Ten leading UK start-ups pitched their pioneering business plans to a panel of judges made up of industry experts and a team from A&N Media.
The five most innovative and promising companies were awarded with a one-year scholarship with Silicon Valley initiative 1M/1M.
The five winners are:
1) goCar Share: a service that connects drivers with passengers who wish to ‘car share’ allowing them to share costs.
2) Platter: a special food blog allowing users to share recipes, pictures and ideas with each other. (Essentially, a cross between Instagram and Pinterest for food.)
3) Enjoy! Karaoke: A Facebook service that gives music fans the chance to ‘karaoke’ to their favourite songs online.
4) Insane Logic: an educuational iPad app, MyChoicePad, which uses symbols, speech and sign language to help children and adults with learning difficulties.
5) thestudentjob.com: an online job portal connecting student with local employers looking for casual staff.
The judges for the contest were Kevin Beatty, CEO of A&N Media, Dominique Trempont, Board Member, DMGT (parent company of A&N Media), Bill Raduchel, Strategic Advisor to DMGT, Alberto Torres, former EVP and GM of Nokia’s MeeGo division, and Sramana Mitra, founder of 1M/1.
Kevin Beatty of A&N Media, said: “We’re delighted to have joined forces with TechHub to offer these promising start-ups the opportunity to gain invaluable experience and guidance from the team at 1M/1M. I was extremely impressed with the ideas and the energetic pitches to us and have no doubt these entrepreneurs have a bright future ahead of them.”
