6th Start-Up@Singapore Semi-Final Bootcamp (1st to 2nd Apr 2005)

Start-Up@Singapore held a 2-day Bootcamp at NUS Business School on the 1st and 2nd April to provide more than 50 semi-finalist teams with an intensive program focused on helping teams to improve their business plan writing.

Hailed as the best bootcamp ever in the history of Start-Up@Singapore, the highlights of this year are the large number of participants leveraging on emerging and innovative technologies from research institutes and universities, new emphasis on Intellectual Property Management with a special seminar by IPOS and Baker & McKenzie. Wong & Leong, special track for Nokia Category participants on “Creative Marketing” and “Retail Management” and the substantial NUS students’ involvement in running the bootcamp – including more than 50 students from NUS Entrepreneurship Society, NOC Alumni as well as Business School and Technopreneurship minor students.

The bootcamp was designed to be highly interactive: each team was assigned one experienced mentor, and also met one-on-one with an expert advisor in Value Proposition, Marketing & Competitive Strategy, as well as Finance and Presentation workshops who evaluated and made suggestions for improvements in the respective sections of the business plans.

Teams also had several opportunities to improve their presentation content and delivery in preparation for the upcoming semi-final presentations. On Friday evening, each of the teams delivered an elevator pitch “on the firing line,” followed by candid and constructive feedback on their pitch by a panel of judges comprising Douglas Abrams of Parallax Capital Management, Chow Yen Lu of Wholetree Corporation, and Fraser Dinnis of Investor Consulting Group.

This year also saw a large number of students in school uniforms at the Bootcamp. Held in conjunction with the Nescafe Youth Category of 6th Start-Up@Singapore, the Make Your Mark 2005! – 3rd National Trade Marks Competition jointly organized with Intellectual Property Office of Singapore (IPOS) announced the top 5 teams in both the Secondary School and JC Categories at the bootcamp:-

Top 5 Secondary School teams:

Singapore Chinese Girls' School - Team Angel
Zhonghua Secondary School - Imperial Black
Bedok Town Secondary School - Cafe de Cole
Beatty Secondary School - Expressive
CHIJ St Theresa Convent - Hot Dog Arena

Top 5 Junior College teams:

Meridian Junior College - Galax
Meridian Junior College - Perk@MJC
Temasek Junior College - TJC E Club
St Andrew's Junior College - Carlio
National Junior College – Footnotes

The evening also saw the award of 6 best executive summaries, namely Biomers, Genometri, Guardian Angel, Hepatolife, Infinity and Ten Cube who gets $500 each courtesy of NTUC Income.

Director of Entrepreneurship           "I've learnt more marketing tactics
Mentor, Mr. Patrick Turner             in one day than if I were to read
(INSEAD) mentoring one of            up on them on my own".
the youth teams.

Ms Caroline Fernandez, (Public        Registration at Bootcamp.
Affairs Director of NTUC Income
Insurance Cooperative Limited)
presenting the "best Executive
Summary" award.

 				                
Teams attending an Intellectual      Interactive workshop on "value
property lecture.                          propositions".