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Thursday 1 December 2016

Winning the third place in Challenge for Innovation and got the seed capital

It was a great experience to participate in the Challenge for Innovation program from17th to 28th of November 2016, organized by the Science and Innovation Park at UAE University. More than 100 groups submitted their innovative ideas for startup. 35 groups were chosen to be in the competition, only 23 continued till the end of the program. Then 16 groups pitched their ideas to a panel of experts, who chose only 10 groups to be accepted in the incubator program and the first 6 teams get seed capital for the startup.
I was the team leader of my project Linovate (Link-to-Innovate) which is a platform to link academia with industry. My team consists of five members mainly from College of IT and Business. We were enrolled to 16 workshops in teamwork skills and business fundamentals. Also, they provided teams of supervisors and mentors to help in building the business plan and the pitch.
During this great experience I have learned a lot of things. One of the most important things was the Win-Win deal and focusing on the customer validation even before starting building the product. This is a key point for a successful startup. In addition, teamwork is significantly important as no single member is able to do everything. Sharing knowledge and trust build a strong team.
We won the third place in this competition and we are qualified to enter the business incubator and make our dream comes true.