1. MONEY

There will be a mega £10,000 in cash and prizes up for grabs at this year’s Idea Idol. Attending the finale is the best way to see what the competition is like and whether you can see yourself in the same position for next year..

2. FAME

Why bother going to buy the latest copy of Heat when you can see real live FAMOUS people in the flesh! Idea Idol judges are always of the highest calibre. This year we have Credit Suisse MD Ian Carneggie-Brown, PricewaterhouseCoopers partner Leo Johnson, GÜ Chocolate Puds founder James Averdick, Andrew Fisher of Shazam Entertainment and Alex Hoye of Latitude and Seedcamp. More about the judges.

3. BEAUTY

There is nothing more beautiful than an idea that makes you think “that’s just what I need, where has it been all my life?” You’ll have to trust us on this one. Come and see if this year’s talent meets your standards! Remember, you’ll be voting for the ‘People’s Choice Award’, so every person who attends has a real impact.

4. INSPIRATION

We all know the feeling that goes “it’s 8th week and all I can think about is the vacation”. Why not come along and get some inspiration for your free time? It could be from the presentations themselves, from hearing the judges’ feedback, or even just when networking with your peers. You never know — you could come back next term with some more money, more ideas, and a completely new outlook on life!

5. IT’S COMPLETELY FREE

So sign up now or find out more.

There is no ‘one type of person fits all’ answer to the question of what it takes to be an entrepreneur, but encouragingly, experience levels have limited relevance. Take, for example, Richard Reed from Innocent Smoothies, who spoke last term about how he and his co-founders began with no previous experience in the drinks sector, and now employ over 180 staff and have 5 offices across Europe. The three founders met each other at university and rather fittingly, (since the Oxprentice programme has recently launched its own club night challenge) club nights were their speciality. Maybe you will meet your future business partner at Uni – the networking opportunities available to you, as a member, at the events the Oxford Entrepreneurs hold each week, could and will foster relationships that may well last a lifetime.

Having a genuine zeal for any idea is the principal success factor for every small start-up. This will mean that you, the entrepreneur, will be willing to work the 18-hour-days that might be necessary for your project to succeed. Also having the patience to stick with your business is essential – the Innocent guys had no idea how long it would take to get their company going, and if they’d previously known the truth, they say, they would have been reluctant to risk leaving their jobs. Facing doubt, anxiety and pressure are all issues needed to be overcome along the path to success.

Oxford Entrepreneurs also provide ample opportunities for start-ups that need capital. The venture capital clinics, held by Octopus Ventures at our incubation centre, gives members a reasonably informal way to pitch their ideas to professionals who can provide invaluable feedback on the next steps your company can go. This coupled with our business plan competition, Idea Idol 2010 (March 10^th) gives small start-ups the exposure that could kick-start their fledgling venture. If you don’t feel that you’re at the stage where you can start pitching your idea, our build a business programme ‘Ideas2Market’ can really help develop your business acumen and arm you with the skills needed to write a stellar executive summary and business plan.

Margaret Thatcher once said, “We are all dependent on the creativity and imagination of others, so how do you create an environment that facilitates that creativity?” For an answer to this question, you need look no further than Oxford Entrepreneurs!

Since last Michaelmas, OE has been running an office for recent Oxford alumni to develop their start-ups in. This Keble College-based environment, called the OE Incubation Centre affords budding entrepreneurs with a fully-equipped office, conference room, networking opportunities, and access to professionals such as venture capitalists. Though the project is barely more than a term old, the inaugural tenants have already been remarkably successful.

The greatest achievement of our tenants so far is the $100 000 award Plink co-founders, Mark Cummins and James Philbin, received from Google for having the most downloaded application in the “Android Developer Challenge”. (Android is a new mobile phone operating system by Google.) James and Mark recently submitted their DPhils in information engineering, in which their academic focus was on their Plink technology: an elaborate computer vision algorithm.

Perception is a powerful ability for a machine to have, and Plink have already established some incredibly cool ways to capitalise on it commercially. If you download Plink onto your mobile phone, for example, you can snap pictures of myriad objects – like artwork, a DVD, a book – and then Plink will lead you to information about the objects, such as who the artist is, the film’s trailer, or where you can buy the novel. Plink generate revenue from this by taking a cut of a sale when their software had directed a user to the online merchant.

Another company making noteworthy strides is LabMinds, who won last year’s Idea Idol and are now negotiating funding to develop their technical solutions-producing machine, which will be a science laboratory tool.  Before needing to move to an office that included lab space, LabMinds co-founder Jochen Klingelhöfer worked at the OE Incubation Centre while he wasn’t busy finishing up his DPhil in Life Sciences. Jochen and fellow co-founder Camilla Oxley (also pursuing a DPhil, in her case in Biochemistry) have teamed up with 2009 Oxford MBA graduate Ville Lehtonen, whose business experience will no doubt lead LabMinds to commercial success.

There are a couple of places left in the OE Incubation Centre, so if you’re interested in working in our entrepreneurial atmosphere, send me a message at jon.krohn@magd.ox.ac.uk.

Have you ever wanted to create your own club night? Well, now is your chance!

This event is designed to introduce our members to creating a new club night and teach events management skills. It also examines the contestant’s ability to think of innovative new ideas to create marketing strategies on a budget of £200.

The theme for this event is to promote a club night which brings Oxford and Oxford Brookes students together to a single club night.

This event has been embroiled in some controversy but Oxford Entrepreneurs can now confirm that the event has been given a green light to go ahead.

Find out more.

The Paperclip Challenge is an exciting opportunity in which students can learn how to maximise the powers of negotiation. Starting with a paperclip (don’t worry, we’ll provide them!), contestants will use their negotiation skills to trade their paperclip for goods of higher value over a period of one week. The contestant who comes back with good that sells for the highest value (on eBay), will receive a cash prize of the total earning of the top two selling products.

To provide guidance and priceless advice on negotiation for this challenge, a presentation will be given by a leading practitioner, mentor and speaker of negotiation, Derek Arden. He has been known to help increase profitability and develop powerful business relationship management skills and will be coming to Oxford to provide his expertise.

In addition to this we have eBay specialists Chris Dawson and John Pemberton coming up to speak about how contestants can list and market their products strategically to maximise their profits.

When: 18:30 – 21:00, 1^st February 2010

Where: Roy Griffiths Room, Keble College

As if you need even more of a reason to come, we may also be giving out freebies kindly donated by eBay! Taking part is simple. Just sign up here.

The entry deadline for Idea Idol 2010 is January 27th and is fast approaching. Idea idol the leading student putching competition in the UK. It’s a multi round businessidea event open to students at the University of Oxford and Oxford Brookes. Don’t miss this chance to pitch your business idea to four stellar business leaders and the chance to win over £5,000 in cash and prizes.

Last year’s finalists pitched to Founder of Ariadne Capital Julie Meyer, Cobra Beer Marketing Director Will Ghali, Skype for Business Director Ian Robin, and Credit Suisse’s Investvement Banking MD Ian Carnegie-Brown. The winners, Easy Solution, Foresight Pharmaceuticals and Youth Bank walked home with £10,000 pounds in collective prize money.

Jump in. Enter now.
Read more details.
To stay up to date, join the facebook group.

Update: Full Hilary term card now available here

We’ve been receiving lots of requests for the latest term card, so here’s a preview of the events we have lined up this term.

The Oxford Entrepreneurs Society has become synonymous with the terms energy and dynamism. Our membership reflects a unique blend of entrepreneurial flair and academic skill, and is perhaps the most diverse member base of any University society in terms of age, discipline, and background. This desirable combination reflects a fundamental part of OE’s ethos: We are not exclusively for entrepreneurs but we harvest and develop the entrepreneurial skills necessary for success in any corporate environment. We draw in ambitious undergraduate and post-graduates from fields as far-ranging as Mathematics, History, Engineering, Linguistics and Economics.

With our free, no-strings-attached membership, many may question how OE consistently provides its aspiring entrepreneurs with a great number of high quality events like the Speaker Series, Ideas2Market, and the flagship business competition, Idea Idol. Unusually for a student society, we rely solely on corporate donations and in-kind support from our sponsors.

Next month marks OE’s 8th Anniversary and from the society’s beginning it was decided that we would aspire to offer students priceless guidance, training and support at no cost at all. This ethos persist to today. Whereas most societies are charging members annually or placing entry fees on events, we believe that money should not be the foundation for entrepreneurial growth. At OE we focus on ideas and transforming and communicating those ideas in a marketable way. We want to provide our members with a creative environment full of opportunities so that their energy is not spent on worrying about funding and the cost of professional advice.

We are very grateful to Octopus Ventures, Credit Suisse, Linklaters, Microsoft, Business Link and of course our founders, the Said Business School who have donated a considerable amount to OE, particularly in terms of time and effort. Despite the current economic situation, the forward-thinking attitude of our sponsors means that they are investing in tomorrow’s entrepreneurs through OE.

If you haven’t already done so, I would encourage you to join OE and start receiving on our events. If you are currently a member then be sure to make the most of your membership — there’s something in our term card for everyone.

Richard Reed spoke at the Oxford Entrepreneurs speaker series on November 3rd, 2009. This is the interview following his talk.

Interview: Richard Reed from The Alligator on Vimeo.

A big issue that many students and graduates are facing these days is the fact that they are struggling to find the jobs they want they because they lack experience. How do you convince employers that you’ll be good at the job if you’ve never done it before? But of course how do you get that first experience without prior experience? Well, one solution to this problem of is to tap into your contacts list. They are, of course, a great way to get one foot through the door. It’s an easy way to get big CV points. Another way is to take part in societies and make the most of what they have to offer. Doing this will give you very transferable skills and great insight – and with the best societies, this will often be for free! One series of events in particular gives students an unparalleled opportunity to get a real business experience. This is Oxford Entrepreneurs’ The OxPrentice.

The idea behind The OxPrentice is simply that students are put into teams and are given business challenges to complete, just like in the TV series, The Apprentice. However, instead of being a knockout competition, with the OxPrentice, the winners of each challenge will have the opportunity to take forward their idea after the event and build on it to make it their own venture that they will run. What is unique about this series is the fact that students are given the chance to experience first-hand real responsibility for a money making project. Whilst some societies provide “trading games” to simulate the trading floor at a bank/hedge fund, or trial law cases, the opportunities that arise from the OxPrentice are by no means fictional. To illustrate this, there were two winners of the iPhone App challenge that we held at the end of last month. One team is already at a stage where they will be meeting with the developers from Inside Mobile to speak about the coding that will be involved in developing their idea. The other team is making rigorous plans to ensure that their idea will materialise into a sexy yet simple app that will hopefully become a very scalable product.

Events like this, and the G&D’s Ice Cream Flavour Event, that we held all day on Wednesday 6th week Michaelmas at Science Oxford (see map) are great ways to get business experience. Running your own venture requires many skills such as organisation, leadership and negotiation. Employees recognise this and therefore look for people with these kinds of experiences. There are no risks in terms of financial investment, so opportunities such as these are rare. Seize the day, and help yourself gain the right experience.