How to turn a good idea into a concrete project
The 14e edition of Entrepreneurship Week, from November 18 to 24, offers more than 40 sessions to spark creativity and the desire to undertake. At the heart of this event, the Best Idea Competition allows you to explore the world of innovation and test your ideas.
Global Entrepreneurship Week (GEW) brings together nearly 10 million participants across 200 countries each year. It aims to inspire entrepreneurial vocations and encourage business creation. The Geneva edition – which celebrates its 14the participation – is called “Unleash your ideas” and offers numerous events, conferences, testimonials and workshops. At UNIGE, this initiative aims to awaken students’ interest in entrepreneurship, by offering them resources and concrete advice with a view to transforming their ideas into feasible projects. And this, whatever their academic background.
Illustration with two success stories from the Best Idea Competition: Beekee and mykistudio. Led by Vincent Widmer, Beekee is an educational technology start-up that helps international organizations, universities and NGOs deploy digital training in hard-to-reach places via the “Beekee Box”, a box that generates a network local wireless.
Mykistudio, co-founded by Myke Penseyres, is a production studio specializing in video and events which notably offers coordination and technical organization of events, livestreaming, presentation videos, interviews and aftermovies.
At the time of their participation in Entrepreneurship Week, Vincent Widmer was a doctoral student in biology while Myke Penseyres was pursuing a Bachelor’s degree in economics and management: different academic profiles, but which converged on the desire to undertake and make a change. The starting point of their entrepreneurial adventure, the benches of the alma mater were also the place where they met their future partner. For both, the path is drawn naturally, instinctively – and without taking any major risks –, Vincent Widmer having Beekee as the subject of his thesis and Myke Penseyres continuing his courses in parallel with his entrepreneurial projects. Both register for the Best Idea Competition on a whim – “to test” – and take the opportunity to rehearse their pitch, this famous two-minute presentation aimed at convincing and, if possible, making an impression. “Pitching is an extraordinary exercise, for which you have to clarify your ideas and make the message you want to convey understandable,” says Vincent Widmer. The experience helps strengthen their confidence in the project they are carrying out, by offering them visibility and sound advice, while confronting them with necessary questioning. “Every project must be challenged, otherwise it goes straight into the wall,” confirms Myke Penseyres.
Ten years after their appearance before the jury of the Best Idea Competition, the projects of Vincent Widmer and Myke Penseyres have undergone numerous transformations, to the point that they no longer have much in common with the pitch of the era. But their motivation and their thirst for entrepreneurship remain (almost) intact.
Testimonials
“We have to look for feedback”
Beekee was born from the imagination of Vincent Widmer, then a doctoral student in biology. As part of his thesis, he created an online platform aimed at improving the interactivity of courses in his discipline. The lack of Wi-Fi in Geneva public schools, however, quickly calls into question his project which is undergoing its first transformation: the digital platform becomes a physical box. Vincent Widmer presented the first prototype of his Beekee Box at the 2015 Best Idea Competition, where he won third place. The project takes on greater scope through contact with humanitarian actors, who make its creator aware of the usefulness of such technology in difficult-to-access areas. “We were invited to the Geneva Health Forum where a doctor who worked in Nepal told us that he absolutely wanted to buy us a box before leaving. But we only had a prototype to offer him! In the end, he wanted it so much that we ended up selling it to him. We then worked with committed people in the field, notably at Médecins sans frontières, who gave us a lot of feedback. This allowed us to work on new versions of the box. My advice is to go see your customers and seek feedback, especially from people who pay for your product.” A winning bet since the Beekee Box is now used in more than 20 countries, and the project is led by a team of seven people, including Vincent Widmer and Sergio Estupiñán, the two founders of the company.
“The important thing was to discover how we could work together”
“I have participated twice in the Best Idea Competition, in 2014 and 2017, but never with mykistudio,” announces Myke Penseyres. The first time, it was already with Massaki Chraiti, co-founder of mykistudio, for a project called Eat&Out, an application for student good deals. We arrived beyond the top 20 and yet, the project came to fruition and had a small success on a student scale. The important thing was to discover how we could collaborate. The second project with which we competed was called Kwiz and aimed to make learning fun. This time we came third. However, this project did not succeed, despite the time devoted to it. This was our first big entrepreneurial disappointment.” Despite this experience which confronted Myke Penseyres and Massaki Chraiti with the emotional roller coaster of entrepreneurship, the two entrepreneurs continued their path by training themselves in a self-taught manner to launch mykistudio. “The hardest part is when your friends start getting salaries and you don’t. We had a lot of doubts, we wondered if we had the capabilities and the vision to get through it.” The answer is visibly affirmative since since 2017, mykistudio has expanded its range of services and the two partners have surrounded themselves with three new collaborators.
Free your ideas
From November 18 to 24
Uni Mail, HEG and different locations in Geneva
Registration for the Competition
Vincent Widmer will give the opening conference of Entrepreneurship Week “How to expand internationally while keeping your roots in Geneva?” Monday November 18 at 5 p.m., FER Geneva.
World
