Igniting the Spark with X Challenge

Auckland University of Technology (AUT) together with the help of Bridgewest Ventures are supporting New Zealand students in their entrepreneurship journey through the X Challenge.

Over the last 10 years, there has been a large shift globally in the movement towards driving entrepreneurship and student-led start-up companies within universities. Universities now recognise that pairing the entrepreneurial mindset with more traditional research and learning makes for a winning combination.

AUT’s X Challenge Programme is designed with this combination in mind. To give each student the opportunity and guidance to develop an idea for a business, cause or project. AUT and Bridgewest Ventures share the notion that no idea is too big – or too small.

Martin Bell, Director or Entrepreneurship & Innovation at Auckland University of Technology has real world experience in setting up and building business in New Zealand. After seeing the successful sale of his publishing business, he started working with AUT and with students within the entrepreneurial space. He recognised that there was a gap to provide a holistic, coordinated strategy to entrepreneurial thinking at AUT and aimed to provide a pathway for students to be able to bring their ideas to life and amalgamate conversations and activities that were already happening on campus. 

Hence, AUT took an innovative and future-thinking approach and the entrepreneurship arm of AUT was created. It has seen great growth over the last four years in both the number of applications to various entrepreneurship programmes and activities (including X Challenge) and the subsequent commercialisation of the ideas.

“We’ve had over 800 students go through X Challenge and the competition is now firmly part of the University landscape. True to the entrepreneurial spirit at the University, there is also a student-led support group for entrepreneurs at the University and we actively encourage that. We want to help students in any way by creating pathways between the student-led approach and programmes, activities and initiatives that we run.” - Martin Bell

The X Challenge is made up of two competitions – the Idea and the Accelerator. ‘The Idea’ is a simple one-page business plan and 40 winners are chosen and provided a $250 cash prize. ‘The Idea’ creates a pathway into ‘The Accelerator’ which involves students putting together a more detailed business plan outlining their business idea and how it would work in the real world. The AUT Entrepreneurship team provides lots of support through ‘The Accelerator’, from pitch coaching through to workshops and clinics on branding, finance and more... 

University is a great place to create and test this mindset, where you can study and work on your idea with a number of people surrounding you that have done it before and are also doing something similar. Martin believes that the skills that are picked up as a part of the X Challenge will set up the students for a successful career whether in an existing company or in creating their own.

“It’s a real win-win. These are all really valuable skills to have in life anyway. If you’ve learnt through some exposure to the skills that we help you build and the people that we connect you with, they will help you anywhere your life will take you. Whether inside a start-up or not. There is really no downside.”

"The most valuable outcome of X Challenge was meeting our mentor – the prize money was very useful, but the advice and networking was priceless" - Jarek Beksa, Founder of Sonnar Interactive, 2019 Winner.

It's fair to say that the entrepreneurial spirit is still alive and well in New Zealand, with Martin Bell and the team at AUT helping drive that spirit - especially during and looking to a post COVID-19 world. He says “Some people think entrepreneurs are born, not made. I think there are some entrepreneurs that are born, but I think an entrepreneurial mindset can be learnt. It is the beliefs, knowledge and processes that ultimately lead to entrepreneurial behaviour”

Bridgewest Ventures shares this philosophy and is proud to be working with AUT and sponsoring the X Challenge programme to help students ignite that spark that lights the fire.