Difference between revisions of "Team:UCL/Entrepreneurship"

Intro

In previous years, iGEM had an entrepreneurship track. Teams were encouraged to build projects and focus around commercializing their work. For 2015, we're removing the track and introducing an award for entrepreneurship.

Note: In order to be considered for the Best Supporting Entrepreneurship award, you must fill out this page.

The Best Supporting Entrepreneurship award recognizes exceptional effort to build a business case and commercialize an iGEM project. This award is open to all teams to show that entrepreneurship is something all teams can aspire to do with their project. This award can go to an new project, or to a previous project that a team aimed to commercialize. Have you filed a provisional patent on your project/device/process? Have you raised money to build and ship products? Have you pitched your idea to investors and received money? Complete the entrepreneurship section on the 2015 Judging form and tell us what you did. As always in iGEM, the aim is to impress the judges!

IndieBio - Cork

IndieBio is a biotech accelerator operating in San Francisco and Cork, Ireland. Many of the companies that come to IndieBio have no assets other than their own team and an idea. Within 100 days and with the guidance of mentors with expertise in a variety of fields these companies are expected to generate a proof of concept that will be used to secure additional funding.

On August 12th we attended the final Demo Day at IndieBio - Cork. We were pleasantly impressed with the quality of the projects and the skill with which the presentations were delivered. Upon speaking to several of the presenters we realised how far they had come in only 100 days. In at least one of the cases the co-founders had met online and had never seen each other in person before arriving in Ireland.

The companies that presented ranged from probiotics that slow down ageing to the synthetic production of ink and fragrances. Afterwards we were treated to dinner and a performance by a trio of fire-wielding performers.

ProKao

Stress is the paradoxical consequence of progress. Despite the fact that humanity has never experienced this much prosperity we still have the same brain our ancestors had living as hunter-gatherers. This predisposes us to a state of constant alertness and with that comes stress and worry.

Minimizing its impact on our health and mood is the best things we can do to ensure a long, healthy lifestyle. As this fact entered public consciousness it created a demand for solutions to this problem in the form of products that offer benefits without significant lifestyle changes.

Gut bacteria have enormous influence on mood and mental health. Our product, Prokao, will deliver a probiotic cocktail designed to optimize well being and minimize the harmful effects of stress. Customers would send us a sample that would be analyzed to create a personalized probiotic profile, which would then be used to tailor the personalized probiotic content of delicious chocolate squares to be consumed on a daily basis.

We are currently doing market research on the segment of functional foods and nutriceuticals, to bring into the market our new synbiotic: Prokao, a chocolate bar that will contain prebiotic oligosaccharides and probiotic bacteria that will act on your gut to improve your mental health and mood. As the market is currently in expansion, we believe that we will achieve to position ourselves in it with a successful high quality and innovative product.