10k Club Competition

Have a business innovative idea for a tech startup?

Would you like to secure $10,000 in funding to develop this idea?

The 10k Club is a partnership between UOW and Spinify giving students the opportunity to bring their innovative ideas to life. Since 2020, this competition has delivered funding and expert mentoring to help students turn their ideas into viable start-ups. 

Ready to take the leap? Submit your expression of interest to uow-giving@uow.edu.au to receive the link and application details. 

This donor is giving his time and 10k to students with bright ideas

There are many innovative ideas that come from students studying at the University of Wollongong (UOW), but most don't have the finances or support to turn those ideas into profitable businesses.

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About

In partnership with the Spinify Foundation and the Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences, the University of Wollongong has launched a challenge to help foster entrepreneurship and innovation in the technology industry.

One team or individual will have the opportunity to secure $10,000 in seed funding along with mentoring support and guidance to help turn their vision, desire and drive into a tangible product.

Overview

 

Eligible teams will be asked to submit a video application outlining their commitment to an idea, product concept and the key reasons for seeking financial and mentoring support. 

 

Video submissions will be reviewed by a selection panel, determining which teams will go on to present their concept during a face to face interview. 

View the 10k Club Competition flyer

Timeline

Competition opens
16 October 2024

Applications close
17 February 2025

Shortlist applicants notified
Between February to March 2025

Pitches commence
March 2025

älyTech: inaugural winners of the 10K Club

So my name's Andrea, but also I'm from Montenegro originally, but I've grown up here in the Illawarra and I'm currently studying a Bachelor of Computer Science. Well, actually, one of the staff members in the faculty of computer science, Dr. Mark Freeman, prompted myself and my group members to apply. We had approached him earlier with our own idea for a capstone project, and he thought that would be a perfect opportunity to, uh, use that project to apply for the club.

So, yeah, we did just that. It's a group study app that helps connect students for peer to peer learning. The idea behind it would be you could open your app, you could either search for somebody within your subject to study with immediately or to form a study group with. And it could intelligently match other people from your degree or your course with you based on your schedule, based on your whim and a number of different, um, uh, characteristics, in fact.

The application itself, the process of applying was really seamless, but the effort that we had to put into the application was was quite intensive in terms of creative effort. So the first stage was putting together a video. It was kind of a pitching slash marketing video that explains the product that we were pitching. And along with that, we wrote a report that served as sort of a business case. So, yeah, I was that was a really great experience to to do something like that.

Yes, so Matt is just a really friendly and open, very direct kind of person. So so far we've had a couple of conversations with him and his main focus has always been on think about the and he's a first no matter what you think about your idea, validate, validate, validate, make sure that your minimum viable product is exactly what the user wants. So that's been a really good perspective to have. And just in general, he's been really open to receiving our questions, always an absolute well of advice.

So, yeah, it's been it's been really good, very approachable, very easy to to work with as well. Ideally, ideally, yeah, we think that the idea is really good, having Matt there to support us with the idea is obviously amazing and an amazing help and a brilliant resource to have makes it seem more probable and really validates that it is a good idea. Yeah. So just we'll say, you see where the future takes us.

Yeah, do it. There's literally no reason not to do it. It's a bit of effort. It's a bit intensive, but the effort itself is is valuable. It's it's something that is a learning process. And these are skills that you can take away with you, whether you win or not. So, yeah, and obviously that's a 10k cash prize for the team, for the winning team. So if you want to develop an app or some other kind of project, that's going to be very helpful.

 

Questions?


For any enquiries, please contact Professor Raad Raad