In early October 2015 we organised the final day of Aegean Startups entrepreneurship competition. It was the culmination of more than 8 months of selecting and mentoring teams of students and young to-be entrepreneurs.
More than 60 ideas were submitted in the first round, in the 4 categories of the competition: tourism and culture, agriculture and traditional food products, transportation and commerce, ICT and governance. Approximately half of them made it in the second round, having then to submit more elaborate business plans with the help of external mentors. Each proposal was evaluated by 3 business mentors and 10 of them were given prizes and awards at the finals.
The day was combined with visits and workshops to OrangeGrove, Google Greece and Intrasoft International on the day before, giving the opportunity to team members to present and discuss their ideas with other startup-ers and business angels.
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| At the Orange Grove, with teams of students |
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| At Google Greece premises in Athens |
The final "ceremony" was attended by more than 100 people from business and academia, acting as a lively audience to student teams. Awards ranged from money prizes, computers and tablets, to positions in late-stage incubators like Microsoft Innovation Centre, Orange Grove, TheAthensIncubator, etc.
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| The winner teams with their awards |
A nice top-up for the finals organisation was the appearance in Greek Public Television morning zone in the day after, discussing live with students on their ideas and their plans for the future.
Aegean Startups in ERT television
A nice wrap-up video of the whole experience of the two days can be seen below (video recording and editing by Orestis Zacharogiannis)
