UTS Venture Day 2019

Jochen:            Welcome everyone back and sorry. Microphone. Yup. Welcome back and a welcome again to Venture Day, 2019, so a big round of applause for everyone who presented already. So for those of you who are just joining us now, just hands up if you're just joining now, so I can see, yeah. Couple of new people in the room. Awesome. Thank you for coming today. So we already went through 16 pitches since one o'clock. So we are halfway through and we already listened to 16 pitches and just now the judging panel decided on the final 10. So we're now going into the final 10. And let me just quickly announce the final 10. We Have Ian Ritchie, PTC teams, Kristen Leboldus with Monda Pins, Mark Reddick, Public Funding. Keep clapping? Nicolas Palechi with Slash, Maneesh Kuma, Ice Cream Me Huis, Peter Graham with Subchat. Keep clapping. Thomas Boneham with BayVeeba. Tomas Camilo Torres with Play Now, Brianna Young with Rock 'n' Splosh and finally Jared Steldoff with Loca.

Jochen:            So those will be our finalists. And we present just in the same order like we did in the first round. Let me just come back here and introduce you to officially open our event. Professor Glenn Whightwick, our Deputy Vice Chancellor Innovation And Entrepreneurship And Enterprise, sorry, to address you and to open the event officially. Thanks Glenn.

Glen:               Thank you Jochen and welcome. Welcome everybody to UTS and to Venture Day. To begin the proceedings. And on behalf of all those present, I'd like to acknowledge and pay my respect to the Cadigal people of the Eora Nation upon whose ancestral lands, UTS now stands. I'd also like to pay respect to elders both past and present, acknowledging them as traditional custodians of knowledge for this place. I'd like to start by thanking a number of people who are providing great support to this Venture Day. Peter Kassakov's, family and foundation, the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, Acool Technologies, Raymond Choi, Gilbert and Tobin's intellectual property group, BDO Australia, Paul Foley and the UTS business school for their generosity- Oh, hello again. How are you? Sorry. It's an old colleague and friend from Monash University in the audience- For their generosity in providing awards and prizes for the event.

Glen:               Our MBA in Entrepreneurship is our flagship Entrepreneurship Programme here at UTS. It's unique within the Australian higher education landscape. With this programme, we really do help students get the best possible start on their innovation journey from concept to commercialization. Today we'll hear from current students but also from MBAE alumni and previous Venture Day winners about how this programme has helped with their entrepreneurial activities. So today's Venture Day we're going to hear from the final ten. This marks for all of the students on the MBAE programme the end of their studies here at UTS and they'll end up obviously graduating. We're very keen to see them no matter what outcome comes from today, to go off into the world and do amazing things. Throughout the last year or two, students have undertaken a rigorous and intensive curriculum studying all aspects of business innovation and entrepreneurship.

Glen:               As part of the programme, students have had access to many supporters, including an entrepreneur in residenc, mentors, and teaching staff, but also the Venture Lab, which is a space created specifically for the MBAE students to work on their businesses. There are many, also many other resources and extra curricular programmes like the UTS startup programme that we offer at UTS. But I'd also like to pay homage to the enormous amount of support that I know all of the students have had from their family and friends. And I know that a number of you are in the audience today and we very much thank you for your support of our students through this journey. We are very proud to be part of a broad entrepreneurial community here at UTS and we really see our role as a university in contributing to that whole innovation ecosystem and ultimately supporting students in developing their necessary knowledge and skills to create new enterprises.

Glen:               Finally, I'd like to thank the business school's director of entrepreneurship. Associate professor Jochen Schweitzer who you've just met. All of our teaching staff, our judges today for coming and providing your capability and support, appreciate that. The entrepreneur in residence, mentors, administrators, and of course our MBAE students for all their hard work in making the programme a success. Very much look forward to seeing the outcome of today's winners and finalists and welcoming the next cohort into the MBAE programme over the next couple of weeks. So thank you very much for your time and I'll look forward to an exciting rest of the afternoon.

Jochen:            Thank you so much Glen. A little bit of housekeeping. So if you are using social media with hashtag UTS Venture Day, so please tweet away. Also if you are looking for bathrooms, you just go to this door over there and right in front of that oval classroom you will find bathrooms. Fire procedure, in case of fire, we all go through the fire exits, which is the ones in the back of one here in the front and we convene around the goods line towards the ABC building and don't forget by the end of this, we have a networking function down in Cafe 80. So you're all invited to stay around, have a chat, meet some of our founders, and have a drink.

Jochen:            Now to introduce our fantastic judging panel for our event today. So let me introduce you in order of appearance. I'll start on the left hand side here with David Langford, who is a managing director of Long Leg Research, applause for David for coming here today. Please. Welcome David.

Jochen:            We're welcoming Peter Casacos, the managing director for Casacos Industries. Also a donor off one of the main awards tonight. Peter.

Jochen:            We have Walter Casa here, Executive Director of Stratton. Ali Linn's also a revisit, he's been here many times now. So Ali, thanks for coming again. Ian Davis, the Angel Investor Director of Ippona Stream. Ben Dunnen representing Commonwealth Bank for another main award to be awarded tonight, head off human centred innovation at CBA.

Jochen:            Paul MacTarget managing director of Blackpeak Capital and non-executive director of Mia Resources. Neil Boyd Clark here to his right from my side, managing partner at Anaheim investment management. Dian Weir first time on the panel. Welcome. The chairman of M Media. Last but not least, John Lee has been with us in our first year. Now for the second time. John Lee, partner at Gilbert and Tobin, also a donor of an award. So one more time. Thank you for, giving up your time for this. And I think we are just about to hear the first pitch. Ian are you ready to go?

Ian:                I am.

Jochen:            You are? Okay. Well we have 10 pitches for you and welcome Ian Ritchie.

Ian:                Good afternoon everyone. My Name's Ian Ritchie. I'm from a company called Process to Customer consulting group. We make organisations work beautifully. Our business journey started 12 years ago. We completed a team performance programme with one of Australia's big four banks and that delivered for their business bank, $140 million uplift in profit. CFO magazine awarded them Business Bank of the year, shortly thereafter. That was our first client assignment. It's what we do, breakthrough team performance and breakthrough process optimization. The work that we do impacts the way people feel about their work day and the value that they derive and their organisations derive from it. Our clients love the rapid results and some of them are here in the room today. Over that 12 year track record the average uplift in a business capacity that we've released through our work with these clients is 35%. Clients approach us to solve problems relating to capacity, speed, quality and compliance, profit and often team culture.

Ian:                If we discern the difference that we see in the market between our competitors and what we do, these are some of the qualities that we see. We see a lot of train and hope in the market, a lot of money spent on training without measurement. We focus in on a curriculum and then measure the results so that over the years we've refined and refined to just those interventions that create the most business value. I've mentioned high cost; we deliver a low cost and what I'm talking with you about today, will take that cost even lower. And finally, once training ends, people forget. Whereas we focus on establishing and habituating the team performance habits, we would like to take this proven on site consulting model now to deliver scale. And in order to do that, we need to take our training online, our coaching online and mentoring and our measurement of value creation, which is key to this whole system, our desk software online.

Ian:                Our clients are asking for greater access to our services, no matter where their teams are located, in Australia and offshore. The technology is now performing at the standard required to deliver a great customer experience. And yes, we are seeking our share of the online training market in Australia, which Ibisworld place at $5 billion. If you have a look at the screen here, this is not a click and hope PowerPoint delivered online. This is a properly curated and designed adult education learning experience delivered online. That's what we want to do. So we want to take our classroom experience and have that provided online. Once our continuous improvement champions conclude their training and we will monitor them and intervene as needed, they go into a 12 week human coaching online service. Same coach for the full 12 weeks building trust, engagement and habituating those successful practises. Finally, we want to create a beautiful dashboard experience for our continuous improvement champions, to ensure that that virtuous circle of activity, measurement of results and motivation is maintained and reinforced.

Ian:                This business scales relatively quickly. We are profitable in year one by year two with just under 500 sales. We're at $2 million revenue and on conservative growth figures. We're at $22 million revenue in year five.

Ian:                So far, something over 200 continuous improvement champions have graduated from our programmes. This is what they're delivering to their client organisations as measured by those organisations today. We would like to make this 20,000 continuous improvement champion graduates and really impact corporate Australia, not to mention the workplace for those 20,000 people. This is team P2C, George, my co-founder is here. We have Tim, our process automation lead. Gracie, our business coach. James, our data analyst and six sigma black belt and Mercier looking after customer onboarding and accounts. These are on salary staff right no. We're a cash flow positive business, however, in order to achieve the scale that I've just talked about and the speed, there are some investment opportunities. So we would like to be able to more rapidly invest in a multichannel sales campaign. This is a business to business sales campaign to develop our desk software and to provide production support to put our training online, unleash next level team performance. Thank you.

Speaker 1:          Can I ask you a question relating to getting staff, even though you're going online, you still need more talent.

Ian:                Yes.

Speaker 1:          And your group, what's your strategy to be able to attract stuff?

Ian:                Okay, so Peter, we we are adept at bringing people into the business and with the right skills and then adjusting their delivery so we're not necessarily looking for highly technical people, but it would be process people perhaps greenbelt, qualified and then we will bring them into the team performance. There's a ratio of 22 or so CI champions, concurrent per coach. So the $22 million revenue is based on just over a hundred coaches.

Speaker 2:          Ian just following up on your proposition, you mentioned that you're low cost.

Ian:                Yes.

Speaker 2:          What is it allows you to be low cost provider of a superior solution?

Ian:                So currently for our on site services, in order to deliver a programme like this, because of the cost of being onsite, we're talking something in the order of 200,000 to bring 11 to 18 CI champions through that programme. We're selling this, we're proposing to sell this for $4,000 per CI champion for the three and a half month programme. So that's quite disruptive costing. And we could take one champion from an organisation no matter where they are as opposed to a whole group.

Speaker 3:          A question on scaling. So to get to 22 million by year five, my guess is you need to get the word out beyond your current clients. How do you plan to do that?

Ian:                Okay, so we clearly, this needs to be a multi channel business to business, sales campaign and hence that's the top line on our ask. So we are experimenting right now with an AB test in a comparing Facebook with linkedin. So we're doing some outreach. Our next experiment will be to approach the HR community and provide some breakfast sessions and try to create some viral word of mouth, but we really need some marketing and sales campaign design support to then build that out. But George and I are both well, I hope, well able to speak at breakfast sessions and to engage on business to business.

Speaker 6:          Ian, good, presentation. My question. So that transition online is going to introduce a whole new players in terms of in terms of competition, what's gonna make you different to the existing players online?

Ian:                So the what makes us different now we believe is what will make us different then. And it comes down to the ability to measure and know what interventions create the value amongst our clients and to be very intuitive about that. So it's the curation of the content and are our follow up. We have piloted the online version with a couple of clients and the results are positive. Yeah.

Speaker 6:          Thank you.

Ian:                But happy to discuss further.

Mark:               Good afternoon everyone. My name is Mark and I represent Public Funding. A social venture fighting for funding transparency today. I'll be presenting through our first product. Frustrated, confused, and anxious. These are the feelings that we feel when we wait, when we wait for a response or an answer associated with something that could change our personal lives or our business for better or for worse. In cases when we wait for funding opportunities, when we wait for a grant acceptance.

Mark:               The grant space in Australia is composed of more than $50 billion of our money allocated on our behalf, spread across 4,000 grants. You as a business owner must first identify which grant you'd like to apply for, review the eligibility criteria and then put pen to paper or hire someone else to do so or whilst trusting yourself that you are able to wait.

Mark:               Be able to wait for the extensive application filtering. Be able to wait for workflow inefficiencies within the government and you're able to wait due to an overall lack of transparency in the amount of grants being allocated. Sometimes for 30 to 60 days waiting for a rejection notice. That's ridiculous.

Mark:               So how might we at Public Funding increase your application quality, increase your workflow efficiency, and also increase the feedback transparency associated with an application. I would like to introduce you to Precilla. Precilla is like your grant personal assistant. She reduces the time between application and result through smart evaluation, tailored funding opportunities and assisting applications. She works simply, she loves to read and reads our database nearly every single second and from that understands the eligibility criteria associated with the grants. Then we ask her three simple things. Firstly, produce screening questions. Secondly, secondly, classify the grant relative to your business needs and thirdly, help us producing application templates all unassisted delivered to you via a ChatBot experience.

Mark:               Let's say you come to the public funding site. You're interested in this grant, minimum viable product grant. Simply Click on review with Precilla. Precilla will pop up and say, 'Hey, Mark, answer these question.' From those questions we will be able to determine whether or not you should or should not apply. If you should apply, we will help you through the application process. If you shouldn't, we'll either refer you to a different grant that's more relevant to your business criteria or will tell you straight out, that you shouldn't apply for grants.

Mark:               There are many competitors within this space. However, they're just aggregates. They serve no innovative purpose. They're just databases and we have a database of over 4,000 grants ourselves. So we are competitive at this. For premium database functionality across these features, we offer that at $5 per month. Okay. In terms of innovation, we provide Precilla something that none of our competitors have and none of our competitors can really make.

Mark:               So we charge that at $100 per application or per grant. Currently in it's Alpha stages. Precilla has had 30 individuals go through. And these 30 individuals wanted to put pen on paper and submit an application, willing to waste their time and effort in waiting for an approval or rejection. From that, we found that 25 should apply for this grant. However, we also found that five shouldn't, five weren't really eligible. From that we can infer that we saved them approximately one month each of waiting time. One month of executables, one month of deliverables. We saved them a month, and that's truly valuable to these businesses.

Mark:               In terms of financials with a hundred percent grant serviceability across the 4,000 grants, we can estimate a revenue stream of approximately $13 million, split across $5 per month, a premium database subscription rate, and a $100 per use for Precilla. Now what's I'll go to market, our go to market is startups. The startup and establishing business grants amounting to a total of $36 billion.

Mark:               These 400 grants, we'll try to market to them via startup communities, coworking spaces, leveraging on social media as well as SEO.

Mark:               We'll also be offering an affiliate programme, 5% commission on a 60 day cookie. And, and we've been quite busy. Over the past three months we've won the Gov Hack New South Wales based on a predecessor of Precilla, so the government likes it. Also we've produced a Alpha programme with 30 individuals going through it. By December, we aim to have 100% startup in establishing grant serviceability by Precilla and by 2021 100% grant serviceability. Our team is composed of individuals with more than 16 years of AI in IT experience and 30 years of marketing and business experience. The founding curator of TedX, Wun Chai, a business owner with more than 30 years' experience and the head of AI and data science at Australia's fastest growing AI startup. We believe that we have the passion for innovation and funding and scalable technologies to truly execute on Precilla.

Mark:               Now, I'm here today asking for $300,000 for a Beta programme of the scalable version of Precilla for developers as well as marketing. Meet people within the public procurement, grant and tender space because in combination with assistance from people within the natural language processing field, we believe that Precilla can scale within these three verticals. However, Precilla only addresses the grant space. We have public funding out there for transparency. We're a social venture. We're also going to be addressing public procurement as well as access to information. We're here to provide transparency and insight into all public fund allocation, a 3 trillion dollar per year loss due to corruption and a lack of transparency globally. If you're interested in us, Public Funding, please go to public funding dot co and signup to our email list. Thank you very much for listening.

Speaker 3:          Thanks very much. Great presentation. I think the grant criteria for a lot of these grants will change over time, some of them quite quickly and regularly. What's the time and cost commitment for you to keep updating Precilla?

Mark:               See with that unfortunately, I cannot give you a direct response to that question because Precilla is currently in its proof of concept Alpha stages. However, I'm assuming with the technologies behind Precilla that setting a periodic update period would be, would counteract the updating in the grant criteria that you're mentioning. Does that address your question? Sorry. Oh, sorry.

Speaker 2:          Thanks for the presentation Mark. Just, you've anchored quite heavily there around the core customer problem you're trying to solve is around time. I was just wondering what feedback and research you've got to back up that that's actually the core pain point people are experiencing.

Mark:               Okay. So I've done over 60 interviews with people that have applied for grants and the biggest pain point is them wondering whether or not they understood the grant eligibility. I could say that yes, my sample size, were with people within the startup and establishing business space. So them doing it on their own is the issue. And they don't have a professional behind them. However like they felt that the understanding of the eligibility criteria gave them some anxiety associated with it. Plus receiving a rejection notice based on the sole fact that you have a buy now button on your website indicating that you have revenue is absurd. And these things aren't stipulated within the government documentation saying that, you've no buy now buttons on your website or else you're inferring that you have revenue, things like that. So I'm going to say statistical significance, no, but from our 60 interviews, yes.

Speaker 5:          In terms of the pricing that you've got for the service of $100 each time you use, Precilla, why did you choose a flat fee, rather than a percentage of funds which might be available or a combination of both. And then secondly, you described yourself as a socially focused organisation, but what do you think about the the return on capital that's going to need to be provided.

Speaker 7:          What do you think about the return on capital that's going to need to be provided by the business?

Mark:               Um, so, to address your first point...Sorry can you repeat that first question?

Speaker 7:          So, it was really the revenue model. Why is it a flat fee?

Mark:               Okay. So we are a social venture and we're not really interested in becoming super profitable. Yes, we could charge per application or commission basis, which is what the industry currently does. However, we're a social venture, we love Australia, and we think everyone here needs some government money bc there's so much out there, however, sometimes it's not accessible. And in terms of your second question, unfortunately I have forgotten that as well.

Speaker 7:          It's to late now anyway so let's move on.

Nicolas Pulecio:    Hi everyone, my name is Nicolas and I am the founder of Slash, a community waste reduction network, a social venture. Today, I want to talk with you about household waste generation and the way we could face this challenge with smart smart bins and the internet of things. But first, let me share with you some insights. Every year, the waste we generate is growing at twice the rate of our population. This is unsustainable. The average Australian family throws out over three and a half thousand dollars of food every year, and this could be doubled in a family of five.

Nicolas Pulecio:    So this is what I heard when talking to people about this issue. Families are just not aware of how much waste they generate, therefore, there is not real motivation for improvement. People want to do the right thing but often don't know where to start on how to reduce waste. The current system doesn't provide incentives to change behaviours. In a nutshell, the problem is that the current system rewards waste collection rather than waste reduction. So how much waste could we actually reduce? Well, you might be surprised to know that 24% of the average red bin content is garbage only that should go to the landfill. 22% are recyclables that should go into the yellow bin or the red cycle programme. 24% are organics, and 30% is food waste that could be reduced for compost. So this is the 76% we want to help people reduce.

Nicolas Pulecio:    And this is exactly what the residents from Karimba South were able to achieve in the social experiment from the ABC serious war on waste. Residents found they could reduce the amount of waste in their red bins by up to two thirds. So then I though, how could we provide this experience to every Australian? And this is how Slash was born. Slash enables councils to have waste via an IOG network that engages, influence, and rewards residents for reducing waste.

Nicolas Pulecio:    So this is how it works. We fit red bins with IOT volume sensors linked to resident profiles. We run a real time monitoring network for waste generation data. We provide waste reporting and reduction advice to residents and councils. But most importantly, we deliver variable incentives for residents based on new waste outcomes. These incentives could be, council radius counts, service credits, or pay as you go fees. In summary, we measure, analyse, advise, and incentivize residents for reducing waste. It's a win win solution that removes friction and aligns councils and residents towards the same goal. Residents save money through the variable waste incentive and by reducing their food bills, while councils reduce landfill waste disposal costs while receiving a great waste educational tool they can share with the community. They both receive real time waste monitoring and advice through the app and web platform. Currently, there are no companies using IOT censors in household bins providing real time information to residents and that's the space we want to own.

Nicolas Pulecio:    Research shows that families with children are the ones that generate more waste, and therefore, need more support. Our target market is 332,000 families with children, living in houses across 58 metropolitan councils in New South Wales. These numbers will double if we talk about the rest of the country.

Nicolas Pulecio:    Our business model is simple. An Opt-in model offered from councils to residents who want to reduce waste and value our benefits. The starter kit is fifty dollars per house for the council, while the subscription fee is ten dollars per month for the residents. Both fees will be offset by the benefits I described before.

Nicolas Pulecio:    Six thousand tonnes less waste, 33,000 houses, and 3.7 million revenue by year three is the way me measure success and impact. Our goal is to achieve a ten percent market penetration in New South Wales in three years and these numbers will scale quickly when we move into other states and then into other countries. So far, 20 plus interviews with sustainability experts, council waste managers, and IOT sensor advisors have provided encouraging feedback to move this project forward.

Nicolas Pulecio:    Our journey began in December 2018 and our next key milestone is to develop a prototype that we can validate via a [inaudible] by May. We want to launch Slash in September and to have three councils and 100 houses signed by December. Our team: I bring 15 years experience in marketing and a passion for using entrepreneurship to solve environmental and social issues. We have a great mentor that has facilitated contacts with IOT experts working with councils, and we are looking for a technical co-founder with expertise in IOT networks and web development.

Nicolas Pulecio:    Our big ask today: We are seeking funding to work on a prototype and pilot programme to test with families. 100 thousand dollars to make this happen. So please, join our mission. Slash waste at home, because more waste our families will make a better choice for a brighter future. Thank you.

Speaker 8:          I'd like to ask about your pricing model. I'd describe it as a carrot and stick model. I pay first and then, if I do well, I might earn my money back and a bit more. Do you have any evidence that councils and families are willing to do that?

Nicolas Pulecio:    From the conversations that I had with councils and some of the families, they think it's an interesting concept that needs to be tested first so that they can see that those benefits actually will be achievable, and therefore will provide those financial incentives.

Speaker 9:          Nicolas I love the initiative, um, my question is that, to have an impact, you would either need to change the lifestyle of how a family would live, or, essentially dump your rubbage elsewhere, outside your bin. What do you think is likely to happen?

Nicolas Pulecio:    Well, because this is a volunteer programme it's offered just to families that want to opt-in to this programme, we're expecting that that type of behaviour would be minimised because we want to work with families that are actually aligned with the mission that we want to achieve. I think if the councils will try to implement this to all the community, then we could have more chances that these behaviours could occur.

Grey coat near:     Just a simple question. Will the measurement system be robust enough to withstand the morning, daily dumping of rubbish, you know. Half the bins on my street are broken, so.

Nicolas Pulecio:    Yes, the sensors that I have seen, I think I have ane example, are very robust and are designed specifically for this purpose. So, we will need to test it but, the ones that I have seen will be able to meet those challenges. Well, thank you very much.

Manish Kumar:       Good afternoon ladies and gentleman. I am Manish Kumar. I am the founder of Mihoos Sorbets and Ice Creams. We create delicious, natural, dairy-free frozen deserts for everyone as our guests are tasting right now. So what's unique about us? We are dairy-free frozen deserts. We are 100% natural. Unique and exclusive range of flavours. And I was a food scientist and a professional pastry chef for fifteen years, so these are the products of plenty of experience and food scientific knowledge. And they taste good so as hinted they are different from the first round so you have different choices.

Manish Kumar:       So what we are solving through market research and industry reports and my personal experience in this field, we identified that there are options available but they are very few in this category in terms of variety and the product. And this market is huge. Let me share our wonderful journey so far since we launched our product in September 2018.

Manish Kumar:       After a rigorous development of eight to nine months, I developed 24 flavours and we first launched our product in September 2018 and followed by various markets and in January 2019, we had opened our first pop-up lease shop in South Village Kirrawee shopping mall and since then we have sold 5,600 scoops of ice cream, a worth valued of 24,500 dollars and still selling today as well. We got lots of customer feedback coming back in that we track with our point of sale system.

Manish Kumar:       So this is what we have achieved; these are some of the flavours we already launched. There are 24 as I mentioned earlier. And there we have already successfully validated these. As you see these are not normal classic flavours, there are some exclusive flavours as well, for example, Lichi and rose liquor. They are actually a symphony of flavours I should say.

Manish Kumar:       You can ask the judges. Don't trust me, just see what our customers have been claiming about. So (?) from Sydney south she has written "beautiful flavours, excellent customer service and gorgeous range. Come see this amazing business, please visit us." This market is huge in Australia. It is worth $445 Million AUD and the key driver for this market is health consciousness, dietary requirements, and convenience. People are becoming more health conscious and lactose intolerance is high in Australia. Out of three, two people are lactose intolerant, this number is very huge. Veganism is on the rise. We are the third largest country for the vegan trend, followed by the US and Germany. If you see global, that it is no different, it is a huge market.

Manish Kumar:       So what makes us different? There are options. If you see in this diagram that our direct competitors, Over the Moo and Coco Frio, they are our direct competitors and they have some choices like 5 and 9 flavours. But all of those flavours are based on coconut. If you love coconut that's fine, if you don't love coconut, that's really a problem. Our products are not only coconut based, our products are made with a variety of ingredients. For example, we use cashew nut as well, we use chia seed, we use hemp seed, coconut, and various rich fruits so we are not limited to one particular ingredient.

Manish Kumar:       We have a qualified team as I was a food scientist and professional pastry chef in 10 years in [inaudible 00:47:29], including Australia, so seven and a half years. And I have been in this journey, I've developed various products in various markets for top companies as well. And my I.T. solution consultant, he's developing our in-house e-commerce systems, he's a high business platform developer and he's assisting us to launch our e-commerce platform or our own technology products.

Manish Kumar:       What we want to do in terms of a roadmap. In the coming six months, we want to launch our take home tubs, followed by our sugar free then, because we want to sync our offerings with health trends. And then followed by that we are going to produce nutrition fortified products in this range like calcium and other can recognise and other nutrient enrichment. How do we do that? We will launch our e-commerce platform followed by key location outlets. We have already identified a few areas in Sydney, Sydney south we have already launched. So that is our go to market strategy for key location outlets and then we'll release our franchise and convenience store collaboration model.

Manish Kumar:       What do we need from you guys? Our plan is very simple, we want to scale up and we need to find 250 thousand dollars just to start a small scale production house and also two pop up shops. And also network, anyone working for a scale up, if you have any expertise in FMCG product, please help us to move forward. And I leave you with this, our success story, which our judges are having. They are the right person to tell you how beautiful my products are. Thank you so much

Glasses near:       Question relating to the price point of your product compared to your competitors. Can you elaborate on how you compare on price?

Manish Kumar:       Okay. At this point in time they have the advantage, those two competitors have the advantage of scale up because they are already in the super markets. In terms of price point, at that price point what they are getting, we have a better quality product because we launched our product in Sydney in a vegan market. Over the moo also comes and sells our product and we proudly say that our product is much more sold out than theirs because of the choices which we are offering. In Sydney Vegan market, if anyone from here visited there, they are the ones the people are speaking about our production offering, so it's head-to-head, we want that. And in therms of when we have a scale up, we will definitely match them. Yes the competitor.

Glasses near:       Manish, thanks for your presentation. You have a perishable product and yet you're talking about an e-commerce distribution platform. How are you going to solve the distribution piece, getting your product to market in satisfactory quality?

Manish Kumar:       So there are two strategies we have learned about. One is our outlets will be there. The second is we are going to collaborate with convenience stores and other businesses. We'll have in the freezers over there. So as a consumer you have two choices, you can just log in, you want to buy a purchase and have it delivered to your place or you can just go and pick it up. So we will have spots in every suburb for a quick delivery and we also supply with frozen trucks kind of stuff. So we have a different line of vendors. You can buy directly or be supplied that way.

Manish Kumar:       Thank you so much

Peter Graham:       Okay. Sorry about that. Good evening. My name is Peter and I'd like you to think of someone that you don't know, but someone that you'd really love to have a conversation with, anyone in the world. How would you go about contacting them and what are the chances that you actually get a reply. Perhaps you could offer to buy them a coffee as a way to incentivize a reply, but really we don't have a reliable framework for ensuring that unsolicited conversations are mutually beneficial. So what's needed to fix this problem?

Peter Graham:       We need a flexible marketplace for conversation. We need a marketplace that doesn't feel like a marketplace. We need a marketplace that feels just like messaging your best friend. Welcome to Subchat. Subchat is a scalable marketplace for one on one conversation hidden beneath an intuitive, dual platform messaging app, designed by the original product designer of Airtaska. Using subchat is simple. Suppose I'm a travel blogger and you're looking for inspiration for your next big adventure. On subchat, you could send me a message with a small payment attached asking where you should go. Let's say the minimum payment I'll accept is just three dollars. I've then got 24 hours to reply to your message with 24 characters or more. If I do, I get just about the whole three dollars, but here's the great part, if I don't, you don't pay.

Peter Graham:       The logic is really that simple and it's this logic that distinguishes this platform from every other messaging platform on the market today. So who's the target market for Subchat? We're targeting content creators or YouTube, Instagram, Twitch, and Tic-Tok. Now lets take YouTube as an example. Currently there's 25 million content creators on YouTube. In real time, how about we have a look at the affect those creators produce.

Peter Graham:       What you're seeing is almost 3 days of video uploaded and almost 3 years of video watched, every single ten seconds. With this astronomical proliferation of data, it's no surprise that becoming a YouTuber has skyrocketed to the top of our young people's career aspirations. However, the data also reveals that sustaining a career on YouTube is less feasible than ever with the top 50,000 youtube channels earning just an average of $12,000 a year. As a result, content creators are moving towards what's known as a paid content creator market worth an estimated 1.32 billion dollars. In particular, they're using competitor services for subchat like twitch and Patreon, who combined processed over 300 million dollars of donations to creators last year alone.

Peter Graham:       However, both Twitch and Patreon operate on a one to many model where interaction with content creators isn't exclusive. And secondly, neither Twitch nor Patreon offer any sort of guarantee to their users around the type of interaction they can expect with a creator in return for their money. This is where subchat is different. For followers, Subchat guarantees one on one interaction with a creator within a predefined amount of time before they pay. And to creators, Subchat is the most efficient way to leverage additional value from their existing user base, earning a minimum of eight cents per character they type into their phone.

Peter Graham:       Our operation model is simple. We're a service provider and we take a service fee of between 14 and 24 percent per transaction and our transactions range in value from $2.40 to $100. On the team there's myself and my co-founder John Berryl, we also have three developers building and we've recently taken on a marketing intern.

Peter Graham:       We have a few key accomplishments to date. Principally we're really glad that we've been able to launch Subchat about a month ago on Ios and Android so you can download it if you like. We've also made great inroads with the Australian content creator community at vidicon 2018. And finally, we graduated from the fantastic UTS style up spring programme. With this traction and our current growth, we expect to catch 15% of the Australian market and 3% of the American and European markets within three years. That's a user base of about 100,000 people, generating about 9.5 million dollars in revenue annually.

Peter Graham:       To achieve this, we have a simple three phase plan. First we're looking to establish our brand with creators who use platforms that are already part of the paid creator market. Next we're looking to engage with creators on more generic social media platforms like YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook. And finally we want to broaden the scope of Subchat to appeal to a broader audience of creators from Linkedin, people like business coaches, fitness coaches, honestly anyone with influence who someone might want to talk to.

Peter Graham:       However, we do have some needs. So primarily we're looking for a senior mentor with experience in the influencer industry to help refine our business model and also to help guide decision making over our growth. We're also looking to take on a full time social media marketer to develop a more robust marketing plan for us and also execute it. And finally, I'm so proud of how we've been able to bootstrap Subchat to where it is, but, we do need to take on funding at some point and so in about six months time we're going to be looking to take on between 800 and 900 thousand dollars of seed funding to sustain our development team and our marketing through till mid 2020. Thanks very much for listening, I'd love to take your questions.

Speaker 10:         Hi, fantastic presentation, thanks for that. Do you think your guarantee of one to one is going to limit your appeal to creators. I mean there's only so many characters they can type in a day.

Peter Graham:       Sure, certainly, I agree. We've tried to make the market as flexible and scalable as possible. So creators can set the minimum amount they'll accept. If they don't want to type to a thousand people, they can set their minimum amount higher, for instance $100. Then they're earning 100 bucks for 24 characters. To give a little scenario for instance, suppose someone puts a YouTube video up with 10,000 views, in ad cents revenue they'd traditionally make 10 and 50 dollars from that. If just .1 percent of the people that see that video, love the person enough to talk to them with say a three dollar message, they just made thirty dollars off the back of say, 15 minutes work from that video. So the aim is to augment their existing revenue streams and for them to just leverage extra revenue from their ultra-dedicated supporters.

Glasses near:       Peter, you mentioned that you've gone live already. What sort of take up have you had?

Peter Graham:       To be honest it's been slow, largely because we haven't been marketing it at all. So we've really been [inaudible 00:57:39] so we've been taking our time to roll in user feedback from our MVP before we market it properly. The reason being that influencers are very high value customers and with each influencer they could bring a thousand other customers. Before we take it to influencers we want to be confident it's the ideal platform for them.

Far blue glasse:    [00:57:59] Can I just ask a little bit about the way in which the payment works? Does somebody have to register a credit card with you or PayPal. Have you got all that lined up?

Peter Graham:       So at the moment we're processing our payments through Stripe. We have PayPal integrated as well but we haven't made it go live yet. Longterm aim is to use PayPal only but people can also use their credit card. Essentially, you can scroll through your list of conversations like on Facebook, go into a conversation, type in your message and as long as your donation is above the persons minimum you'll be able to send it through to them. So it doesn't feel like a check-out, it's just a conversation log just like any other app.

Far blue glasse:    Is there also a reason why you've limited the maximum payment to $100?

Peter Graham:       Sure. To begin with, that's purely our own financial liability because of the way we're having to process payments because we're having to front up money into our pay outs account and anticipate demand. That model will be shifting soon once we move exclusively to Stripe so then we can lift the payments level. Its also a matter of ethics in terms of, we've got strict terms of service, people under 18 can't use the platform but we know that children are going to try and we don't want them to be able to spend 5 grand of their parents money on a message. Thanks very much.

Thomas Boneham:     G'day. I'm Tom Boneham and I'm the co founder of Beviva. We're pitching in the social venture space today. I'm here today to talk about something very close to my heart but its also something that will impact one in three of us at some stage in our lives. Two years ago, a great mate of mine Andy was diagnose with stage 4 cancer. After the initial shock of his diagnosis had worn off, as it came completely out of the blue. Something I didn't realise was the day to day impact that his diagnosis and treatment would have on him. But, his story isn't unique. A list of side effects here are common to many cancer patients, including nausea, loss of appetite, and changing taste preferences. If you can imagine that you love a certain flavour at one point, and then after a round of cancer treatment, you can't stand it anymore.

Thomas Boneham:     It can make eating enough, eating well, or sometimes eating at all, a really difficult prospect. Or the time, which is really important to be getting adequate nutrition, study after study has shown that adequate nutrition during cancer treatment leads to better outcomes.

Thomas Boneham:     And this is where Beviva fits in. We're a line of tailored beverages specifically designed to the nutritional needs of cancer patients. But how will we compare to the market more broadly. Presently, it's dominated by Nestle Food Services Sciences, Abbott nutrition, and Flavour Creations. Each of these products provides highly processed, nutritionally questionable.. sorry, let me retract that, highly processed, calorie dense products with a limited flavour line. What this means for patients is that it's not tailored to their nutritional needs, nor is it tailored to their flavour tastes, if their tastes change beyond the existing line. Patients that we've spoken to tell us that this has led them to more typical off the counter, off the shelf options, including protein shakes all the way down the nutrition ladder to your red bulls and Lipton iced teas.

Thomas Boneham:     If we take one of the tailored options from Nestle, Boost plus, I was shocked to find that 14 grammes out of 100 mils is sugar. For context, that's almost 25% more than Coca-Cola. All at a time when mounting evidence shows that a high sugar diet is related to higher incidents of cancer and a high sugar diet during treatment correlated with worse outcomes. So there's obviously a gap in the market here and There's a need for something different and I hope that Beviva is going to be that solution.

Thomas Boneham:     We'll be nourishing, using organic, natural, fresh ingredients with no added sugar and no added fillers. Developed by doctors and nutritionists working closely with cancer patients to ensure that the product is both effective but also tailored to what they want.

Thomas Boneham:     Convenient- we'll be offering a subscription service delivered to their door. But most importantly, we're looking to move the needle in patient wellbeing during treatment. Taking care of the nutrition question so they can focus on getting well.

Thomas Boneham:     We hope by 2021 to be able to serve 3% of the 500,000 patients being treated for cancer in Australia each year. That's 15,000 subscriptions. Our model is a subscription model and at $7 per meal with an average of two per day, that's 900,000 in weekly revenue, for an annual revenue of 47 million by 2021.

Thomas Boneham:     We've built an exciting team around us, with Andy, my co-founder and product developer. Andrew Howie who has over 20 years experience in nutrition and as a dietitian working in the clinical space. Carolina Alas heads up our brand and Marketing. She's launched products for Louis Vuitton group, as well as the most recent rebranding for the World Wildlife Fund. And we have a strong advisory board as well across finance, design, and most excitingly the CEO of Australia's largest sugar free beverage company who themselves are looking at 10 million dollars in annual revenue this year.

Thomas Boneham:     To date, where have we been? I've been working with Andy and we've developed a range of products that are working on him and we've brought on a nutritionist now to build out that range and we hope to feed them into a supervised case study in Q1 of this year, build out the remaining business operations for a soft launch in selected cancer clinics throughout Sydney in Q4 this year, with a roll out Australia wide in Q1 2020.

Thomas Boneham:     We're asking for 3 million dollars today to fund this journey and we're also looking to build our network of advisors across supply chain, e-commerce, particularly in legal, especially if you have experience in navigating the TGA. Thank you very much.

Far gold coat:      Question relating to the next phase. How many are you going to use in your sample set to try out different products and are you using people in different age groups, different demographics?

Thomas Boneham:     Are you talking about the case study?

Far gold coat:      Yes the case study.

Thomas Boneham:     We haven't built that yet so we will be looking to include a range because it covers all the way from the elderly down to the [crosstalk 01:05:50]

Far gold coat:      And that case study is covered by that funding, is it part of the funding?

Thomas Boneham:     Sorry?

Far gold coat:      The cost of the case study..

Thomas Boneham:     Yes, that's covered within the funding

Grey coat near:     So Tom, when you get to revenue projections of 47 million, what kind of margin are you expecting there? Is this a product that's going to cost you a lot to put on the [crosstalk 01:06:10]

Thomas Boneham:     We've benchmarked it at the moment off our nearest competitor which we can see to be the fresh smoothie beverage line and that's looking at 25% cost of goods per unit and then, so the margins 25% basically.

Glasses near:       Thomas just with regard to how you kind of envision the subscription working. You talked about changing tastes as the disease progresses. You have a subscription model, what kind of shelf life and what sort of number of deliveries are you expecting for your customer base because it strikes me that could be quite a significant cost?

Thomas Boneham:     So we're expecting, over the next five years, we're looking at 1% of New South Wales year one and then building out 1%, 1%, 3%, 3% and for each of those [crosstalk 01:07:09] so you want to interject?

Glasses near:       Yes I wasn't quite clear, I'm talking about how regularly are you going to deliver to your customers?

Thomas Boneham:     So we're planning on giving them the option to set their cadence according to their treatment because some people might have treatment on a weekly basis and some people might have it monthly, so there's going to be a little bit of variability there so I can't commit to exactly what it's going to look like but we're planning on aligning it with that.

Thomas Tores:       Hi everyone, my name is Thomas. I am the founder of Playnow and I'm a huge fan of sports, just like Jonah. Jonah used to be an advanced level Tennis player, however, he is now intermediate since he finds it difficult to find people to play with. But why did this happen?

Thomas:             Difficult to find people to play with, but why did this happen? He constantly wants to play, but he can't find opponents of a similar level and he doesn't have enough friends who play tennis, but Jonah is not alone. According to the Australian sports commission. There's currently 8.1 million adults who are playing sports once a week and based on my research, half of these people are interested in playing more often. So I ask myself, what if we could match players in a simple way? What if we could bring courts and venues closer to the users and what if could provide the users with different features and options to play? Well we can. The answer is Play Now, Play Now is an app that quickly connect sports enthusiasts to play their favourite games more often. So let's go back to Jonah to see how the app works.

Thomas:             He first logs in creates his profile. Then the app will ask him a series of questions to determine his level, being indicated being illustrated as a spider chart indicating his specific abilities. Once this happens, he'll be able to be much with players of a similar level, build the rating details and invite them to our game as well as search for other registered players. Let's assume in this case your Jonah decides he wants to play with Elise Robinson. He'll be able to compare his level with hers and observe where this specific abilities match and differ. So when it comes to tennis, there's surf, forehand, backhand, volley and rally. Furthermore, he also be able to look for coaches near him, check their reviews, their availability, their profile and book and pay a session with them all through the app. Finally, he'll also need somewhere to play, which is what he'll also be able to look for courts near him, check their reviews and book them all through the app as well.

Thomas:             So these are some competitors that are doing something similar at the moment. However, these apps and websites are focusing either in providing matching accuracy or in helping or in providing different features or some of them are not strong in any of this. So this is a market gap Play Now wants to take advantage of by emphasising both in helping players find the opponents that match their same level and also offering different features that allow them to play. So if at some point they can't find an opponent, they can go for a coach and they have a full guide of courts and venues at their disposal. To be successful Plane Now needs players, which is why the app is free for all to find a match. This and the rest of the services will be structured in a freemium model with a free and a premium version of the app.

Thomas:             The free version will include finding players, one coach per month and search courts and venues with only one booking per month. The premium version on the other side includes finding players, unlimited coaches, and unlimited courts and venues with special discounts when booking them. All of this for three $399 a month on a subscription basis or $40 per year. Additionally, Play Now will also generate revenue by keeping 10% of the coaches' fees for each session booked through the app. So I already mentioned there's 8.1 million adults who are playing those potential customers. However, I would start here with the people who are already using technology in the practise of sport, specifically websites or online tools, which accounts for 1.8 million adults according to the Australian sports commission. These people are already mobile active and we'll have instant interaction with the free version of the APP. Thanks to our freemium model previously explained.

Thomas:             Once this happens, this highly technology engage users will also help me in acquiring a portion of the rest of the market through the usual sport activities. So taking this into numbers, we have a 10% share of these highly technology engage users and a small portion of the initial potential users, we have a total of 225,000 users with 10% of these buying a premium subscription and making some assumptions when it comes to monthly subscriptions, annual Subscriptions, and the coaching sessions and also considering I still need some validation when it comes to customer acquisition costs. This means Play Now would reach and annual revenue exceeding $3 million. These numbers though are only year one and they're only in Australia. Due to its sports nature, Play Now scales globally. Just as an example, if I take this to China and initially acquire a very conservative 5% of the market that uses apps for sports, we're talking about a $32 million opportunity.

Thomas:             So far I validated this concept with different players and coaches around Sydney, over 30 players and coaches and I shared the app and mockup with them. Also, conducting interviews, getting to understand their pin points and experiences and getting their very constructive feedback when it comes to assessing level and providing different features to play. My next steps by March, I want to build the app, test it and iterate on it, and if I'm successful securing any funds today, that's where they would go and then by May I want to launch the APP in both Android and IOS. A little bit about me and what brought me into sports.

Thomas:             I have five years experience working as a lawyer in the startup space. I've participated in the organisation of the South American Olympic Games and most importantly for me, I have a lifelong passion for sports. So at Play Now at the moment we are looking for developers. I would love if someone who has these abilities and shares the passion for sports that I have would join me on this journey. And also if you enjoy sports and if you like what Play Now wants to offer, please visit our website, subscribe to our email list and we will let you know once the APP officially launches. With Play Now, we want you to play more. Thank you very much.

Audience:           Thanks for the presentation, Thomas. Your business model, there anchored quite heavily around tennis and for is primarily a solo sport. I was wondering how you've analysed and incorporated, I guess a lot of team sport, which I'd imagine a whole raft of people in the population are actually playing.

Thomas:             Yes, I also want to take it into team sports. You are absolutely right. I imagine it, for example, looking for a teammate in the APP or when you're looking just for someone to join your team or if you're looking for a coach, then a team ... you can go for a coach either long term or just for a short term session if you're interested in having a short term session with a coach. So yes, what I look is to have any type of sports, just individuals or partner sports between two people or team sports as well, yes.

Audience:           Thomas, you mentioned you'll get a reasonable profile of the playing partners that play with, now I was wondering, are you planning to write coaches or is there going to be some means of writing coaches so that potential customers can choose which coach to employ?

Thomas:             Yes, so what I imagine what I want to achieve is to have a marketplace between coaches and players and there's going to be the hold rating processes and the whole and this is going to be ... to give the coaches a profile where they'd be able to have a specific rating based on their games and the amount of games they have. And every time they have a game with a player, the player will eventually raid him and that will allow the coach to create a reputation and then eventually have more business to coach more players.

Audience:           Thomas, what's your cost per acquisition at the moment?

Thomas:             At the moment it's $35 for subscription, for a customer who subscribes to the app. That's the customer acquisition I have at moment.

Audience:           What's the lifetime value?

Thomas:             Honestly at the moment I don't have the lifetime value. I have the customer acquisition based on reports from profit well and also from specific industry averages from a Statista that I have been able to gather. But yes, honestly at the moment I don't have the lifetime value.

Audience:           Okay.

Brianna:            Hi, my name is Brianna and I'm the founder of Rock & Splosh. So now just imagine y'all going to China to study for two years and all of a sudden, the university just told you that it's all going to be in Chinese, no English. So what would you do in preparation for that and why would you do if you're struggling over there? Rock & Splosh is an online learning platform for Chinese international students who are living in Australia. Why do we need that? The current situation in China, they're basically sending 600 [Daldint 01:16:29] students out every year and some on the UK, the US, Australia is actually the most popular destination. They have brought us great economic boost and apparently spending 30 point $9 billion a year, just some uni fees on travelling and living expenses and now we're questioning do they enjoy us as much as we enjoyed them?

Brianna:            Probably not, every year they're paying around $50,000 just purely on uni fees. And because of us lowering the English standard for them to come in, they definitely struggle when they come here. In terms of academically or just socially and also the culture shock that they will never be able to overcome because of the English level and they just stick with that with their own circles of friends. So now where the complications comes with that, so because of the inadequate student entry procedures, most of them actually failing lots of academic subjects or academic communications. Academic integrity becomes a problem as well. A lot of them starts to find ghostwriters and for the employability side it's definitely not bright either limited competency, English ability to communicate and also limited understanding of the local working context. Definitely do not lead them too many great opportunities and I think it just a matter of time for them to realise that Australia is not worth it.

Brianna:            It's not worth the $200,000 to study four years here. So is there a solution for both of us? This is a friend Rachel. She actually studies at UTS doing marketing. After two years of studying Australia, she still struggles quite a lot with just writing a simple essay. To we have a solution for her. Can she find a job in the future. So now this solution is we create this online platform for everyone to learn, especially international students. It is accessible 24/7 with our prerecorded videos and also comes with some complimentary live sessions. All the courses are going to be in their first language. Just like the first question I ask you, if you are going to China to study everything in Chinese, would you rather to have a Chinese student who can speak English to you or would you rather to have someone who only speaks Chinese to you to learn Chinese?

Brianna:            You might be questioning, so what courses are we going to offer, only the English courses that's not very competitive. So no well, English courses are, only the fundamental parts of it. However, we're going to provide them academic help and also other soft skills to help them to find better jobs in the future. Also, we're going to provide some coaching on the studying courses that in this way if they do become the next generation of immigrants, it will be a lot easier for them to merge in and also it is, we're trying to build this bridge for them to have an easier transition. So why would Rock & Splosh work. You may be questioning, why don't we just do lynda.com with Chinese subtitles, so it will work because I'm personally an in-betweener I was born and raised in China. I came to Australia when I was 11, so I know both languages and culture very well.

Brianna:            Also, I have the passion to change because when I was 11 I didn't speak much of English. I didn't really know what's going on and I just imagine if I have something like that it will make my life so much easier. So the business model, it is a very simple business model. At the moment we are charging them based on the courses that they buy. So it depends on what we offer and depends on the contents of the course. It is generally priced around $120 to $300. For the cost of the business, we don't really have that much of cost. Generally mostly will only be commission face that goes to instructors. So 70% goes to the instructor and the rest of the 30 goes back to the platform. So for the future planning as I mentioned, we'll mainly be expanding our courses and then having more courses of their [seemings 01:20:14] we're going to have more revenues.

Brianna:            At the moment we are providing written and spoken English and also we're providing some subject university subjects to help them to improve their marks such as business statistics. Also, we do some pre-uni courses, especially for the people who haven't done HRC in Australia. By end of 2019 we're hoping to launch employability side courses to especially helping with the soft skills, interview skills and some technical skills. Ultimately we want this to be a platform of people coming together and being supported and some up to date accomplishments so far.

Brianna:            We launched these on the 1st of August and we have 11 courses being launched and we have sold more than 300 units of courses on the very first 10 days when we launched the course, we actually got $2,000 of revenue just in 10 days. At the moment we have a hundred plus active customers just waiting six months. Last one it's a bit of a cry for help and also our accomplishment. We are providing all the courses, only sharing the videos on Google drive. However, we have gained massive good feedbacks. I do not recall a terrible feedback from anyone. So I think it's both side and also I do believe lots of potentials in this business. Thank you.

Audience:           It sounds like there's massive potential here. My question is around competition first. Are you saying that there's no one else who's providing native language support to Chinese overseas business?

Brianna:            Oh no, definitely not. I actually worked at a Chinese tutoring place in Sydney where they provide academic help in Chinese. However, the difference would be I love the people who are helping, such as the tutors are not alike, like in-betweeners like me. They're either very Chinese and then they are struggling themselves as well. So I guess they can only provide the academic help but not the other paths such as culture or the language itself.

Audience:           Brianna,

Brianna:            Yes.

Audience:           Congratulations on what you've done so far. But what I'm trying to understand, are you doing this as an influencer more as a social media sort of environment or are you wanting this to be seen as real training courses? And if it's the latter, what's your plan to perhaps put some more accreditation or structure or rigour around what those courses are so that there's that level of independent credibility around them?

Brianna:            Yes definitely, that's a great question. I think at the moment because it is a very young business and I'm instructing quite a lot of them especially for the spoken English or the writing classes. However, most of them I do personal research and I do question that whether it is going to be like the perfect course for them. I do get lots of good feedbacks, but in the future, I do want to like what you said, I do want to make it into the latter one to make it into, people can actually get great education from us. I think in the future, as business grow, I guess I have to hire and recruit more qualified people to do this rather than just myself.

Audience:           Can I understand the model for the creation of courses. Do the lectures just get paid on how many people actually do the course or you pay them for developing the course?

Brianna:            Yes so for people who developed the course we call them instructors and then for example, if it's $100 for the course and then they get 70% of that and we get 30%.

Audience:           So if no one takes the course they don't get paid. It's a risk.

Brianna:            If no one, yes basically. So this is a risk of whether you want to make the course on not. All right. Thank you for the time.

Jared:              Hi, my name is Jared and I'm the founder of Loca, a digital experience that provides curated and customizable journeys to places of interest suggested by locals. Now, Loca is actually born out of a love story, so I once matched with a girl on Tinder who asked me what my favourite bar was, all I told her was that it was in Darlinghurst. A few days later, we're walking towards this destination near Oxford street down a dark [Gulu 01:24:37] means scary alley. She turns to me frightened and says, ìJared, are you crazy?î I showed her everything was going to be okay. We opened a nearby door and we're presented with this bustling poker bar with live music and dim lighting. Now I asked her about this experience. She told me she loved the fact that she could trust a local to take her to a venue she had never been to before.

Jared:              She loved the fact that it was a surprise and she loved it that you're required minimal planning. Now I wanted to recreate this experience digitally, but for source and problems. Tourists focus too much on the final destination and experience head bear. They don't realise that part of the journey is actually getting there and how that is rewarding. New leaf salvage businesses with lower marketing budgets and lower exposure are at a higher risk of failure and passionate locals don't have an easy and direct way of being able to promote and support their favourite venues and community. I present you the solution Loca the best way to experience locally sourced places of interest. The journey starts with the user deciding what theme journey they want to go on. That could be maybe for example, a bar, a bar crawl, or maybe a date.

Jared:              They decided how much time they want to spend on this journey and the location of which the area they want to explore. They're then taken to a list of curated journeys based on their preferences though each journey has a final destination that remains a surprise until the user gets there. The user then navigates the area going to different local hotspots. The user has the ability to customise the different hotspots they want to go to and the transport means between each hotspot. Upon leaving the penultimate hotspot, they are notified and will be able to be revealed the location of the final destination. Once they get to the final destination, they are shown what makes the bar so special or what makes the venue so special and are shown the local who suggested it. Here, they can also access the reward. The reward comes in the form of a Freebie or a discount at the venue.

Jared:              Here they can also refer this journey to a friend and track how much of the city they've explored. This is where the journey ends. Now, competition does exist against Loca, but Loca's competitive advantage sits in the fact that it is not just about the final destination for its uses, for its locals it empowers them and for the local businesses, it gives them a way to be promoted. Now, the business model sits at each user paying $4.99 per journey, but in return they are give an end to end experience navigation, a surprise and a reward, the venues, they pay $2.99 for every user that makes it to their venue by a Loca and in return they get free exposure and free Loca certification. Now the local, they are paid 99 cents every time a user makes it to their suggested venue.

Jared:              According to a study in 2018 by destination in New South Wales, there were 10.3 million domestic overnight tourists to Sydney staying in average of 2.2 nights. I wanted to capture the target market of millennials and Gen Zs specifically those that come to Sydney for activity based reasons. Now, Loca is projected to have the market size of 20% by its end of its third year. This is under the assumption that 75% of all Loca journeys are successful. Their revenue as a result is $2 million and the profit 1.4 this doesn't even include local residents or international tourists. Now, some traction has been made over the last eight weeks.

Jared:              I validated Loca with over 40 people. I've had an expression of interest from two venues and I've tested the methodology with six different users from various backgrounds. Now my go to market strategy consists of partnering with government initiatives such as Watson in Sydney sorry, yes Watson in Sydney and Destination New South Wales to be able to leverage them, promote Loca. I will also develop business relationships with those venues suggested by the locals and use them to do instal advertising and I will augment organic growth via an incentive referral scheme.

Jared:              I have a great geographic knowledge of Sydney having worked as a courier for the last six years. I am also the target market and understand the space intimately and I have experienced curating and developing different journeys. My head of digital, he has 10 years of UX experience and a mathematics background, but what am I asking for? I'm asking for support in the form of mentorship for marketing and advertising to help grow Loca. I am also asking for $50,000 in development funding to be able to develop prototypes to test Loca further. Lastly, I'm awesome for UX testers I've been conducting experiments manually with Loca, so if you want to understand what makes a Loca journey and experience, please go to my website and sign up. Thank you.

Audience:           So my question is about evidence of interests by tourists, by venues by local. So I get that you've had a number of chats, it's given you confidence. Do you have any evidence beyond the chats that you've had that tourist venues and locals will participate in numbers?

Jared:              In terms of the venues, I have reached out to a number of venues and those I have had a chance with have been on board with something like this. In terms of the venues I have narrowed it down to those that are under two years old. Those who are more established those seemed to be on board, which makes sense because they even established user base. In terms of the users, the 40 people that I validated it with and in terms of the domestic market, I had spoken to different users of my own demographic who put themselves in the shoes of going to another city in terms of speaking to tourists, I have not only those who are tourism themselves from Sydney going to another city seeing themselves use this.

Audience:           Jared, is there an inherent problem with the solution in that locals recommending something that they like might destroy the attraction that they like about the local?

Jared:              You're saying that a local hotspot doesn't become a local hotspot if they get enough traction? Is that what you're telling me is that what you're asking me? Sorry.

Audience:           It becomes too hot.

Jared:              It becomes too hot. I guess that is a problem. I suppose there are always different venues popping up, you know, around the city in different parts of the city of Sydney is expanding as a city. So that means there are different venues around the city and sure, I would say it could come into that issue, but because the ... such a bustling city I think that the ability for Sydney to expand this may not be as much of an issue as it possibly it could be foreseen.

Audience:           You're almost becoming a trusted social advisor. So how do you develop that trust? How do you build the brand around building trust?

Jared:              That reckons down to outside the trust comes from the venue. So you don't want to go to a venue that isn't trusted. Right? I would say that comes down to building the rapport with the venue and doing the due diligence around the venue and doing extra research, making sure the Google reviews match, making sure that the venues are quite substantial and worthwhile going to. Does that answer your question?

Speaker 11:         Hey everyone, before I get started about me, I actually wanted to just add a couple of thanks and shout outs, if that's all right. I know they're not here, but I've been promised that the judges will see the video. So I do want to acknowledge the time and the commitment that the judges make. I know it seems like they just sit up here and ask tough questions and they get to go away and blah, blah blah. But these guys, and I know from personal experience, these guys are actually seriously invested in this programme and in many other programmes at UTS. I personally worked with a few of them in helping enhance my business since I was up on this stage last year. These guys are, they really put a lot of time and effort into this, so definitely appreciate the commitment they make to the programme so just join me in thanking them. They'll see it on the video.

Speaker 11:         I also want to thank the sponsors. I don't know if that, no, it's not up there, but holy cow. Did you guys see the list the $74,000 that are up for grabs today, which is Gargantuan and it so awesome and really appreciate the sponsors who make all of this so valuable for the founder. So thanks to them as well.

Speaker 11:         Finally, I want to thank everyone who pitched because I personally know how tough it is to be up here and do this pitch. It's really, really hard to get in front of you guys and bare your soul and all the work that you've put in over the last semester. And in some cases like years of work. I think [Yakin 01:33:58] mentioned at the beginning there were 16 pitches and you guys have seen 10. Well, how many did ... were there a lot of people who were here for the first bit? Maybe show of hands. Yes, so you guys saw yes, take the time to meet with these founders as well because they're working on really cool projects. I think they're all incredible and an amazing, I've had the opportunity to see them earlier today.

Speaker 11:         So do connect with them at the drinks after the session. Like David said I've got the opportunity to pitch my first startup resists decks here on the stage. A year and a couple of days ago, not that, that day is burned in my memory or anything, but it was a fantastic experience and a really important step on my entrepreneurial journey. For me it was a really incredible opportunity because it was like the intersection of these two really important parts of my life. One was fitness, which since moving to Australia in 2010, I developed a really keen interest in and the other was technology. I grew up with technology. I was lucky enough as a young kid to have access to a computer in my bedroom, like from age seven. I didn't emerge until like age 17.

Speaker 11:         I got to learn how to programme on this really old clunky machine with like a daisy wheel printer and cassette tapes and all this stuff. It was really cool for me. In either case, like bringing these two things together was just a really fun thing and it was no real surprise that I ended up in a very long career in technology. I ended up spending about 18 years working for various enterprise companies doing like big IT stuff, big storage computing and whatnot in people's data centres. One thing led to another and I ended up in this wonderful country, Australia, like I said, in 2010 and it was there that I had probably the one of the best career opportunities of my life. That was the chance to start what's known as the managed services business for a company called EMC Servicing and actually one of our sponsors, Commonwealth Bank.

Speaker 11:         That was like one of the hardest jobs but most interesting and rewarding job that I've ever had. And it was really two reasons. One was because I got the opportunity to solve a real problem. I could see my efforts bringing something to reality and two, I got to work with a really great team. Those two things were really valuable to me. However, as corporate life tends to do, I got more and more interested in making sure that I had things like progression. I wanted bigger titles. I wanted more responsibility and these things unfortunately, I was truly, unfortunately, I got until I had moved so far away from solving problems that I cared about rather than focusing on things that matter to my customer. Instead, I was filling holes in our bookings target for the quarter and it's like, what am I doing?

Speaker 11:         I felt like I was losing my soul. Luckily my partner happens to be an alum of UTS and he got this email saying, ìHey, there's going to be this big talk about entrepreneurship down at the Great Hall in building one.î Is it? Yes. ìAnd let's go.î So I said, ìCool, let's go.î And funny thing, I almost didn't go to this talk because he was sick that night, but I decided to go anyway. And I know bad on me but anyway, I go and that's where I see this German guy named Yakin Schweitzer up on the stage talking about, ìHey, wouldn't it be really nice if in Australia, rather than trying to teach our kids to go get good jobs, we could teach them to make a good jobs through this clever thing called entrepreneurship.î I thought, ìHey, I like that. That sounds like a good idea to me.î

Speaker 11:         I was hooked, so I went to an information session for the MBAE and I has such a great time that I went to another one. Then next thing I knew it, I'm registered for a course and I'm sitting there learning about accounting and finance and I'm taking classes with some of the people in this room. It was there that Resistex was born. As many of you would obviously realise going through the MBAE programme, you get to develop your startup. It was a really fun time over that year, really developing that product. Halfway through the programme I realised that this is what I wanted to do. I quit my job and just committed myself 100% to completing my degree here and in launching this startup called Resistex.

Speaker 11:         With the benefit of hindsight today, you obviously realise I'm not wearing a [inaudible 01:38:25] tee shirt. With the benefit of hindsight, I realise now that I probably had a lot more things to learn even then about what it takes to really make a startup like Resistex work. I remember in particular a piece of sage wisdom from one of our lecturers, Tara in our EIP course. She said something to the ... I remember the exact words, but it was something like ìIf you ask the right questions of your customers, then you will almost always end up somewhere you didn't expect.î and that's something that I wasn't doing with Resistex. That became painfully obvious to me in a conversation I was having with a potential customer where I was pitching a version of Resistex. This is a gym owner that I happened to know, the gym where I train and I'm explaining to him how I've got this great product, it's going to help you engage more gym goers it's going to have you scale your business.

Speaker 11:         And he's like, ìOkay, that's great Tim. Thanks for that, appreciate that. However, that's not really my problem. My problem is this other thing, as it turns out, this particular gym is a fitness educator. So they work with fitness professionals to get them things like cert threes and fours and fitness and to teach them specific skills on how to engage with particular communities in the fitness area and the fitness space. Because my big problem is I want to scale my education business. My fitness business is fine, you're a tech guy. You know what we do, what can you do? Can you help me scale this education business?î And I said, ìSure, why not?î And on that day, 10th of September, [Coursy 01:39:57] was born and over the period of time since then, it's just been a few short months.

Speaker 11:         I've had the great benefit of working with this wonderful customer. Building a decent pipeline to another set of customers and also building just an incredible team of creatives and problem solvers who are once again focused on this idea of fixing a customer's actual problem. For me the entrepreneurial journey has been punctuated with a lot of ups and downs. But if I were to take away anything it would be to make sure that you're always staying connected with your customers need because that's where the greatest amount of reward is. For me that's the primary thing that I've learned. When I reflect back on the circumstances that led me here a year ago, I think about all of the random things that led from this job to that job to moving to Australia, to meeting Yakin, to engaging with this programme, to going to this gym, Ethan.

Speaker 11:         And having that one conversation that led to this business that I get to run now called Coursy. It reminds me that so much of what we do is just a pool of contention possibilities. To me that's exactly what this is all about, right? Like this is a community UTS, the MBAE venture day. It's a community of people who are creating contingent possibilities where things just mix around and out of that opportunity springs. And for that I am incredibly grateful and I feel very fortunate and I hope my other MBAE colleagues feel the same. So with that, that's all I've got to say. Join me again and thanking the wonderful panel thanking the UTS, the UTS staff, faculty, all the great people who make this day possible and who make all of these opportunities for us as founders so meaningful. Thanks for your time.

Speaker 12:         That reminds me actually, Tim's experience of that great line, luck is where preparation meets opportunity. So if you're prepared when the opportunity emerges, you can capitalise on it. Okay. We now have Teresa Yuen. And she is the cofounder and CEO of Open Visa, which is a platform that streamlines the customer experience for Australian visa applicants. Open Visa's aim is to create a streamlined user friendly service, adding value to clients by providing quality information that is accurate, simple and easy to digest. Teresa actually has first hand experience with Australian visa application process, and so her passion is to actually share this knowledge and alleviate the pain points for others, who'd like to migrate to Australia. And by trade, Teresa is actually incredibly competent, highly motivated as a finance director, and has extensive experience in media, entertainment and retail industries. And she was part of the first cohort of the MBA-Es. So she's been out for a couple of years. Tell us what you've learned.

Teresa:             Sure. Thanks David for the warm welcome. Hi everyone. It's very hard to beat Tim's keynote speech there, but I'll try my best. So firstly, congrats to the team and individuals who presented today. I know how nerve wracking it is. We were essentially here two years ago, closer to this day. It's really difficult to obviously pitch your ideas, what you've been working on for months and potentially years on the line for perhaps strangers to hear, and I suppose judge you on it. So congratulations for making it this far.

Teresa:             So as I mentioned, I was standing here with Corey, my cofounder, back corner there, two years ago. Back then, we were pitching a platform called Sent Form. As David mentioned, we are trying to simplify the Australian visa application process. For those who haven't gone through it, I can tell you now it is a lengthy one. Depending on what visa you're after actually. So back then, we had this idea. We started with the MBA-E, as four individuals. We've never met before. We went through the first trimester, still didn't talk to each other. Still trying to find our feet. And then the second trimester came, and it was EIP. God brought us all together, or fate, or something up there. We've all selected the same startup to work on. So Yu-shen, Corey, Ellie and myself, we work together along with our fifth member who's not part of the Open Visa team. We basically selected this particular client to work on.

Teresa:             And that's one of the best thing I believe the MBA-E could bring, is the fact that it's very hands on. It's very practical. It's one of the reasons why I chose the MBA-E instead of the executive MBA. I'm very hands on. I believe when you're in today's day and age, you need to be innovative. You need to be at the top of your game. And be it starting your own business or working in a business. It's very competitive marketplace out there. And I think having the skill set, the tools to be able to move forward, I think that's really important, be it in a small business, or in a large corporation.

Teresa:             So back to EIP. We've selected this client. We worked, I think it was about eight to nine weeks, day and night. Mind you, we all had full time jobs. So this course was pitched as, you can do it while having a full time job. Don't know how we survived that, but we got there. We are living proof that you can make it. There is a light at the end of the tunnel.

Teresa:             Throughout late nights, we basically discussed what we're doing in our normal lives, in our normal jobs, our pain points. And it so happens that Corey and I were both going through a visa process. Not for ourselves. We're legitimately Australian citizens. Corey was going through a visa process for his wife, and I was going through the visa process for my adopted son. So what came about, it's obviously the process. How long it takes to obtain a visa. All of the documents you've got to put together. The emails backwards and forward with your migration agent, lawyers, et cetera. And in the end you've got to resubmit it again, if something's missing.

Teresa:             So we've come up with the idea throughout that process, that surely we're smart people. We can automate this. We can make it work. We know exactly the pain points. We are the customers. And we know what we want, we know what it is that potentially clients want. So from EIP all the way down to venture day, we ditched our own individual ideas, and we created back then as I mentioned, Sent Form.

Teresa:             So two years on, we are now Open Visa. It's taken us a long time. It wasn't an easy journey. We still have our full time jobs. And we work on Open Visa full time. As opposed the one takeaway from that is we're very fortunate that we understand each other's strengths and weaknesses. We were very fortunate that the four of us had individual skillset. Ellie is amazing with her marketing. Corey has built our whole entire platform and working with our dev team. Yu-shen, she actually went back to uni to get her migration agent registration. So good on her.

Teresa:             So essentially, we know what we're good at. We know what we're not. And basically we try not to do everything ourselves. Working in a team of four, one would think that we've got four people, great resources, but we still needed obviously help. And that is from our development team. So two years on, we've also narrowed our platform down to what we believe is going to work. And I think I've got to thank UTS again. They've invited us back earlier in the late last year, to participate as a client with their EIP team. And from then I can see a couple of faces here. Hello there.

Teresa:             They brought something to light. They brought something to light in the terms that we were trying to cater for a mass market. You're looking at over 99 different visas in Australia alone. We had the partner visa. We had the family visa. We have the skilled workers visa. Anyone who says, do you have that visa? We would say yes, and go and build it.

Teresa:             In the end it was just too much. It's very difficult to cater for everyone. So as part of the feedback that was given by the EIP team, it's guys, narrow it down to what you're good at. What you can relate to. So at the moment, Open Visa specialises in two visas, student and graduate visas. Yay. So I think the point to take out from that is yes, you can look at the market size. You can look at everything and yes, you think that you can do it all. But you have to be really realistic about it.

Teresa:             So that's one of my advice is, do something good with one thing. And then of course you can expand from there. Don't try to take over the world as much as the idea of it, it's amazing. And you're going to make lots of money. And everyone's going to understand and be on board with you. Sometimes it's not. You will have people who will tell you that your idea is a crap idea. Or that it's been done before. But if you really truly believe in it, take on board all of the advice that you believe is going to be good, and leave the rest in your back pocket. It might come handy one day.

Teresa:             So I've got my little notes here of what I needed to talk about while the judges deliberate. So I think I've ticked it all. I think it's definitely about, two years on, resilient is the other word that I like to use. It's very difficult to work full time, have a family, have commitments. We all live in Sydney. But if you really believe in what you're doing, make sure that you just go for it, and get the help that you need. And also at times, take time out. For the last two years, personally we have had to take time out. Sometimes it just gets too much. And it's okay. And it's okay. It's okay to say look, let's reset. Let's refresh. And at least that way you never know, you would actually might come up with a better solution. You might be able to meet people and hear what they're saying, rather than just be bogged down in your idea. Be open minded. Be open minded to change.

Teresa:             We thought that by catering for the masses, that we were doing ourselves a favour. We weren't. We weren't able to do that. Of course later on, potentially we could. But right now let's just do what we do well.

Teresa:             And I think the other thing is, we wouldn't have been able to do it with the support of UTS, especially Jochen and the business unit. Their support over the last two years, be it during our time doing the course, as well as after. They've been able to provide us with a meeting place in the lab, which we still use. We wouldn't be able to do it without that. And the fact that days like this where there is external support, their sponsorship. People who are willing to not only give the rewards in cash, but also their time.

Teresa:             I think it's really valuable. The network that you've created, I think it's second to none. And we're very, very pleased. The team and I are very, very pleased, that we're able to meet at UTS and be able to continue the journey with UTS as well.

Teresa:             So as a final note, obviously you'll be graduating soon. If you're ever in need of a visa, I'll be seeing you after the results. Thanks guys.

Speaker 13:         So here we are. At the end of the day, what has been your impressions from Venture Day this year? Who would like to start?

Speaker 14:         Well I've got the microphones, so I will. I guess number one, UTS students rock, clearly. Massive amount of thought, in all of those presentations. And it was actually really quite difficult. And I think the diversity of some of the ideas was actually really, really fantastic as well. I mean, it wasn't no anywhere near as hard as your jobs, obviously, but let me tell you, the judging was very hard.

Speaker 15:         Well. I would have loved the MBA-E to be around for when I was studying. I would probably pay a little bit more attention. I think it's a future of education. It's real life. And even for those entrepreneurs that don't end up commercialising their ideas, you go back into the workforce, and you're going to actually bring a whole new thought process to how companies should actually be run. And I think that's very powerful. So I love the concept of MBA-E, and congratulations to all the talent that we've had in the room present to us. You all did a very, very good job.

Speaker 16:         Oh, I would just add, today's been a great day. I think the presentations you've seen had been fantastic. I think the one common thread was we all felt we would have liked more time to, I guess, learn more about the ideas that were presented. As an investor who's been listening to pitches, in particular for the last 20 years, one thing that stands out, and I think everyone can benefit from it, is the idea if you cannot convey your message, and your key selling points for funding round, in the sort of time that you had today, things are going to be difficult. So it's not a comment on the quality of the ideas. And tremendous ideas. But getting that pitch right, and refining your pitch to be as strong as you can, in the short space of time is absolutely critical to getting funding in particular. Quite apart from the execution on the idea.

Speaker 17:         What I particularly loved about today was the amazing level of passion that was in every founder that we heard from. And most of that passion came from personal journeys. Which is a great way to find passion. Building a new business is going to hurt. It's going to take a long time. And the best way to get through it is if you're passionate about the outcome. One even better if thought for all the founders, is what I didn't see very much of, was what does it take for this business to get to break even and profitability? How long is the journey? How much scale do I need to build? What do I have to believe myself before I'm going to go on this journey, to make this business a success? And if you figured that out, then it's easier to convey that to people who you're asking to put their money in.

Speaker 18:         So thank you to the presenters today. I certainly got a lot out of it. And I think it's good to see that we have social ventures coming to the fore. I think generally as a community that's becoming a more important factor for us. I'd pick up on some of the earlier points made. You really need to get a sense when you're pitching to people who might potentially be giving you money, it's not just about revenue, but it's also about when I start to make a return on my capital and a margin. So have those in mind. They're kind of important factors. We need to kind of get to profit at some point.

Speaker 18:         And it probably needs to come relatively early in the pitch. Not sort of within the Q&A, kind of needs to be up front. This is a venture year three, I'm going to make x percent margin. Whatever. Sort of quantify it. That obviously comes from someone who's been raising money for ventures. So I need the money shot to get out there, and kind of push the story, to raise the money.

Speaker 19:         The quality of the presentations were all very good. In fact, the judging is very difficult given the great qualities. I have to commend everybody for that. And the actual presentations themselves, I was here last year. I believe these presentations were even better than last year. And the way that you were prepared. The only thing I'd say, the one thing that I thought was slightly missing, is when you say the money that you want, even just a simple spreadsheet of where you're going to use the money. So that we can actually understand a little bit more about them than just a quantum. There was a lot of adjectives that are going to use it here and there, but to show that you've actually done a little bit of homework on that, could be useful.

Speaker 20:         Well done to everyone today. Outstanding pitches all around, both in the quality of slides that you showed, but the clarity with which you expressed your ideas. And I know that it always looks much easier than it is, and that's because you're doing it very well. Just to talk further about, I think Ian's point about passion. What was interesting, if you could have come into the judging room, was like a real investor. The passion that you showed was persuasive, as to how people want to spend the money. Because there were lots of fantastic ideas up there, but which of you has the passion to follow that through and make it happen, despite all of the pitfalls that are on the way. So that passion thing, which is very hackneyed, is real in the investor room, as well as just in social media. Many of you showed that, which is well done to you all.

Speaker 21:         I probably just reiterate a lot of the points already made. It was really pleasing to see the infectious passion in the room today. High quality presentations. I love to commend everyone for their efforts around that. And certainly the aspects around the storytelling were really important, I think in terms of bringing those ideas to life. And that'd be my tip and guidance around that, is how do you bring that kind of human and customer lens to all the problems that you're trying to solve, and make it, I guess, a better world.

Speaker 22:         The things that really stuck out for me today were the way in which the design thinking that's been taught in the course, is flowing through to the ideas that the students have brought to bear or pitched, in terms of what are the impacts on customers? And what are the journeys of the customers have? And then secondly, there's been a real focus and, being another finance guy, I immediately go to the numbers. But there's been a real focus on the creation of value and sharing in the creation of value, rather than business being a zero sum game. I think socially we're going through quite a significant change at the moment. And, I think this is a really clear indication that UTS is a thought leader in that space.

Speaker 23:         Thanks very much. Just quickly to echo what everyone said. Fantastic standards today, not just the finalists, but everyone who presented. I thought it was real diverse range of ideas and business opportunities. And it's great to see that. I'm an IP guy, not a finance guy. What I'm looking for is the creativity, and the difference that you bring. And there was some really interesting ideas that came out today. So congratulations to everyone. Well done.

Speaker 13:         Thanks very much for your observations. Yes. And then there are photos. And then there are thanks. So, David Langford is actually an adjunct professor here in the business school. He's also managing director and chief investment analysts of Long Lake Research. And he is going to announce the winners.

David:              Before I announced the winners, I just like to thank the judging panel today. Many of whom it's the second or third time that you've been along. Many of you have been generous in terms of both financial contributions and contributions in terms of your time. And many of you have been very, very good and longterm friends of mine. And it's something that I appreciate both personally, your support and the university really appreciates your support as well.

David:              So, some prizes. So the first prize that we're going to announce is the Gilbert and Tobin UTS venture day prize. And that's a $5,000 of in kind IP services. And that's being awarded to Monda Pins. Kristen.

David:              The second prize which we're announcing is the BDO East Coast Partnership Prize, which is for $5,000 of in-kind professional services for tax, corporate finance and accounting. And that's being awarded to Maneesh at Me-who's.

David:              And I'm realising that I'm a year older because I'm actually starting to hold the awards nights a bit further in front of me. The next prize is the Rod Bertram Memorial Prize, to the value of $1,500 in cash. And that's being awarded for engineering or technology venture. And the winner is Jared from Locker.

David:              So we move on to the Paul Thorley prize, which is to the value of $2,500 in cash for a health related venture. And again, the winner is Maneesh from Me-who's.

David:              And for those who didn't have the product, it is just amazing. And the fact that it's actually good for you, it's not such bad thing.

David:              The next prize to announce is the AiQual Technologies Prize to the value of $5,000 in cash, which is awarded for innovation. And that's being awarded to Market Public Funding.

David:              And moving on to the UTS business school's Dean's Award for the best social venture, that's a prize for $7,500 in cash. So don't stop smiling, Mark. It's Public Funding.

David:              The next aspect of the UTS business school's Dean's Award is for a for-profit venture. And that's for $7,500. And it's to PtoC teams, Ian.

David:              And we're getting to some of the larger prizes now. The Commonwealth Bank, UTS venture day Prize, which is for $10,000 in cash and $10,000 of in-kind services. And that's awarded to Slash. Nicolas.

David:              And now the final prize. Which is extremely generous and thanks very much Peter, for both judging and for contributing a financial prize. It's the Kazacos Prize in Entrepreneurship for the best social venture. And that's for $10,000 in cash and $10,000 in in-kind services. And that's being awarded to Aviva. Thomas.

Speaker 13:         So it's now my great privileged to say the thank you's, at the end of the day. And we've got lots up there. So maybe first, for the donors. There's been lots of incredibly generous donors, which provides enormous opportunity for the venture entrepreneurs. So maybe, the entrepreneurs in the audience, you'd like to say thank you to everybody who's been so generous in their contribution to the programme.

Speaker 13:         We also have judges. We know we've thank you many times today, but here's one more. We know how busy you are, particularly to get people that have had such a great level of success and experience, who are willing to spend their time and energy, and coming along, both to contribute to the university, and then more specifically to our entrepreneurs. So just a massive thank you to all of you.

Speaker 13:         We also have our mentors. You may or may not know that there's a lot of people who have spent a lot of time and energy, mentoring the students. Particularly in this last period of time, as they've really developed their ideas. And without that kind of the input, the potential for the opportunities that they're creating, certainly wouldn't be quite the same. So we just want to say thank you to all of you who have mentored our students over the course of this year.

Speaker 13:         We now have some other people to thank in relation to today. First of all, where's Emma? Oh, there you are. Emma. Thank you. Emma is the one that organised today. What a great job, right?

Speaker 13:         We've also got Serena. Serena Stewards who helped us with their awards. Serena is our absolutely fantastic advancement person. If you'd like to support the university, go see her. She really understands how to enable value to be created through collaboration and working together.

Speaker 13:         To John Elliott, Rachel, Dodi, Sheridan, Murray. I finally can tell your names apart now. Lisa Woo. Bonnie Wong. Joe Butler. For all your work in the marketing communications unit. Thank you very much for your help.

Speaker 13:         Julian March, who did the scoring today. Catherine Stanford who does all the administration and make stuff work. And Tom, who's our entrepreneur in residence, where is he hiding? At the back. The awesome Tom Vass.

Speaker 13:         And finally, thank you to the students. The fact that you have spent your time and your energy in a UTS a programme. It's actually the students that make programmes work. You can have academics in institutions and knowledge and so on, but without students actually engaging in the programme, it's impossible. So, thank you for all your work over the last 12 months. I feel almost a little bit like a parent, because I was one of the first people that met the students in there for early class, like in March last year. And so you see all the work done.

Speaker 13:         Sorry, is it a cost accountant? I go, raw materials, work in process, finished goods. So I remember that we were raw materials, and I've now seeing the finished goods. Not too much has gone to scrap, so that's good. So thank you for your contribution over the last year. When you become incredibly rich, don't forget to give back to the few generations of entrepreneurs. And finally, both as an institution and also personally, thank you to Jochen [inaudible 00:30:03], who was a director of entrepreneurship in the business school, and pulls all of this together. And does a remarkable job. Thank you Jochen.

Speaker 24:         Anecdotal to that, the rest of the class would actually like to donate a gift that we've all chipped in for, for Jochen and Tom, to say thank you for the efforts they have put in, over the whole running of the VPP programme. So if you could both come up on stage, I'd like to present it to you personally.

Speaker 24:         Thank you very much from the class.

Speaker 13:         And on that note, Venture Day for another year is over.