Swedbank’s “Biznesa skices” (eng: Business sketches) competition took place from 24 January to 21 March. Now it has concluded and 2nd year students of BA School of Business and Finance – Olivers Kulpe, Janis Kamergrauzis and Agnis Strazds – “SD-rent” won the first place and 1500 Eur for their business development! Congratulations!
Below, students on participation in the competition, the conduct of the competition and the emotions and experiences acquired:
We participated in Swedbank’s “Biznesa skices” competition. It is an annual event where young people have the opportunity to apply for their business idea using Swedbank’s business planning tool.
It was nothing new to us and we coped quickly. In total, nearly 1,000 students and students with different business ideas came forward. We successfully moved on to Round 2, where we had to create an ad and description for our service. Here we let our creativity fly and made a stylish video in a matter of days. You can watch it here:
Swedbank jury, made up of 90 employees, rated us with a great result and we successfully entered the final round! Now was the time to get a public vote – our favourite part.
It should be added that the evaluation was 50% of the jury’s evaluation and 50% of the public’s votes.
From the first day of voting, we took to the bull by the horns and started marketing activities. Studying, and also previous experience, has given us a lot of knowledge and key secrets to reach more people and, in our case, voices. We actively used social networks and asked for help from friends, family and colleagues.
We reached 700 votes during the two-week voting period and are grateful to anyone who voted and shared further. We followed up every day and even went to shopping centre “Origo” on the last day to introduce people to our idea and possibly get more votes.
Once the vote was over, all that remained was to wait for the results to be announced. We didn’t want to sleep at night, the habit of watching the number of votes every hour hadn’t gone away… Even though we knew we had done everything we could and were pleased, we couldn’t change anything now.
Then came the fateful day. We went to Swedbank branch in Pārdaugava and were welcomed as winners. All the finalists had a private party with drinks and food. Very stylish, actually!
After a little networking with other contestants and easing the thirst that had arisen from stress, it was finally time for the results to be announced. We remember that when they started calling out the winners of primary schools, everything was boiling in inside of us. For a few moments it seemed as if our stomachs would blow up and fly away. Finally, it was time to announce the winners of the university group – keep your thumbs up! Keep your thumbs up… 5th place NOT SD-Rent, 4th place NOT SD-Rent, 3rd place NOT SD-Rent and… 2nd place… NOT SD-Rent. By that point, our pulse had already fallen 3 times to 0 and climbed to 140, but by that point ecstasy began. 1st place – from BA School of Business and Finance “SD-Rent”. We told of our business idea – “We’re building a platform where people will be able to rent and rent electronics, it’s so simple!”. We did it! Our goal from the first day when we wanted to apply was clear and we successfully achieved it – we did it with relentless work and tremendous support from our closest.
After the award, we continued to enjoy other contestants and gained new contact.
We’ll be sure to take part in the contest again and would like to advise everyone interested to try as well. You never know! It’s the experience we gained and we got to realistically test in practice our ability to attract people. We are very happy with our work and this is just one of many steps we will take. We are going for continued growth for ourselves and our business idea.
If you want to learn more about “SD-Rent”, follow us: https://www.facebook.com/smartdevicerent & https://www.instagram.com/smartdevicerent/