2012 news siliconvalley 229x205 1

Learning through the act of creating

23 November 2012

The article at a glance

The winning project of the SVC2UK Cambridge Startup weekend, which took place at Cambridge Judge Business School between 9 and 11 November …

Winners of the SVC2UK Cambridge startup weekendThe winning project of the SVC2UK Cambridge Startup weekend, which took place at Cambridge Judge Business School between 9 and 11 November 2012, has gone on to win the Grand Finale in London.

ProjectPolicy.org is an online, intuitive tool to help make sense of policy information by aggregating data from different sources. Following a pitch by Nathan Boublil and Agastya Muthanna, the team behind ProjectPolicy was formed during the SVC2UK Cambridge Startup Weekend and together the five team members developed and presented the initiative as a viable business opportunity to a panel of judges.

After an intensive few days, ProjectPolicy was announced as the winning project and was invited to the Grand Finale at the Google Campus in East London. The team competed against seven other finalists from Startup Weekends across the country and was eventually named as the overall winner, with the prize being an all-expenses trip to Silicon Valley in January, sponsored by Google.

Hanadi Jabado, Director of Accelerate Cambridge, who mentored the ProjectPolicy team, commented:

We are delighted that ProjectPolicy won the Grand Finale in London. The team are fantastic and innovative and really benefited from having Matthew Painter, CTO of import•io as a mentor. Our goal now is to keep the momentum going and to support ProjectPolicy through the next stages.”

Nathan Boublil, co-founder of ProjectPolicy, commented:

The SVC2UK Cambridge Startup Weekend was an intense 54-hour accelerator hosted at Cambridge Judge Business School, which allowed us to turn an idea into a concept, then into a pitch and finally a functioning product. Without a doubt I would recommend the experience to anyone as it is quite incredible to see what a few minds can do by putting their heads together and working intensively and simultaneously. The event was perfectly organised by Hanadi Jabado and Donald de Santis and being mentored by experts like import•io was invaluable and certainly a good fit for our project.

Winning the SVC2UK Cambridge Startup Weekened was an important external validation of the project’s potential and a great conclusion to an intensive collective effort. With the Grand Finale, the competition standards were very high, the judges very demanding and we’re all extremely grateful to have won the UK edition. We are now looking forward to talking ProjectPolicy to the next stage, which includes the trip to Silicon Valley and we look forward to continuing to draw on the expertise of the team at import•io, which has been so generous in supporting us through this experience.”

The ProjectPolicy team is currently competing for the GlobalStartUpBattle, which includes all the winners from Startup Weekends globally. The winner will be decided by an online voting mechanism.

Accelerate Cambridge is part of Cambridge Judge Business School and has a mission to stimulate venture creation out of Cambridge.

As the organisers of the Cambridge Startup Weekend, Accelerate Cambridge believes that there were eight strong teams formed over the course of the event and seven of them have joined the Accelerator programme starting in January 2013. Applications for this accelerator close on 10 December 2012. Three Startup Weekends are being planned for 2013 and they will all be followed by an Accelerator programme.

To find out more about Startup Weekends at Cambridge Judge Business School or the Accelerator programmes please contact Hanadi Jabado at [email protected].