StartupCafe

Flaminia Cavallo (Theory Mine/Vanity Theorems) won 1st Prize in the Scottish Institution of Enterprise’s (SIE) New Venture Competition! Flaminia, who is based on the 6th floor at Appleton Tower, is commericalising research based on her final year project which was supervised by the legendary Prof Alan Bundy at the School of Informatics.

Although Flaminia scooped first prize (package including £6000 cash plus support), two other Edinburgh startups also scooped prizes: namely Richard Burton (Nudge) and Jonathan Millin (Zoomatelo).

More information is available at the Launch.ed website (copied below).

Congratulations goes to University of Edinburgh graduate Flaminia Cavallo who won the Scottish Institute for Enterprise New Ventures Competition this week with her new venture “Theory Mine’. Theory Mine will be an ecommerce site giving customers the opportunity “discover” a novel mathematical theorem and have it registered in their name. The business will licence technology developed through 20 years of research at the University of Edinburgh. Flaminia is a recent graduate from the School of Informatics and the business idea developed from her final year project. Flaminia received £6000 cash plus intensive business support from SIE.

University of Edinburgh students dominated the new ventures category claiming wins in three of the five categories: Jonathan Millin (Social Enterprise) – ‘Zoomatelo’
Flaminia Cavallo (E-commerce/retail business) – ‘Vanity Theorems’

Richard Burton (Science, Engineering, or technology Business) – ‘Nudge’.

All three won a £1000 cash prize.

This is the third year in a row that University of Edinburgh students have won the SIE New Ventures competition, showing how Edinburgh leads the way in student enterprise. Student entrepreneurs at the University of Edinburgh have access to a wide range of support services including practioner run enterprise education, funding and incubation support, pitch coaching and practice, business planning and market research support through enterprise programmes such as Informatics Ventures, Prospekt, Business and Enterprise Training (Transkills), LAUNCH.ed and our enterprise clubs and societies.

The winners were announced at the Scottish Institute for Enterprise Gala awards dinner, held on Wednesday 17 March 2010 in Glasgow. The evening was focussed on the finalists of the national new ideas and venture competitions with overall winners being announced in both, along with intern and entrepreneurship educator of the year. The New Ideas competition was dominated by the University of Glasgow and Glasgow School of Art. The overall winners for the business ideas competition were Samuel Smith and Andrew from Morrison of Glasgow University with Vac-u-Loc who won £1000 cash. Entrepreneurship Educator of the Year went to Carol Langston (UHI Inverness) and Greg Sinclair of Glasgow University, with intern of the year going to Samuel Smith of Glasgow University.

Author: Rebecca Difford- Company Formation Executive