Westminster Enterprise Network (WeNetwork), the University of Westminster’s entrepreneurial community, delivered their Pioneer Programme Demo Day on Tuesday 29 March in partnership with VoXo.
The 14-week Pioneer Programme offered selected students to take part in expert-led workshops, mentoring and opportunities to connect with investors, inspirational founders, and industry leaders. The programme is underlined by WeNetwork’s mission to make entrepreneurship and industry more inclusive and representative of the diversity of the University of Westminster student community, by contributing to the building of a diverse, experienced, confident, and highly skilled talent pipeline.
VoXo, who partnered with WeNetwork on this year’s programme, are a powerful community providing women with greater opportunities for public and professional speaking by connecting them online with the global events industry.
The event featured a special guest speaker, Bode Abifarin, COO at Flutterwave and an impressive line-up of judges including Jimmy Desai, Commercial and Tech Lawyer, Sean Williams, Entrepreneur and Investor, and Clelia Bevillard, Senior Student Enterprise Manager.
During the Demo Day, 17 students who completed the programme were offered a £250 bursary to develop their business idea, and received certificates for completing the programme and badges to share on their social networks. Seven finalists pitched their business ideas to a live audience and panel of judges to compete for first, second and third place. The third place prize was award to George Dechausay with G Three, while Charlotte Donivar placed second with Arc-Tec and first place was awarded to Tobias Gamper with Science Lens.
Talking about the Pioneer Programme Demo Day, Clelia Bevillard, Senior Student Enterprise Manager at Westminster, said: “It is on a very positive note that we wrap up the Pioneer Programme for this academic year with a line-up of finalists who presented their idea with great confidence and enthusiasm, rallying the support of the panel of judges. Participants of this programme received a great deal of support and encouragement from the Voxo team which led to the development of many commercial ideas and we were pleased to see several Pioneer participants follow through their ambitions and apply for our Big Idea competition to unlock funding. I hope their enthusiasm will continue as more support is available from WeNetwork in the form of mentoring and events.”
Karen Winton, Co-founder of VoXo, added: “We were delighted to be selected to run this year's Pioneer Programme with the Enterprise Network team and have thoroughly enjoyed working alongside them and being part of the students' journey over the past few months. Congratulations not only to our winners and finalists but to all those who completed the course and built out their business models and pitch decks. It was no mean feat to meet the programme requirements alongside their regular coursework, and we are proud of them all for their hard work and commitment.”
Find out more about WeNetwork at the University of Westminster.
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