Driving Innovation - Entrepreneurial Evening
The 27th of November, IE University, in collaboration with the Student Government, organised an entrepreneurship evening in the university’s Segovia campus. The event consisted on providing a platform for students who are pursuing an entrepreneurial venture to present their ideas as well as to give them a chance to network with faculty members, students, and other entrepreneurs. Additionally, IE invited consolidated entrepreneurs to the event so that they could pitch their new ventures to students and hence, provide insightful feedback on the student’s presentations.
The first presenter of the event was Carolina Sánchez de Movellán from the leather manufacturing company Sol & Luna, specialised in high-end luxury leather goods. Sánchez de Movellán gave students detailed accounts on her background prior to launching the company, how the company started, the importance of knowing where to manufacture products, and the importance of having a low environmental footprint even though your company lays in a controversial industry in this matter. Furthermore, she stressed on the importance that angel investors had in the success of her company, and additionally elaborated on the importance of having actress Gwyneth Paltrow as a one of these three “angels”. Finally, she talked about the importance of international fairs in the luxury goods retail industry and the process of opening their first physical store in Nuñes de Balboa in 2002. Sánchez de Movellán finished her presentation by claiming that “(Sol & Luna) believe in all the things made with love”, and accrediting their success to this mentality.
The next presentation was delivered by Ruggero Cipriani, an Italian IE BBA alumni, who presented the company Helbiz, which aims to “revolutionise global transportation with friendly solutions”. He stressed on one specific area of the company named HelbizGo, an e-scooter manufacturer. When asked about what differentiates them from other companies that offer the same service, Cipriani argued that the feature of being able to pay with crypto currencies and that their scooters will have collaborations with fashion brands such as OFF WHITE, will adjust the product to a modern market and a new type of young consumer demographic. Finally, Cipriani announced that, in the short-run, Helbiz will implement a pilot of HelbizGo in Segovia. In the upcoming months, a limited number of scooters will be deployed in Segovia in order to test their business strategy in a small environment characterized for a young demographic of university students.
After Helbiz came the time for Baits, an application where businesses will be able to post their own publicity and promotions to raise awareness amongst regular consumers, or attract new ones. Baits was co-funded by Nicolás López, Diego Oramas, and Santiago Zapata, three third year BBA students at IE University. Through an environmental rhetoric, López claims that his prime motivation to create such an app is to “take paper away from the streets” by eliminating physical promotional flyers and hence, reducing the environmental impact of paper production. “Every small action counts when attempting to achieve a common, larger goal” claims López in an exclusive interview for the Stork.
Next it was the turn for E-MOTI, an application created by Maria Anabitarte (second year BBA) and Moni Sánchez (second year LLB) to make payments more agile at cashiers and eliminate paper receipts. They as well pursue an environmental goal such as Baits to try to reduce paper consumption by providing a platform where consumers will be able to store all their receipts digitally by scanning a QR code.
The last speaker of the evening was Irene Ocáriz, a second year BBA student who aims to increase women’s security by developing an Uber-like application exclusively for women. Her value proposition relies on the claim that women, both taxi drivers and passengers, will feel more comfortable if they were driven by, or were taking, female passengers. Henceforth, she claims this would eventually reduce violence against women and therefore legitimise her value proposition.
Comentários