The first session of the STARTONIC Week-End organized by SKEMA VENTURES and TONIC Incubation took place at SKEMA Business School’s Lille campus from April 6 to 8. Mixing management and engineering talents together, student-entrepreneurship was really in the air!
Initially, they were 18 student-entrepreneurs from TONIC Incubation partnering schools coming from SKEMA, Arts et Métiers, CESI and Centrale Lille. Each of them had prepared to pitch their entrepreneurial project in front of an audience of 30 of their peers to convince them to come on board and co-innovate during the weekend. After the vote of the students and the coaches from the partnering schools, 7 projects were selected, and students teamed up to accelerate them over the weekend.
Ranging from vegetarian protein food line, events screening platform, online knowledge community service, and recycling services or devices, projects testified from the innovativeness and sense-making of entrepreneurs. Some projects pivoted 180°, others were strengthened in their initial direction, but all benefited from intense cross-fertilization, such as Ehrang who emphasized: “It gave me a lot to think about and to follow; I gained a lot from the interactions and practices.”
The jury comprising serial entrepreneurs, TONIC Incubation members, and partners from the local ecosystem such as Euratechnologies, R3E Invest, or Amvalor highlighted the quality of the projects and the pitches.
As Fabian, leader of one of the selected projects summarized: “The STARTONIC WEEK-END was a great way to make effective progress on projects while having new content / new methods and new interesting ideas! I really enjoyed and learned!”