University of Auckland Innovation Challenge Winners Announced

University of Auckland Innovation Challenge Winners Announced Article Image

For the past three years Alleasing have been sponsoring the University of Auckland’s entrepreneurship program, Velocity. A unique and innovative program, Velocity started back in 2003 and is New Zealand’s leading entrepreneurship development program. To date the program has helped to create over 110 ventures and nearly $200 million of capital as well as over 400 jobs.

A year-long initiative, Velocity runs a series of workshops and seminars for participants with the opportunity to compete in two separate competitions for seed money to fund their venture.

The first of the competitions, aptly named the ‘Innovation Challenge,’ was held over February to May offering entrants to win up to $2,000 in prize money to fund their idea. Entrants had to write a pitch of no more than 1,000 words outlining their business proposition, benefits and relevance to the market to a panel of judges, one of which was Alleasing’s own Colin Phillips.

After reviewing all the entries, the judges made a decision, and at the end of May, the winners were announced.

Hosted at the University of Auckland, the guest speaker for the evening was Amy Potter from HelloMissPotter, who talked to a packed auditorium of 500 people, on her journey from creative designer to COO of Leaping Tiger, an online community gaming board.

Amy Potter also went on to announce and present each of the winners of the Innovation Challenge their prizes. In total there were 348 entries with only 39 winners whose ideas spanned into agritech, the arts, health and social initiatives to name but a few. More about the winners and their ideas can be found on the Velocity website.

Well done to everyone who participated in the Innovation Challenge this year, and congratulations to all the winners. From everyone at Alleasing, we look forward to seeing what else comes from Velocity over the next few months and the results of the $100,000 challenge in October.