Dear reader,

I hope you are keeping well as we look forward with hope to the next phase of our new normal. At Tangent, May proved an extremely exciting month and we remain as busy as ever!

We are currently extremely excited for Demo Day, the culmination of our AI accelerator Alsessor in partnership with Altada. After 5 months of honing their startups, 6 finalists will compete to secure €250,000 funding courtesy of Oysterhaven Ventures and Rocktop partners. We eagerly look forward to welcoming back the class of 2020 for our inaugural Alumni Event too, with a keynote adress from the Executive Director of the Design Programme at Stanford.

Wishing you all a restful bank holiday weekend - remember to stay connected!

Ken

 

LaunchBox, Tangent's Student Accelerator, starts in June and once again we have a diverse cohort of start-ups ready and raring to go! Our aim with LaunchBox is to help them progress as far as possible over the next 3 months, with support from founders, advisors, mentors, experts, and more.

We couldn’t run LaunchBox in a vacuum – and so we are once again asking for your help. As any startup founder knows, speaking to potential users and/or customers is key when you are developing your product or service. A business that operates in without speaking to their customers is not going to survive long.

To help the LaunchBox startups who are operating under restricted circumstances, we are asking our network in Tangent to simply donate one hour of their time to take part in a Customer Development exercise for our 10 LaunchBox teams.

All you have to do is come to an online discussion group, and answer any questions honestly, offering feedback. The discussion group will take place on Monday  14 June from 12.30pm  - 1.30pm. The session will be entirely led by our student startups.

Please sign up here: https://custdevlbox21.eventbrite.ie

Lots happening in the Tangent/LaunchBox ecosystem at the moment involving participants past and present! See the round up below!

https://www.businesspost.ie/connected/30-under-30-the-ones-to-watch-3c27706b

http://www.universitytimes.ie/2021/05/how-launchbox-hopes-to-inspire-and-include-every-student/

https://www.irishtimes.com/business/work/in-the-us-alone-almost-40-of-food-gets-wasted-1.4555962 

https://www.irishtimes.com/business/technology/irish-founded-fraud-detection-start-up-inscribe-raises-10-5m-1.4548899 

https://sifted.eu/articles/top-irish-startups/ 

It has all come down to this - the most awaited AI Accelerator event of the year is almost here! Over the past 5 months, our talented Alsessor accelerator teams have been hard at work growing their start-up projects progressively. Join us online on 25th June 2021 for an exclusive chance to witness six teams pitch their scaled project to leading industry mentors, investors, and market experts. One winner will be crowned, taking home a prize of €250,000 investment funding courtesy of Oysterhaven Ventures and Rocktop Partners. 

A new postgraduate certificate course in Climate Entrepreneurship started in March this year. The course is funded through the HEA’s Springboard+ initiative and proved very popular with almost 200 applications for 42 places. The course Director Prof Quentin Crowley is based in the School of Natural Sciences and now working part-time in Tangent. Overall, the course aims to provide an integrated approach to prepare students for both the opportunities and challenges emerging from climate change. It is the first of its kind in Ireland and is being run fully online this year, attracting students from a wide geographic spread and wide range of educational and professional backgrounds.

Students have completed the first module Systems Innovation for Positive Climate Action, where they explored the systems complexities of climate challenges. In-class assignments used a challenge-based approach where small student groups chose their own focus areas to work though systems innovation methodologies. The class were fortunate enough to benefit from a session delivered by Prof Mary Robinson on Effective Communication for Climate Action, as well as contributions from several other guest speakers. We look forward to delivering the rest of the course, which will be completed in late July. 
 

In the absence of a formal graduation this year, Tangent is proud to host our inaugural Alumni Event to celebrate with our recent graduates!

Taking place on Tuesday 15th, Tangent is honoured to be joined by Provost-elect Linda Doyle who will provide an opening address on the night.

To provide a keynote adress, Tangent is privileged to welcome distinguished academic guest speaker Bill Burnett to its Alumni Welcome Evening on Tuesday 15^th June.

Bill is the Executive Director of the Design Program at Stanford, where he directs the undergraduate and graduate program in design. These programs are interdepartmental, run between Stanford’s Mechanical Engineering department and Art department. He received his BS and MS in Product Design at Stanford and has worked professionally on a wide variety of projects ranging from award-winning Apple PowerBooks to the original Hasbro Star Wars action figures.

He holds several mechanical and design patents, and design awards for a variety of products including the first “slate” computer. In addition to his duties at Stanford, he is a on the Board of VOZ (pronounced “VAWS – it means voice in Spanish) a socially responsible high fashion start-up, and advises several Internet start-ups. He will address our new Tangent alumni on life design.

 

Lots happening in Tangent Education this month!

Over on the Innovation and Enterprise Development module, the learning journey continues in Module 2 Opportunity Generation and Recognition! Our group of 44 students, with a great mix of corporate and entrepreneurial experience, have just picked the business idea on which the rest of their assignment work shall be based. Extremely interesting ideas proposed to date, with ideas ranging across social and corporate enterprise environments.

 

In other news, the two-week Creative Thinking and Innovation in Health module concluded last Friday. A fantastic online interactive learning experience for the 186 students, all dialling in from Singapore Institute of Technology, this is a long-standing module delivered by Tangent in conjunction with the Department of Physiotherapy, Trinity.  The course finished on a high-note, with pitch presentations from each of the 24 student groups. Next up student will produce a written report to give more context on the Health Innovation solution that they are proposing.  

Excited to share this new opportunity! Tangent, Trinity’s Ideas Workspace are recruiting for a Digital Media Officer. Click on the link below, search "Digital Media Officer" and join our team!

 Click here: http://jobs.tcd.ie