostats that are designed with the goal of increasing the yield of residential and small-scale commercial solar energy collection systems. Heliomobil’s core product supplements marketed solar collection technologies, enabling them to significantly accelerate return-on-investment through increased sunlight availability.

TPS Limited

With the development of more advance tablet coatings, there is an urgent need for stricter control over tablet coating thickness and evenness which can only be achieved with better analytical equipment. Terahertz-based imaging devices have recently been developed for studying pharmaceutical tablet coatings. These devices enable continuous, on-line monitoring of tablet coating thickness during the coating process, and can be fitted to existing manufacturing equipment without modifications. These benefits make them superior to currently utilized methods. As such, these devices will be able to rapidly penetrate the US$2.2 billion pharmaceutical analytical equipment market.

Shuruat Mobility

Launched in 2011, Shuruat is working in the field of product, service and delivery model design and innovation to target large, under-served segments at the bottom of the pyramid. Our first initiative, Shuruat Mobility, is focused on the design, development and marketing of an ecosystem of innovative assistive mobility devices, specialised educational programmes and micro-financing services for the physically disabled across rural India, Africa and the Middle-East, with the objective of delivering income generation opportunities and financial independence to them in a sustainable and scalable manner.

Simple Tax Calculator

Running a small business is difficult, and keeping records of sales and expenses over multiple years is time consuming. Business owners want to spent as much time as possible on their business and as little as possible on record keeping.
The Simple Tax Calculator is a convenient, easy to use tax calculation system that allows sole traders to keep a running total of their tax liability throughout the year.
This solution will revolutionise the way small businesses manage their records, keeping all the required information in one place, and allowing you to plan your tax liability year round.

Collide

Winners of the Silicon Valley comes to the UK Cambridge Appathon, Collide creates new ways for friends to meet and interact by bringing Mobile, Local and Social together. Collide is a mobile application which tells you when your friends are close and suggests nearby places to hang out and grab a coffee, and as an added sweetener Collide also provides the user with money off vouchers for their favourite social spots.

Hopskip

HopSkip connects people when people want to be connected. HopSkip revolutionises how and when people are able to use their mobile phones. It does this by tunnelling connections through the latent mobile phone network on unused and available radio frequency bands. HopSkip utilises software embedded within the mobile phone to search, identify and connect to other roaming mobile phones until a connection with a network provider is achieved. As long as other mobile phones are in the vicinity and are HopSkip enabled, a connection through the latent mobile network to the real network will be established. This technology extends the coverage of existing networks substantially, allowing phone signals to be transmitted down into the London Underground, into concrete buildings and down alleyways. It also extends the boundaries of existing cell-sites considerably. Digital information literally hops and skips through other users mobile phones.

VocallQ
VocalIQ will become the leading provider of voice interfaces for computer systems. By using novel statistical models of dialogue, VocalIQ can dramatically improve the performance of voice-based systems. Possible applications include automated call centres, mobile applications and car-navigation systems.

Well done everybody! Look forward to receiving your entries in the £5K competition.

1. Sign up for our mailing list: https://lists.cam.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/soc-cue

2. Join the £100 competition to win £100 for 100-word summaries of your ideas. Deadline 23:59, Tues 25th Oct. https://www.cue.org.uk/100-for-100-word-submission/

3. Come to the pitching training event on Wednesday 26th Oct. http://cuepitchmeuktraining.eventbrite.com/

4. Join our Enterprise Tuesday discussion group on Tuesday 8th Nov to meet and talk to our committee members. http://cuediscussiongroup2011.eventbrite.com/

5. Like our facebook page (http://goo.gl/4KQeO), follow our Twitter (http://twitter.com/#!/cu_e), or join our LinkedIn group (http://goo.gl/TlF6Z) to be informed of our upcoming events and updates of the competition.

6. Enter the £1K competition and the £5K competition to win cash prizes and attract more Angel investments. http://www.cue.org.uk