Last week (21-22-23rd October 2016) I have been invited by Aurore Hochard, Head of Entrepreneurship Programmes at CASS Business School, to mentor students from City University of London in the development of their startups ideas. The event called, CityStarters Weekend,  was extremely popular and over 100 students took part.

On Saturday morning I also gave a talk on evaluating opportunities and finding the problem-solution fit and on Sunday evening I was one of the Judges at the  final pitch event, when we selected 4 winners:

CityGo – a welcome pack for foreign students

The Oven – an incubator for food startups

RememberWhen – a markeplace where journalist and video makers can be hired to record your life experiences

Wooland – a place where musicians collaborate with artists and learn business skills

The event was extremely well organised and structured to guide students in the development of their ideas. Many people from the Business Design Tools network have been given talks (Joanna Alpa on Building Products/Brands and Zoe Peden on Acquiring Customers) and have helped mentoring startups in their journeys (including Juhi Gore).

It has been an amazing weekend of hard work and incredibly interesting projects and it has been difficult to select the winners.

I hope some of these ideas will come to life.