Six new Aberdeen businesses have been awarded a share of £30,000 of equity-free funding at the latest Robert Gordon University (RGU) Startup Accelerator Showcase on May 11.
Now in its fifth year, the entrepreneurial programme has supported over 120 businesses across the region that have gone on to create employment and contribute significant economic and social impact in the North East and beyond.
The heavily anticipated Showcase event offered the final 16 entrepreneurial teams an opportunity to exhibit their venture before eight selected finalists took to the stage to pitch in front of three judges, an engaged audience, and hundreds more via live stream.
Success stories on the night included Codelion, winner of the Innovation Impact Award, and Members Guest, who claimed the Community Impact Award. Both early-stage businesses won £8,000 of equity-free prize money for their startup enterprise.
Marcin Jedrol and Shibo Mitchell, both application software development graduates from RGU, invented Codelion, a creative and education social media app for children to learn programming on.
On their win, Marcin said: “We put a lot of work into this and we have customers already so I’m very pleased. We were working on targeting the award with what we do and I think everybody in our team deserves a shout out for how hard they worked. We’re just super happy to win.”
Members Guest is an innovation from Stuart Wright who aims to grow the game and bring golfers together through an app inspired by a mix of Airbnb and Tinder, matching golfers to offer cheaper rounds at often expensive member only golf clubs.
Stuart said: “I’m a great believer in the game of golf. I think it’s a fantastic sport that everybody should at least try and I’m really hopeful that these extra funds will be put to good use and help the app scale”.
The Audience Award, decided by audience vote, also claimed £8,000 and was won by Assetworx for their subscription service which offers architecture, engineering, and design students’ access to a range of technical assets, from CADblocks to vector files.
Joshua Ekekwe, one of six in the team, was grateful for the funding award: “It’s hard to get capital, especially for start-ups having to apply for funding so it’s nice to have something now to get started. We can now build a team and hire some freelance designers to build the assets we need”.