Startup Weekend Brisbane announces ‘CarValues.co’ as overall winning concept from the 54 hour battle
27 October 2014
Over 150 people gathered at River City Labs on Friday to watch 44 different ideas pitched on the launch night of Startup Weekend Brisbane 2014. Out of the 44 pitches, concepts were voted on culminating into 13 working startup teams. After 54 hours of planning, collaborating coding, eating and drinking, team CarValues.co emerged winners of Brisbane Startup Weekend 2014.
CarValues.co position themselves as ‘Car dealer’s worst nightmare’. They analyse listed prices from car websites across the country so that you can find the best deal.
Team lead Christopher Drake said “Our platform will change the way people look at pricing when buying or selling used cars. It will no longer be difficult to negotiate a discount with a used car dealers as their nationally listed prices bring transparency to the industry. We are providing useful easy to understand data for people that will remove power from traditional dealers which have monopolised the market for so long.”
As winners of Brisbane Startup Weekend, the team took home a $4,000 business package from sponsor Hanrick Curran which will provide business support services for 12 months. The team of seven also received three months casual membership at River City Labs plus an XBOX One from Microsoft.
Runner up and the prize for overall execution went to Go Leaderboard founded by Brisbane game developer Glen Arrowsmith who also took home an XBOX One for the team.
River City Labs founder and active startup investor Steve Baxter said the talent in the room at this event was the best he had seen in the past three years of hosting Startup Weekend events at River City Labs.
“Out of the 80 participants we had 20 registered developers which is an encouraging sign for Brisbane. Normally we have less than that so technical talent is stretched across teams. This year we had a great mix of tech, designers and business people proving more people are engaging in the Startup sector and wanting to get involved. It is very encouraging. “Steve said.
Local sponsor Microsoft offered a prize to the best team who developed on Azure which went to team ‘CaterMe’ - a digital solution for storing, managing and tracking dietary requirements for event attendees. Team leader Jo Keong is a member of Student Entrepreneurial society Idea Network. The team took home two Lumia 930 phones.
Other teams worthy of mention include Judges’ favourite “AreYouChicken”, “MovieApe” and ‘EatCheat’ which won spirit of Startup Weekend Award for their energy, enthusiasm and futuristic thinking. Lunch on the Saturday was ordered and delivered via EatCheat and delivered by drone.
The tagline was “You choose the meals and we source the cheapest ingredients and deliver it via drone." Currently the drones are of human kind with robotic versions coming soon.
Startup Weekend Brisbane is an intense 54 hour event where a community of local entrepreneurs, business startup enthusiasts, web and software developers, designers, marketing gurus came together to launch 13 different startups. Tweets across the weekend can be found by tracking the official @swbne account and #swbne14 hashtag. All official photos are located on here:
Photo gallery 1:
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.884365171581657.1073741848.325047367513443&type=1
Team Photo: CarValues.co
About Startup Weekend
Startup Weekend is a global grassroots movement of active and empowered entrepreneurs who are learning the basics of founding startups and launching successful ventures. It is the largest community of passionate entrepreneurs hosting over 1068 events across 478 cities that have created over 8,000, Startups through 100,000 highly motivated entrepreneurs. No talk, all action. Launch a Startup in 54 hours.
Visit brisbane.startupweekend.org for more details on Sponsors, Mentors, Organisers, Facilitators and the full weekend program.