Two Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) students, Chin Chia Yuan from Centre for Engineering Education(CEE UTM), Lee Sin Kuan Gary from Faculty of Built Environment and Surveying, participated in Techstars Startup Weekend Johor Bahru 2022 at Austin 18 Versatile Business Suites from 19th until 21st August 2022. They led a team of five and won the overall grand prize with their business idea: “JOM TaPAU”.
The idea was to establish a pre-order delivery platform to help university students and working adults save their money for meals. The prototype was a mobile application with user, rider and supplier interfaces. The team competed with seven other teams with various backgrounds of business owners, entrepreneurs, marketing experts, IT experts, and designers from all over Malaysia.
Techstars Startup Weekend is the world’s starting point for entrepreneurship, being held in different regions globally. In the 54 thrilling hours, designers, developers, marketers, and startup enthusiasts had come together to share ideas, form teams, and launch startups. At the same time, the mentors, investors, co-founders, and sponsors showed the participants how to start up a business from scratch, step by step.
The organizers of Techstars Startup Weekend, iPrima Media claimed that they were dedicated to fostering local entrepreneurship to strengthen their community. Their goal was to create an environment where passionate, driven, and like-minded people could come together to get things done. To learn, network, bridge the gap between trades, expose potential, and see actual results. Through the guidance given in the three days events, they hoped to educate and groom more young entrepreneurs in Johor so that they can grow practical ideas in the right direction.
Beginning with open mic pitches on Friday, participants brought their best ideas and inspired others to join their team. Over Saturday and Sunday, teams identified the direction of the business through Business Model Canvas (BMC), and focused on customer development, validating their ideas, and practising. On Sunday evening, teams pitched and demonstrated their prototypes respectively and received valuable feedback from a panel of judges.
From left, Kenneth Ho (Founder of BEAMSTART), Shuan Ling (Founder of iPrima Media), Zoey Chai (Creator of Woots! Event).
It was also the fourth winning Startup Weekend Johor Bahru for Chin Chia Yuan to be paired up with the first-time participant, Lee Sin Kuan Gary to participate in Startup Weekend Johor Bahru 2022. Their achievements that brought up the name of UTM in startup weekend were Grand Prize Winner TechStars Startup Weekend Johor Bahru (19th – 21st August 2022), Grand Prize Winner & Crowd Favourite IP SMART Startup Weekend Johor Bahru (28th – 30th June 2019), Winner of Social Enterprise Category IP SMART Startup Weekend Johor Bahru (17th – 19th August 2018), and Grand Prize Winner IP SMART Startup Weekend Johor Bahru (26th – 28th January 2018).