Dare to think big!

The cross-university programme on startup entrepreneurship and innovation management ended with a pitch competition.

Great novelty of this autumn’s term is that (on the initiative of the Central Bank of Hungary [MNB]), which has been supporting the Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences of BME for years) the Startup Management subject was officially opened to students of two more universities - Budapest Metropolitan University (METU) and John von Neumann University (NJU). The aim of the cross-university course was to create a more diverse, more effective and mixed team of students with different cultures, mindsets and factual knowledge from the three universities.

The 15 teams formed in September stayed together, worked through the term and presented their pitches at the end-of-term class, where the faculty team expected them to show, in addition to the compulsory elements of the usual investor pitch, how and to what extent the validating market research had generated a change in the original idea. For some teams, the so-called "pivot" was so great that the original name was changed to reflect the new direction.

Students who successfully completed the subject were eligible to apply for a scholarship, funded by the MNB Hungarian Innovation Hub (HIH) programme, which supports the availability of the course. In addition to 20 students from METU and NJE, 43 BME students fulfilled the requirements, i.e. they participated in two full-day professional events during the term and did meaningful work in practical classes from week to week. In order to give this educational experiment the attention and professional recognition it deserves in the Hungarian startup ecosystem, the Hungarian Innovation Hub organised a pitch competition on 15 December at the MNB headquarters in Krisztina körút, at the end of the term.

The jury reached its decision in less time than estimated. Gergely Balázs, an investment expert at Vespucci venture capital fund, gave a general, comprehensive assessment, encouraging teams to think on an international scale and to be more courageous, while pointing out that investors are most interested in numbers and figures, which the competitors included less often than they should have.

The awards were presented by Péter Sajtos, representing MNB.

First prize went to the Noted team. Their solution responds to a problem that many university students experience during exam periods: the available presentations and abstracts are not sufficient for studying. This AI-based solution collects the necessary explanatory texts based on the content of the tutorial slides and notes, and generates specific customised notes and mock exams for users to ensure efficient studying. The content created can be shared between members of the Noted community.

Second place was awarded to BridgeAID, the team that developed a bridge monitoring solution. Data from sensors on the bridges is analysed using a proprietary algorithm that provides a more accurate way than ever before to infer the traffic passing through, the parameters of individual vehicles and the condition of the bridge. This innovative system is of great help to road management companies and regulatory and supervisory authorities, not only in Hungary, as there are tens of thousands of road and rail bridges in EU member states alone.

Third prize was won by SphereMotion, who have developed an automated way to create real-time animation for live music, even for a small-budget club concert.

The three outstanding award-winning teams, which will be joined by 8 BME-affiliated team members, will receive an additional 1 year of incubation, jointly provided by MNB HIH and BME U[S]3, to ensure successful product development and market entry.

The special incubation prize of the Future Founders Club, which sponsored the event, was awarded to Fraudshield, who use their software fraud prevention solution to filter out phishing and scam darkweb addresses during everyday online purchases and payments.

Of course, IVIM and the Startup Management subject based on that will continue to be taught as usual for BME students in the spring term, but based on the experience of the first cross-university course, in the autumn term of the academic year 2024-2025 (using the experience gained now) students from the three universities can again create mixed teams on the 10th floor of Building Z. The planned changes will mainly affect the programme and structure of the one-day bootcamp events, but according to the organisers the pitch competition, which will award valuable prizes, will definitely be held again next December in the same way.

Medium-term objectives of the cross-university programme include that MNB HIH and BME U[S]3 will organise "train-the-trainer" programmes to develop a comprehensive curriculum and, based on this, train university lecturers to be able to deliver theoretical and workshop-stream-like practical training in their own institutions similar to the IVIM and Startup Management subjects. Based on the feedback of foreign guests, the content and methodology of BME's programmes in this field are comparable to those of internationally renowned institutions. In the longer term, an interactive startup distance learning platform for foreign students will be created using self-developed teaching materials in a joint workshop of MNB HIH and the three universities, under the professional leadership of BME.

BV-KJ

photo: Viktor Kiss, MNB