Today me and Fergus went to a meet the mentors event at Sync the City!
We began by finding the building where the event was held, which was ‘Fuel studios,’ a lovely breakout room that was really open, with fun seating like swings and noise cancelling seating areas, which we thought were perfect for socialising and networking – which is exactly what we did!
Whilst it was a little bit scary at first, because everyone there seemed to be a little bit older than us, and members of the industry we hoped to break out into, we were offered some drinks by one of the mentors, a developer named (I forgot name). We sat on the swing seats whilst he told us about the minute long pitches and some of the parts we weren’t sure on, and let us ask him questions about the event, which later on, the event runner (also forgot name) spoke about in more depth, pictured below.
We were told that whilst the one minute pitches were not needed by all members, you would lose nothing by giving it a go, which got me and Fergus thinking of start up companies that we could pitch. After talking it over with one of the mentors, we were offered the chance to present a rough draft to the rest of the group. My idea (please bare in mind I came up with it on the spot,’ was regarding student chat rooms, a source of communication for students linking to societies, accommodation, courses, and anything else, all in one place, as opposed to the 15 group chats on 5 different platforms that a normal user would need to join and manage, something I pointed out in my pitch. I ended the pitch noting that it would be for profit, as an app for student could easily advertise student based events, working with societies and clubs to create revenue for all partners, and stated that whilst not everyone was a uni student once, every uni student was lonely once, and it was important for such communication to be accessible and viable.
Fergus pitched an idea regarding a ticketing app for travel, which I thought was really good! We had a really nice time overall and after meeting a lot of the other attendees, made friends of other arts students, industry professionals, coffee shop owners, gamers, and self proclaimed ‘nerds.’
We ended our night with a celebratory spoons trip, which Fergus would like to comment was ‘a well deserved bevvy,’ after our terrifying pitches, in which I actually enjoyed a lot, and helped me move out of my comfort zone.