48 hours: The winners are in

Eight teams spent a non-stop 48 hours coming up with a business idea on Monday to celebrate the Innes 48 Hour Business Start Up Competition at the Wintec Atrium.

The sleep-deprived entrepreneurs presented their ideas to four judges who came out firing questions, some easy and some that would make even the best public speaker stutter.

There were three major prize categories, best team, best use of technology and most viable business idea. The prize pool came to about $15,000.

The judges were Neil Richardson, Gabriel Engel, Graham Gaylard and John Luxton.

Rab Heath and the Last Minute Innovations group took home the best team award and their presentation drew a good reaction from the 80 strong crowd.

Their idea was aimed at delivering men’s bathroom products – door to door.

“For a team that just came together this has been an awesome experience and the way the discussions went throughout the team were great,” said Rab, 24.

The best use of technology award went to the Web Nv group.

They had an idea based around providing companies with better employee engagement software.

“I cannot believe we won even after the technical difficulties,” said team member Annie Monk.

“We are just fizzing, almost speechless,” said Deborah Duffield who was part of the Draw Inc team that took away the prize for the most viable business idea.

Their idea was based around creating an Art Trust so artists could then sell their artwork to businesses.

“A day ago we had to keep telling ourselves it is just an idea, let’s not get carried away,” she said.

The total cost of the event was $130,000, and with nearly 80 people in attendance it had been a very successful night, said Petr Adamek, from Soda inc, one of the event organisers.