Bond Demo Day for Business Studentsse

Seven Somerset College students were invited by the Bond Business School to pitch their new business ideas at the annual Gold Coast Demo Day, Wednesday 14 November. These new student developed businesses were first conceptualised during the Celebration of Entrepreneurship in October this year.

The aim of the Bond Demo Day is to foster the entrepreneurial spirit on the Gold Coast, as our city has the highest per capita rate of business ownership in Australia.

The first team to pitch on the night were our Somerset Alumni Middle Years Pitch Competition winners, including Cawin Ashok Kumar, Jaime Dwyer, and Marcus Nguyen. These four students pitched their newly developed and fully operational citation software called Minima. The crowd was amazed by the sophisticated algorithms that run this software, particularly given that all members of the team are less than 14 years of age.

The second group to pitch on the night won our Bond University Senior Years Pitch Competition at the Celebration of Entrepreneurship. This team included Anna Harris, Sarah McTaggart, Ashleigh Shannon and Eva Wallace. Like Team Tangram before them, they too received high praise and are close to securing mentoring support from several high profile Gold Coast entrepreneurs who see huge potential in their idea to use recycled plastic bags to produce active wear.

At the networking event after the pitch competition, students were introduced by Dr Baden U’Ren from Bond University to four Gold Coast entrepreneurs including Eden Shirley from Autoguru, Michael Metcalfe from Kynd, Josh Murchie from Little Phil and Diana Scott from Frontier Pets. As a result of introductions to these local entrepreneurs, our students have been able to take the first steps to acquire Angel Investor funding for their new businesses.

These students have done both their families and the College proud!

It is wonderful to see the entrepreneurial mindset is alive and well in the Somerset College community!