StartUp Academy project’s aim is to develop, test and implement a supporting environment for unemployed young persons with entrepreneurial ideas with special focus on those living in remote regions with limited access to education and training and resources. After a large-scale surveying, project partners planed, designed and developed training materials so called learning modules for young adults (aged 18-35) with innovative ideas but with limited entrepreneurial skills. The learning modules have a basic (Phase 1) and an advanced (Phase 2) parts. Phase 1 – Basic part was an online training with 7 modules. During this training through 7 modules, we focused on helping young adults learn basic skills and competences in business life.
Young adults who finished the online training could share their business proposal with StartUp Academy team and from these ideas 48 young adults from 5 different countries were selected to participate at the 5-day Hackathon training and competition which was organized and held in Nagykanizsa, 16-20 April 2018.
On the first day, potential young innovators were requested to present their business ideas in 60 seconds to a competitive jury. Later on, participants voted for the most innovative ideas and those receiving the largest number of votes were selected for the second round. Innovators with the best ideas created small “business groups” inviting other participants to joint their new “fictitious companies” created to put into practice new business ideas. Participants could opt for those “winning ideas” which they consider as the best ones. That way, about 12 innovator groups of 3 or 4 members were created which persisted during the whole lifetime of the project. During the 5-day training event, members of each innovator group worked together and could learn advanced skills for the business life.
On the last day of the Hackathon training, a competition event was organised. This event was an innovative and creative way of presenting entrepreneurial ideas revealing new potential entrepreneurial initiatives according to local economic needs and conditions, showing the real strengths of the participants. From the presented 12 business ideas, the invited jury selected the best 4 groups of innovators (the best 4 business ideas) who will be supported to prepare their individual feasibility studies with the help of assigned business coaches and other experts.
The name of the four winner groups:
- Knowledge
- Tattoo
- Snail
- Wooden
