Deakin Startup Competition 21 – Finals Showcase

Our first-ever Deakin Startup Competition is coming to the pointy end of proceedings!

Over the last 3 months we have had over 300+ people engaging with us and attending our development events and were thrilled to receive 50 applications to the competition from 97 Founders. In Round 2, 15 workshops, masterclasses with our expert guests and facilitators resulted in 29 strong applications making it over the line at the end of Round 2. Our round two judges had a challenging task to select the top eight. 

REGISTER YOUR SEAT FOR OCTOBER 21, 4pm-6pm AEDT  

Join us on Thursday, October 21 from 4pm-6pm to hear about eight new ideas from the Deakin community, these ideas are seeded from passion, from need and from drive to see a difference in the problems that have been uncovered.  

TAKE A LOOK AT OUR INCREDIBLE FINALISTS HERE  

These ideas are not pitching for investment, these Founders are coming with their vision, their work and want to share it with more people as they navigate their next steps.  

The outcome that we hoped for when this competition first came about was that we could 

  1. Honour the courage to try 
  1. Support the growth it takes to keep showing up 

…and we hope that at this stage, at the end of the competition, the finalists, winners and go- getters were at a stage in the journey that would make them a strong candidate for a real world.  

These pitches are different, and so they should be. They are not pitching for investment; they are pitching for help with their next step.  They are pitching to show that they know and love their customer, and why you should too. 

We are zooming on the part of the start-up journey that is often overlooked in favour of building a product. 

Rather than all judges all ask the same thing – “Have you spoken to your customers” – we hope that our judges and audience will remark that they understand, they can relate, they know someone that would benefit, and they have some ideas on how they can help. Ah, every early-stage Founders dream 😊.  

We wanted to own that as our goal so that we could put Founders first no matter where they were one their journey, and in turn, show up for SPARK Deakin’s values and continue to live and breathe those values. 

REGISTER YOUR SEAT FOR OCTOBER 21, 4pm-6pm AEDT  

We hope that you can join us as we celebrate them and support the problems, they are solving at the Final event on Thursday evening (Oct 21 4pm-6pm).