De studerendes månedsmagasin - Studenterlauget

enture
bring your ideas
cup
to life
How do ideas come to life? What separates the good ideas from the bad? Are the only ideas brought to life coming
from high profile engineers? Questions like these might have crossed your mind, and you might even have wished
to be the brain behind Skype or Google
Text: Stine Trolle
Picture: Esben Hjorth
What is Venture Cup?
As a student at ASB, you, and any other
students under AU, have the opportunity
to bring your ideas to life by entering the
cross-disciplinary business plan competition,
Venture Cup. The idea behind Venture Cup
is to give students at Danish Universities
and other higher educational institutions
the chance to turn their ideas and projects
into real life businesses. “In order to enter
the competition, students do not necessarily
need to have an idea or a complete business
plan nor a complete Venture cup team.
Students are able to enter the competition
if they believe that they can offer skills that
other teams might be able to make the
use of, “says Anja Bukhave Larsen, project
assistant at Region Midt Jylland. Networking
workshops set up by Venture Cup provide
students with the opportunity to discuss
their ideas with other students who might
possess skills in other fields. Thereby, it
is possible to test, develop and optimize
an idea before handing over a complete
business plan to the judges.
What is in it for me?
By being a contestant in the Venture Cup
competition, you will not only get the
opportunity to have your ideas evaluated,
critiqued and judged by business profiles,
such as Dennis Westergaard, Business
Development Manager at Danfoss Ventures,
Jacob Sand CEO of Capital+ and other
8 COMMERCIEL - DE STUDERENDES MÅNEDSMAGASIN
business profiles. It will also give you
the opportunity to improve your resume
by adding “Venture Cup contestant”
to it. “Being a part of the Venture Cup
competition, you have the chance to get
feed-back on some of the ideas and projects
that you have developed throughout the
semester from professional real life business
people, all free of charge. You get an insight
into how things are in the real business
world, and you get the chance to present
your idea and profile to high profile business
people, which might be to your advantage
later on,” says Hans William Falck, Masters’
Student in IT and Information Studies.
He and two other students are the people
behind TAG, a TAG-shirt that is designed
and developed to help blind people get
around in their every day life. At the
regional final, their idea was rewarded with
DDK 10.000.
Peder Østergaard, Vice Dean of
ASB and board member of Venture Cup
representing AU agrees with Hans William
Falck. “The competition gives the students
a miniature image of what the real business
world is like.” Peder Østergaard explains
that there has been a good support from
the business community and thinks that
both students and businesses benefit
from the interaction, and that the Venture
Cup competition gives the educational
institutions ideas to new cross-disciplinary
educational programs.
Mads Kramhøft
Anja Bukhave Larsen
Two students who have proven
that cross-disciplinary projects are worth
developing are ASB students Martin Klint
and John Agerholm. In a project with
Hvidovre hospital, they realized their idea
of Immutell and they were also the winners
of DDK 10.000 at the regional Venture
Cup final. The two Master’s Students are
blogging on ASB’s web page and are now
preparing for the national final where the
first prize is a sum of DDK 250.000.
How to enter Venture Cup
“One of the first days of class, one of our
professors encouraged us to enter the
Venture Cup competition because it gives us
the opportunity to put theory and projects
into a real life perspective,” says Rasmus
Enø, another of the three master brains
behind TAG. The three students all agree
that professors and teachers at the different
faculties have a huge impact on how many
students that enter the competition. Anja
Bukhave Larsen explains that the amount
of entering teams has tippled this year in
region Midt Jylland; it might be because
promotion has been a bit broader this year,
or because students now have a better idea
of what Venture Cup is. Conclusively, she
points out that it still is possible to enter
the competition on www.venturecup.dk by
submitting a 15-30 pages business plan of
your idea by 12 May 2008.