On 24th of October sTARTUp Lab hosted a Mentor Feedback Carousel which brought together STARTER programme teams and experienced mentors to help teams develop their ideas. Teams rotated between mentors to get feedback to their ideas from different experts. By the end of the event, mentors invested virtual play money checks to the teams they liked the best.
Kiur Kimmel presenting ideas to mentor Chris Thompson
Mentors got the virtual play money checks worth 100 000 €, 50 000 € and 10 000 €. By the end of the day, mentors shared the virtual play money between their favorite teams as investments! One team received a direct pass to Ajujaht TOP100 teams! Harri Tallinn, from Ajujaht gave this award to the team CommuniCare whose idea is to help people in care homes be better connected with the world around them.
Team Communicare with head of Ajujaht Harri Tallinn
Team MEDEA won the play money game collecting 550 000 € investment and was awarded with every start-up’s dream book „The Start-up Owner’s Manual“. Sophio Japharidze from MEDEA said: “Getting that kind of investment from mentors shows that they have faith in us and that our idea has potential.” MEDEA is developing medical device integrated with alarm system that continuously measures oxygen level and heart rate. Team CommuniCare was runner-up collecting 330 000 € and Gerifix came third with 270 000 €. Gerifix is creating a system that analyses falling experience of elderly people in order to prevent future falls.
Kristina Viznovich from Law Firm LMP surprised all STARTERtartu teams by announcing that LMP provides STARTER teams an opportunity to get 1-hour free legal advice. Teams can approach LMP with questions from variety of areas, ranging from data protection to entering foreign markets.
Head of Ajujaht Harri Tallinn, has been a mentor for STARTER teams in Tartu on several occasions. According to him every idea has potential when you put work into it. “None of the ideas should be underestimated, because often, at first glance, the most foolish and craziest ideas can become the coolest and most successful ones,” said Harri Tallinn and encouraged teams to apply for Ajujaht.
All the teams were very grateful to the mentors. According to teams’ feedback they got advice from different perspectives and confidence to move on. It was also mentioned that mentors had pointed out critical aspects of their idea development and warned about mistakes that should not be made.
Team MEDEA with mentor Rimante Valancauskaite
Norman Vester, a first year undergraduate student at the School of Economics and Business Administration at the University of Tartu and one of the leaders of the CommuniCare team, commented: “Because CommuniCare is a social enterprise, we did not expect to be selected among Ajujaht Top 100 teams. Therefore, it was a big surprise for us. I believe that one of the cornerstones of success was our clear objective. In addition, we have conducted market research and interviews to get a better overview of the problems we are facing. We have worked hard and at the sTARTUp Lab workshops, we focused on analysing the feedback received and immediately made the necessary adjustments. Now it is the time to review the tips from mentors and build an initial version of our service.”
sTARTUp Lab’s good partner Tartu City Government was represented by their Marketing Manager Helen Kalberg as a mentor. According to Helen, all teams were very ambitious and she saw great potential in some teams.
Maret Ahonen, Manager of the sTARTUp Lab and STARTERtartu programme is grateful for the mentors for their time and attention spent on mentoring teams. “It’s great that we have so many mentors in Tartu who are excited about students’ ideas, are willing to listen to them and give suggestions. Moreover, it makes us happy to see that several alumni of the STARTER programme showed up as mentors”, said Maret.
Mentors
sTARTUp Lab would like to thank all the mentors: Harri Tallinn (Ajujaht), Taavi Tamm (STARTER@Pärnu), Kadri Haljas (Triumf Health), Chris Thompson (Neuroactive AI), Vaido Mikheim (Tartu Science Park), Kristina Viznovitš (LMP), Sven Illing (sTARTUp Day), Evgenia Trofimova (Introwise), Alo Peets (Unversity of Tartu), Indrek Tulp (Selfdiagnostics), Rimante Valancauskaite (Nevercode), Helen Kalberg (Tartu City Governement ), Mari-Liis Kärsten (Nortal) and Ants-Oskar Mäesalu (TRIT).
Event photos on sTARTUp Lab Facebook album. Photos were taken by Egert Lehtla and sTARTUp Lab.
The event was financed by the European Social Fund.
Further information: Andres Vaher, Marketing & Communications Specialist, sTARTUp Lab, University of Tartu, +372 5558 7359, andres.vaher@ut.ee