The Santander Universities Entrepreneurship Awards is a UK-wide entrepreneurial business pitching competition for students and recent graduates. This year, the competition included a ‘Crowdfunding challenge’ where the businesses worked with the team at Crowdfunder to create a campaign for their business.
Working with Crowdfunder, Student Travel Tips created a campaign for the business, winning a cash prize of £6,000 from Santander at the final and crowdfunding over £5,000.
Alfie Laurence set up Student Travel Tips while studying at Bristol to provide peer to peer advice for students studying abroad. From paperwork and accommodation to culture and socialising, Alfie aims to reassure students as they embark on a daunting, yet exciting, year abroad.
Alfie graduated with Spanish and Portuguese in July this year and is one of thousands of graduates creating their own employment opportunities. He said: “If there is one thing, I’ll cherish the most from the early stages of my start up journey, it’ll be the confidence that the Basecamp Enterprise team gave me. I never expected to be doing this full time and I am thankful to them for their help. They not only invited me to take part in the New Enterprise Competitions and but also nominated me for the Santander Emerging Entrepreneur Program.’’
Theo Paphitis supported this year’s Santander Entrepreneurship Awards and said: “The quality of idea, development and execution of these businesses is excellent and shows how entrepreneurial students can be. That these ideas have been nurtured alongside their studies is inspirational and shows me that UK start-ups are in great shape. That so many students are now starting businesses as they study shows the value of earning whilst learning.”
Jon Hunt, Executive Director, Research & Enterprise at the University of Bristol said, “It’s great to see a start-up business like Alfie’s getting recognised by such a prestigious award, the University of Bristol has a proud legacy and successful track record in supporting innovation through its vibrant start-up, spin-out, and scale-up business ecosystem, resulting in significant economic value and job creation for the region”
Alfie’s win follows last year’s successes for University of Bristol alumni founded business Scribeless who won the top prize of £25,000 at the Santander Emerging Entrepreneurs Programme 2019.