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StartUp Sussex Award Winners 2016

An app to beat the barbers’ queue, a compression suit for sport and an ethical recipe platform – this year’s StartUp Sussex awards evening highlighted a fantastic range of ideas developed by Sussex students.

StartUp Sussex finalists 2016In the end though it was Darren Tenkorang who was named the University of Sussex's top young entrepreneur out of a pool of more than 50 fellow students, winning the 2016 StartUp Sussex Award and £10,000 to develop his business.

His app, TRIM-IT, aims to revolutionise the barbering industry by taking the wait out of the process. Rather than being held waiting for their favourite barber to become available, men will be able to book an appointment with them. For the first time they’ll be rewarded for their loyalty too.StartUp Sussex winner, Darren Tenkorang

Finishing runner-up in the annual competition - and receiving £5,000 - was Laurence Stephens, who is studying for an MSc Business Management & Entrepreneurship. His product, Vanguard, is a compression suit that meets all the needs of players of high impact sports such as rugby.

The suit has pouches around key muscle groups into which different products from the Vanguard range can be inserted. Weights can also be added to help build more muscle while in the gym, padding to protect from injury while training and gel packs which can be heated or frozen to aid recovery from injury.

In third place came MA Participation, Power & Social Change student Simone Riddle, who receives £2,500. Her enterprise, Global Food Connections, hopes to connect western consumers to global recipes using an interactive ethical recipe platform. The hope is that it will sell ethnically sourced, organic ingredients and recipe kits to make ethical online shopping quick and easy.

This year’s runners-up were Daniel Hajas: Mphys Theoretical Physics; Maria Ariza Munoz: 3rd year International Business; Iain Brodley: Graduate (Biomedical Science); and Nick Slack: 2nd year BSc Games and Multi-Media Environments.

The Awards, organised by the Careers and Employability Centre, is the culmination of several months of hard work from initial idea, advice and support through to formulation.

This year’s winners were chosen from six finalists who pitched their enterprising ideas to the judging panel. This consisted of Peter Lane – Innovation Support Manager, Sussex Innovation Centre; Linda Buckham – Director, University of Sussex Careers & Employability Centre; Jonathan Markwell – Founder, The Skiff, CoderFounders; Jim Banting – Investor; Michael Stubbs – Investor; and David Porter – Investment Readiness Advisor, Sussex Innovation Centre

The judges were very impressed with the high standard of all this year’s pitches. So much so that the Sussex Innovation Centre will offer a further 10 hours of business support and mentoring, free of charge, to the three finalists who didn’t win prizes.