Posted by kari.petroschmidt
THE WINNERS
First off, I’ll start by announcing the winners. In first place we have Ryan Everton of Globelet (Otago University), the sustainable plastic cup aimed at reducing waste in New Zealand’s major festivals and events. Ryan already has a commission with Forsyth Barr Stadium and a client in Australia, with more on the way. Globelet is a part of his Valueroad Project, whose sole mission is to reduce waste in New Zealand and the rest of the world “by creating products of value that promote sustainability in a positive and exciting way.”
In second place, David Booth and Harrison Uffindell of MeatMail, the meat delivery service for students in Dunedin which already has 86 customers and plans for expansion to Christchurch and Palmerston North.
The ever-charming Kevin Smith came in third with Sgt Apples, the new and more portable cider in a can (Otago University) and in forth place we had Dave Cameron of LearnCOACH, the interactive, multi-media tutoring system for NCEA students in New Zealand (Otago University).
Dave Cameron (LearnCOACH), Kevin Smith (Sgt Apples), David Wilson (Audacious Competition Co-Ordinator) and Deborah Lambie (Simple Health)
William Austen Maccabee received the prize for Best Small Business with A1 Tree Care, the arborist business which will utilise and foster Polytechnic arborist students through the Community Student Arborist Project and aims to keep New Zealand’s tree’s healthy in our urban environments. Soft Hit Hand Guard by Tom Maguire (Otago Polytechnic) received Best Design with his new, more comfortable and safer dirt-bike hand-guard. Plastication by Eleanor Parker (Otago University) received Best Social Entrepreneurship with her industrial scale national closed loop plastic recycling system for New Zealand, reducing our dependence on crude oil and minimising environmental contamination from plastics in our landfills. Finally, AquaFORCE by Carl Crawford, Fiorenzo Rutschmann and Daniel Hampton (Otago Polytechnic) received Best Technology for their new app aimed at recording and storing the data produced by aquariums.
Eleanor Parker of Plastication
We also had a top 15 to recognise the hard-work and achievements of many of those in the competition. This included Natasha Stillman, Chontelle Syme, Freya Haanan and Alice Jackson of Throw Like a Girl (the mentoring program for young girls), Jenny Yun and Kendall Flutey of Atticus (the cloud-based software to help legal professionals share information with their clients), Fabienne Le Comte, Rachel Kaspers and Libby Neale of Black Cat Early Learning (aimed at combining traditional methods of learning e.g. books, with new technologies e.g. CDs and apps, for 0-5 year olds), Alex Black and Shun Yu-Wu of Trust Bee (a start-up aimed at providing confidence to consumers over the internet), Hannah Feenstra of Real Meals (an online food delivery service which delivers seasonal produce, coupled with new recipes for every season), Deborah Lambie of Simple Health (a software aimed at a fully integrated NZ healthcare system) and Annabelle Molloy of Belle’s Babysitters (a new babysitting agency in Dunedin). You guys are awesome!
ENTERTAINMENT AND OTHER LOCAL START-UPS
The evening featured a heap of local talent. Julien Van Mellhearts, Audacious top 5 winner from 2011 with Namida Wasabi Vodka, began the evening, singing opera from the mezzanine of the historic Public Trust Building. Local band Summer Thieves graced us with their funk/reggae beats and we were privileged to witness the first ever live acoustic performance of Jenny Yun, 2012 Audacious contestant and top 15 winner.
Jake Barton and Johnny Ward of Summer Thieves
Jenny Yun of Atticus
Local video, web, art and design start-up Motion Sickness Studio featured their show-reel, as well as a video regarding starting up in Dunedin. Jon Thom of Moodie Tuesday also featured some of his art works.
Fabienne Le Comte of Black Cat Early Learning exhibited her water colour prints on the upper mezzanine, as part of an initiative to raise money for the Otago Polytechnic Childcare Centre. Finally, George and William of W and G Projects displayed their wooden laser-cut sculptures as centre-pieces and even made the top 40 wooden name-tags with the Audacious logo. Stellar!
SPONSORS
We had some great involvement from our sponsors this year. Jarod Chisholm of WHK and David Frame of ANZ were both judges this year and were involved in a number of events. David spoke at our Pitching event in Semester 1 and Jarod at the Open Workshop for the Business Plan, as well as at the Audacious Awards Ceremony. One thing that really stood out for me with Jarod’s speech was his emphasis on passion – as something that will pull you through the hard times and that will get other people to believe in and invest in you.
Jarod Chisholm of WHK
CONNECTIONS
The awards event, like all our Audacious events, was also about facilitating connections between people in the Dunedin business community. A few examples of this in the program so far include Jenny Yun and Kendall Flutey getting in touch with Summer Thieves and Ryan Everton, George Wilkins and William McCallum of W and G Projects selling their wooden laser-cut sculptures, Audacious judge Sarah Girvan meeting with Nick Cleaver of Multiverse after his Dragon’s Den, the boys from MeatMail getting in touch with the developers behind AquaFORCE and Andy Foster of Scarfie Textbooks to help develop their website, and Audacious judge Rosey McConnen connecting with Omri Moyal of ShareItOn and Annabelle Molloy of Belle’s Babysitters.
The evening aimed to speak to the spirit of starting-up. Doing things differently, working together, celebrating creativity and our achievements. So we want to say congratulations to all the winners, but also to everyone who has been involved with and contributed to Audacious this year. A BIG thanks from Jessie, David and myself.
Finally, Motion Sickness Studios has made a wee video on the night, you can check it out below!