entrepreneurship@UBC Seed Accelerator Competition
On October 20th the UBC entrepreneurial community gathered to watch 5 UBC companies pitch to a panel of judges. Each team was given 10 minutes to present their business in hopes of getting an investment of up to $100,000. The companies were then faced with an intense Q&A session for an additional 10 minutes.
As the entrepreneurship@UBC website states, they have support from many faculties and groups on campus: “entrepreneurship@UBC is a campus wide initiative led by the Sauder School of Business, the Faculty of Applied Science, the Faculty of Science and the University Industry Liaison Office. It is supported by the Faculty of Arts and all the student entrepreneurship clubs on campus.”
My favourite part of the evening was hearing the Dean of Applied Science, Tyseer Aboulnasr speak. She perfectly captured why entrepreneurship@UBC is such a great program by discussing the importance of getting out there and trying something. One of my favourite quotes from her was “You’re never going to succeed if you don’t learn to fail.”
Greg Peet, the Chair of the Seed Accelerator Advisory Board, stated that the program aims to help more students create businesses that can grow and succeed. They want to invest and help the next generation of entrepreneurs. Before the pitches started, Greg stated, “Mark this day, you were here when it all began.”
You can read more about the companies that pitched here. The winning company was Aeos Biomedical for their product Target Tape. The tape serves 2 purposes, first it can be used during medical imaging to make grid or ruler markings on the scans. Second, the tape leaves the same markings on the skin in ink to help surgeons with precision during surgery. According to their pitch, 50% of all spinal surgeons have operated on the wrong vertebrae. That sounds pretty extreme! However, if the guys behind Target Tape can get their product to be used on a daily basis they are in for a nice return, and perhaps generate enough profits to donate back to entrepreneurship@UBC.
Overall it was great to see the pitches and see the entrepreneurial community come together for such a monumental event.
