Ireland’s first ever Student Startup Weekend was this weekend down in Cork and I had the pleasure of coaching the teams on the presentation side of things.

Participants included a 16 year old who led a project team of 8 (what the hell was I up to when I was that age…), and also a pair of identical twins (which was very confusing) who both led projects, and came in 1st and 2nd place… the chances of which are surely pretty slim!

As always with these events there was amazing buzz around the place throughout the weekend, and the projects that resulted from the intense few days were fantastic.

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Here are the startups of the future to look out for:

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Loopstr

Businesses are finding it harder and harder to get their deals and promotions out to their followers on Facebook without paying to “Promote” their posts. Loopstr hopes to solve this problem by making these posts easily discoverable through their app.
Twitter

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ReScope

Led by the 16 year old Daniel Kyne, ReScope is an app that aims to let you connect with your favourite musician and let you keep up to date with their updates, news and gig announcements.
Twitter

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BuddyUp

The ambitious BuddyUp project aims to be part social network and part mini-game production house. The concept is tied together with a strong element of competitive rivalry between friends through the medium of fun, addictive games.

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Join the Dots

The goal of Join the dots is to help you achieve successful goal completion in areas such as sports and personal development by breaking the overall goal down into its smaller constituent parts and allowing you to track your progress and find out the root causes behind your failures.
Twitter

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CraftSquare

CraftSquare is aiming to be a beer-fanatics new best friend. Say you end up in a new city and want to find out where to get a proper craft beer, then look no further! The team also indicated that they would aim to add in a strong community element with a goal to becoming the go to resource for all things craft beer.
Twitter

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Strive

A social network for social entrepreneurs. Strive’s goal is to bring together those who have aspirations of solving social issues together in a centralised place where ideas can be discussed and projects launched.
Twitter

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3rd Place: CrowdBuy

These guys intend to eliminate the middle man in the purchasing process. Whereas kickstarter promotes products in development, this service aims to be a place where a community express a desire for a certain existing product where Crowdbuy play the role of deal broker and the end customer gets a great deal, and the producer pays a fraction of what they would to the Groupons of this world.

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2nd Place: Marvelist

Have you ever gone to the shops and forgotten the simple thing you went there to buy? Marvelist aims to make sure that this never happens again!

Unlike other shopping list apps Marvelist has a predictive function that intelligently suggests what you might need based on your past purchases. The idea also has the potential to yield interesting data around customer buying habits. I know I would use this today!
Twitter

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1st Place: Collect

Collect is going to disrupt an industry that clearly needs to be shaken up a bit. They are going to make bin collection a more customer friendly and flexible experience.

Different types of households have vastly differing waste disposal needs, and at present waste companies are shoe-horning people into one-size-fits all solutions both in terms of pricing and scheduling.

Collect will be – as judge Pat Phelan called it – “Uber for bin collection” and will ultimately save customers money, but also give them vastly more flexibility and convenience.
Twitter – follow their CTO here

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Thanks to the organisers, participants, mentors and judges for making it a great weekend!

And if you don’t already follow me on twitter… you can get me by clicking here

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PS, in an odd twist of events I am convincing the kids that Powerpoint is cool:

Totally changed my point of view on powerpoint after seeing how @Clearpreso uses it over the weekend. Amazing at presentation tuning! – Tom Dunton, Co-Organiser