Housing made of plastic for refugee communities, cheap robotic limbs made from old phone parts and industrial waste and an app for worried parents to keep an eye on their kids home deposit savings were some of the diverse projects vying for a spot in the finals of the Duke of York’s entrepreneurial competition.
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Held at the Innovation Campus, the first Australian semi-finals of “Pitch@Palace” was a chance for 24 business start-ups from around the country to compete via three minute pitches for the attention of mentors and potential business partners.
Judges at Tuesday’s event were originally tasked to pick 12 finalists – but at a cocktail function later in the evening the prince announced all 24 would go on to the next stage as they were “all so deserving”.
They will now compete at Government House in Sydney on Thursday and two will be selected to represent Australia in London.
The pitch program, the main reason for the Prince Andrew’s day-long visit to Wollongong, has been running in the UK since 2014.
It has given hundreds of entrepreneurs the chance to work with powerful leaders and mentors, and has expanded to include 60 countries.
Speaking to a packed room of potential investors and mentors, Prince Andrew told the start-up hopefuls he made “no apologies for seeing entrepreneurs under pressure”.
“Understand that every single one of these 24 are, to my mind, already winners, they are now a part of the Pitch@Palace alumni,” he said.
The Duke also thanked his former sister-in-law Jane Ferguson (Sarah’s older sister), who worked with UOW’s Deputy Vice-Chancellor Professor Alex Frino to arrange the royal visit.
First off the blocks in the speedy plug for people to invest in his business was surfboard maker Nev Hyman, of Nevhouse, who sought support for his modular plastic homes which can be built in disaster areas and refugee communities.
“Nevhouse is a social, economic and environmental solution for affordable housing,” he said.
“What if we could take all the plastic that’s in the planet and create shelter for people – well we’ve done it. [We] take the seven codes of plastic, grind it up into little particles and turn it into product, the panels of the house.”
Duo Sara and Cyn, of Re:Purpose for Good, then asked for “a knight in shining armour – or better yet a Duke” to help get their robotic limb enterprise off the ground. To be made of recycled plastic and electronic waste, their prosthetics will be 3D-printed by children as a teaching exercise and made cheaply enough to be accessible to people on lower incomes.