«I feel like running away!», vents, jokingly, Ana Michele Renda, after the first half of the seminar that launched the maturation process of the proposals presented in the competition «Ideias em Caixa», at the University of Algarve.
More than a hundred entrepreneur candidates attended an event on Saturday at the University of Algarve's Gambelas Campus, where they got to understand better how to create your own business and what this implies, from the mouths of entrepreneurs and specialists.
This meeting marked the beginning of the maturation process of the ideas selected to move on to the second phase of the competition. On Saturday, the bid promoters began an intense process of consolidating their proposals, with the aim of improving them and presenting them in a new depth to the competition jury, on April 12th.
Some of the speakers present, as well as others who will promote initiatives with the same objective in the coming weeks, started in exactly the same way: with an application to the «Ideias em Caixa» from CRIA – Division of Entrepreneurship and Technology Transfer of the University of Algarve.
In its fourth edition, the competition is already a reference for those with business ideas, as the 161 applications received seem to prove. So many that forced CRIA to choose 50 to move on to this second phase, instead of the 30 initially planned. Ideas that, considers the director of CRIA, «were already well consolidated and close to the market».
“In the initial phase, we asked for just a very simple idea. And we have now entered the second phase of the process, the maturation seminars», explained Hugo Barros to Sul Informação, on the sidelines of Saturday's event.
«These seminars aim to bring together the promoters a set of experience of people and companies, of things that went well and what went wrong, to convey what it means to be in the market and what it means to move from idea to business, from entrepreneur to potential entrepreneur», explained the director of CRIA.
Testimonies that intended to put those who are running for “Ideias em Caixa” thinking and that, it seems, succeeded. “This is more complicated than it sounds. A person even thinks: just let yourself be there, get it, but it's a job, and if you can get the money for it, go on vacation (laughs)», said Michele Renda.
More seriously, the candidate for entrepreneur guarantees that she “has no regrets” about applying. “Of course I'm a bit scared, but I also think I have no doubts. This is what I want, at my pace, slowly, so as not to sink in», he illustrated.
Michele Renda's sentiment would certainly be shared by many other candidates present. Not least because these seminars serve, exactly, to make the candidates' promoters think deeply about their proposals and realize their real potential and, of course, their weaknesses.
Maturity seminars are repeated until April 12th
The initial maturation seminar was the longest and covered several areas, such as “financing, business environment, sales and first-person experiences for those who have already gone through this process”.
«During the next two weeks we will go through an intensive period of actions to mature the projects. People will be with a set of consultants and tutors, to mature their idea until a pre-business plan stage», said Hugo Barros.
In this field, there are, of course, those who are more advanced than others. «Ideias em Caixa» is also used by those who are already in the field trying to develop business ideas, but who feel that they stand to gain from the experience and knowledge of CRIA and the consultants who are associated with this event, all of them from recognized credits and, in some cases, founders of companies recognized for their capacity to innovate.
Bruno Rodrigues is a good example of this. The candidate for entrepreneur is one of the interns in the second phase of the Querença Project, he has already started to promote events related to «trail running», but he took advantage of the CRIA competition to gain more tools to create his own company.
The more than one hundred promoters (most ideas have more than one promoter) presented ideas in seven major areas: Agrifood; Cultural and Creative Industries; Manufacturing Industries; Health and wellness; Technologies; and Tourism.
After presenting their proposal, orally, to the competition jury, they will have until April 17th to submit the final projects. From here, the 15 main ideas will be chosen, one of which, which the jury considers most deserving, will benefit from a monetary prize of 5 thousand euros.
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