Are you Innovative?
Are you Entrepreneurial?
18 to 25 years old?
2009 Victoria Business Icon is coming!

Following enormous success in Western Australia and Queensland, Business Icon will be held in Melbourne for the first time form 24th - 31th August 2009. Business Icon is a program that will introduce some of Victoria's sharpest young minds to the world of competitive business. The program has some similarities to Donald Trump's 'The Apprentice' but is also markedly different. Contestants are judged as they complete a variety of business tasks, which have been specifically designed by current business leaders to fully test their skills, creativity and leadership in all aspects of business. Participants are eliminated after the completion of each task, and the final participant standing will be the 2009 Victoria Business Icon. Prizes in the past have included %5000 cash as well as fully expense paid trips to attend professional development courses.

Applications Close: Friday 31st July, 2009

Competition Dates: August 24th to August 31st, 2009

Formal business studies are not a requirement for this competition, which will provide an opportunity for individuals to showcase their natural business and entrepreneurial talent. The experience gained by the competition will further develop your business acumen and confidence, with many past participants springboarding their business ideas after the competition.

About One of Past Business Icon Winners

The first ever Business Icon winner, Mark Pozzi, started hi s own Tax Consultancy at age 22. Mark attributes Business Icon as the catalyst experience that opened his mind to the possibilities and gave him the experiential edge. After selling his consultancy last year and starting yet another business, he has just been named on the BRW Young Rich List. Mark is now a sponsors of the competition and regularly judges and gives interviews on the competition's behalf.

To register, sign up at www.vic.ausralianbusinessicon.com

This competition is run by our friends at AELC, please direct any further questions to: info@aelc.edu.au

Ernst & Young have put together a nice website packed with conversations from winners of the 'world entrepreneur of the year' awards.

It makes for some good reading/listening, with tips for up 'n' coming entrepreneurs, as well as some insights into what its like in the day to day life of an entrepreneur.

Check it out at: http://www.ey.com/conversations#

Posted by Amir @ 12:00pm, 22/6/09.

Interesting new book titled 'The Accidental Billionaires' about the Facebook founders. Talks about Zuckerburg as a geeky undergraduate hacking away at things and stumbling across the concept that became facebook... Given virtually everyone at uni uses facebook, insight into the backstory should be enlightening - or amusing at minimium.

Book comes out July 14 on Amazaon if I'm not mistaken.

Also, for a bit of a change - a job opportunity (for a startup at least).

Four Green Walls is a household energy efficiency startup created by Cool NRG (a gloabl carbon-trading firm, they also sponsored the sustainability prize at last years Innovators Challenge - held during Entrepreneurs Week).

At the moment they are serching for 'Green Guides' - enthusiastic people to go inspect + convert eligible houses. Strong community ties help. As does an entepreneurial attitude.

They're holding an information session this Thursday (18th) from 10:30am, at the Four Green Walls offices: level 1, 269 Stewart Street, Brunswick East (next to CERES). Call Four Green Walls on 9387 2694 for more info.

Posted by Amir @ 5pm, 15/6/09.

Topical...

Twitter - if you haven't heard of this one, were have you been? - founder Jack Dorsey, talks about what it takes to start up a company. Dorsey dropped out of New York University one semester short of graduating!

Video below (thanks to www.collegemogul.com):

Posted by Amir @ 10:50pm, 10/6/09.

Slow week as you can well imagine, what with everyone studying hard to ace there exams... or at least pass in some/most cases.

Came across this little number from the Foundation for Young Australians, some sort of social enterprise scholarship by the looks of it.

http://www.ecna.com.au/2009/05/search-for-australias-young-social-pionee... for details.

Don't forgt The Hive on tomorrow night either. Makes for a good break from study!

Posted by Amir @ 5:15pm, 8/6/09.

"Bill Gates was 19 when he came up with the idea for Microsoft. Michael Dell was the same age when he started selling computers out of his dorm room."

First few lines on an article about the 'Top 10' kid entrepreneurs coming up in tech.

An interesting read. Check out the whole article and slideshow: http://www.contentnext.com/econaffinity/list_intro/top-10-kids-in-tech/

One of the best is:

Good stuff to think about when your not studying for exams!

Posted by Amir @ 4:30pm, 3/6/09.

So,

A couple of us from Agents of Change (myself included) pitched today at the finals of the Melbourne City Pillar Challenge.

Was quite a nerve-racking experience to say the least! Not sure if it was because it was personally my first pitch competition as a participant, or because we had about 4 hours worth of prep on the pitch itself... Either way, was an awesome experience! I don't think we did enough to go through - there were some very serious looking competitors about - but we did learn a bit. A big thank you to my partner in crime Tian Yang too! It was his initiative that made us enter in the first place.

Not sure when exactly the results come out, but this place will be the first to know.

Whatever happens, hopefully they run the competition again next year. A city pillar is some fancied real estate, and I'm sure some entrepreneurial student types could go far with it.

Posted by Amir @ 7:25pm, 1/6/09.

Y-combinator has been mentioned on this blog before. It's a company which funds predominantly student startups in the US.

Paul Graham, entrepreneur and co-founder of Y-combinator has also been mentioned here a few times at least. He's got some awesome videos and articles on startups, particularly student startups.

Having just finished reading one such article http://www.paulgraham.com/mit.html I am again suitably impressed. His experience of student startups from the funding side must be second to none.

From the article, the quote I most liked was "As a young founder your strengths are: stamina, poverty, rootlessness, colleagues, and ignorance."

Again, the link is above, and it's definitely worth a read. A good 15 minute distraction from exam/essay study if ever there was one!

Posted by Amir @ 10:20am, 30/5/09.

Just the other day we heard about a few website projects coming out of a class taken by Sarah Stokely, a tech journalist and teacher of some digital media classes at uni. (Sarah blogs at http://www.foxforcefive.com/ for those interested).

Without knowing too many details, it looks like the students had to come up with a web startup, possibly within a limited timeframe.

The websites are described below, all appear community based, but are different from each other.

MelbinNoir is a free, user-centred directory that provides information about Jazz artists, events and venues around Melbourne.

http://melbinnoir.com.au/wordpress/

UpUrAlley is a site with sections for rental listings, job openings, business directories, upcoming events, restaurant reviews, and more so that you can use UpUrAlley in the way that makes life easier for you. And your neighbour can use it in the way that makes life easier for him or her. And then, if you'd like, you can use it to easily make your neighbour a part of your life.

http://upuralley.com/

Chockrocks will satisfy all of your Melbourne chocolate needs, with everything from chocolate recipes to reviews of local chocolate producers to insight into its rich history. Compiled for fellow Melburnians and visitors to Melbourne, this collection of all things cacao-related is sure to hit the spot.

http://chocrocks.wordpress.com/

Good to see and hear of this sorta stuff happening on campus. If you know of anything else that is interesting/relevant do let us know.

Posted by Amir @ 10:00am, 28/5/09.

Found an awesome short article about student entrepreneurs. Particularly focused on the initial stages.

The aptly titled 'Navigating the jungle; a survival guide for student entrepreneurs' has some great tips and resources. I haven't checked out the rest of the blog in detail, but other posts look promising.

David Langer, the person who authors the blog, speaks from personal experience as he goes through his efforts starting up www.groupspaces.com

Check it out at: http://davidlanger.co.uk/2009/05/17/navigating-the-jungle-a-survival-gui...

Posted by Amir @ 10:30am, 27/5/09.

Internships at startups and SMB's!

A new startup out of Oxford called Enternships > http://www.enternships.com/ < hooks up students and recent graduates with startups and small business's around the globe.

It acts as a match making service, and for now it's free to put up your profile. They do plan on adding premium services at a price later in the play.

It will be interesting to see if this takes off. Most student types think of internships only with the big boys. A smaller placement offers more hands on opportunities. A chance to have a big impact in the venture in question. And work closer to those at the top.

This sort of thing - if done well - could easily be imitated here, by us even! We'll be watching to see what comes of it, let us know if you're interested in trying to do something similar locally already.

Posted by Amir @ 3:45pm, 26/5/09.

A quick update on the City Pillar Challenge.

Finalists have been announced, and an entry from one of our own has made it through! Watch this space for more detail, the final presentations are going down on June 1.

*Disclaimer - I'm part of the team : )

Also, a reminder about the upcoming events this week: NICTA have an interview with an entrepreneur tomorrow night, and AIMIA talk about the risk involved in social media Wednesday (check the calendar section for more detail).

Posted by Amir @ 6:00pm, 25/5/09.

The Melbourne University Entrepreneurial Challenge ended this past week. After 3 months of fierce competition, 6 teams made it to the finals.

They'd pitched to expert panels and written business plans for their ideas. A few of the entrants were already up and running come the final round.

The winners were announced at a fancy dinner. With a last minute addition of an undergraduate prize to!

A big shout out goes to Melbourne Op Shop Tours - you may remember them from such Agents of Change competitions as IdeaPitch 08 - who took out the undergraduate prize. Being the furthest team to progress through our 1K competition aimed at prepping students for MUEC.

www.Rentoid.com took out second place. Bakrest first.

Posted by Amir @ 7:30pm, 24/5/09.

MicroJobs

This was the other half of the two job sites (as the name would suggest).

They were up in quick time, and spread the word far and wide. Even though the early listings were fictitious, it didn't stop them taking a phone interview for the 'playboy bunny' position!

There pitch:

Posted by Amir @ 1:30pm, 21/5/09.

Rate My Guts

This team more than any embraced their entrepreneurial. Up until the 11th hour (literally an hour before the product launch), they were a health comparison site.

Then, after a few minor complications and a lot of soul searching, decided a place to share gory stories was far more there bent.

The results you can decide for yourself...

Part 1

Part 2

Posted by Amir @ 2:10pm, 20/5/09.

One Off Jobs was one of two job sites coming out of the camp.

They were head to head in a battle for honours internally (despite protestations that it wasn't a competition).

This team was, far and away, the most dedicated. With all of there members staying up 24 hours plus. Putting in the work while others slept.

What isn't shown in the pitch is their funny promotional video. You should check out their site if you haven't seen it yet.

Posted by Amir @ 12:20pm, 19/5/09.

Just wording people up on a few upcoming events.

Firstly, the people at Melbourne Junior Chamber of Commerce are putting on a nice little shinding at the KPMG building, with an impressive speaker list. This one is going down on the 21st.

Then there is NICTA's Meet the Founder series. An interview with Dr Alan Finkel, of Axon Instruments, which was sold for $200m in 2004, and is currently the Chancellor of Monash University. Free and on campus, they also provide some decent food for attendees! 26th of May is the date it takes place.

In other news, the Melbourne University Entrepreneurial Challenge (MUEC) is up to the finals. We will know the winners by Friday, with a couple of our own members competing for the to honours!!

Best of luck to them.

Posted by Amir @ 1:20pm, 16/5/09.

iBrewit was a fans favourite from the start!

Ever the underdog, the team was reduced from 5 to 4, and momentarily 3 from late Friday night. That they had one coder working continuously for over 24 hours helped, but it was a massive effort all round.

A community for local brewers, complete with wiki and forums, was up and running in quick time. And the lure of free beer to the first 50 who sign up was a strong draw card.

Their pitch:

Posted by Amir @ 2:00pm, 15/5/09.

Conversion Space

This team as star studded. All four of them had previous entepreneurial experience. Mark Parncutt and James Ramsay, lead coders on the conversion space team, have both been successful in previous entrepreneurial competitions.

Conversion Space was a big challenge, and this team worked hard, during the night you could see the stress on their faces as the deadlines approached. Business/marketing team members Roshni Govindaraj and Grace Sia even managed to get themselves banned from facebook spreading the word!

It all came together in the end though, you can see their pitch below:

Posted by Amir @ 3:40pm, 13/5/09.

So,

ChoreCop was an interesting one.

They started out with an idea for providing budgeting/financial services for students on line. After about an hour or two, it dawned on them that this wasn't going to be accomlished in the time allowed. And quickly went back to the drawing board.

They re-emerged with a simple idea of helping those in share houses sort out their domestic chores. It was real, filled a niche, and they were off and running.

It ended up being voted best of the camp by the people at Anthill!

Their final presentation.

Part 1:

and part 2:

Posted by Amir @ 6pm, 10/5/09.