THE Information and Communications Technology Office (ICTO) launched with companies on May 20 the second Philippine Startup Challenge (PSC).
The PSC is a student start-up competition promoting technology entrepreneurship or “technopreneurship” among college students.
“It dares the students all over the country to create bolder, more creative software and Internet-based innovations that solve real problems and help improve the lives of individuals worldwide,” the ICTO said in a statement.
To join the competition, each team must have four members composed of one faculty adviser and three students. The faculty adviser must have attended or will attend at least one of the preparatory boot camps for PSC. These are the Lean Startup 101 Boot Camp in 2014 and the boot camps for 2015 scheduled on the following dates: June 6 in Cebu City, June 13 in Davao City, June 20 in Iloilo City, July 4 in Baguio City, July 8 in Metro Manila, and July 25 in Cagayan de Oro City.
A preparatory boot camp is a series of workshops for faculty advisers and teachers of information technology and computer science for them to learn the basics about building and operating a start-up company.
Each aspiring team must submit a five-minute video pitch presentation of their start-up idea by the end of August. From the submitted entries, the 10 best entries will be selected as finalists and the 10 respective teams will be given further mentoring.
These 10 finalists will then advance to the National Finals, tentatively set in November, where they will get the chance to pitch their products directly to funders, industry experts and government representatives. The top 3 teams will be picked as winners, and thus gain funding and admission to business incubation.
On the initial run of PSC last year, 51 teams from different colleges and universities all over the country sent their entries. Four out of the top 5 winners came from outside Metro Manila.
Image credits: Photo Courtesy ICTO/BusinessMirror