The third cycle of the Cyprus Entrepreneurship Competition initiated by the Centre of Entrepreneurship (C4E) of the University of Cyprus with the support of the Ministry of Energy Commerce and Industry was successfully completed with the announcement of the winning teams, last Wednesday at the University of Cyprus.

All participating teams in the CyEC acceleration program had the chance to pitch their business ideas to the public during the 7^th Innovation and Entrepreneurship Forum (IEF), organized by the C4E. Each year the IEF, with the support of PwC Cyprus, invites a distinguished keynote speaker to present and discuss about innovation and entrepreneurship. This year we had the honor to have with us Prof. Costas Andriopoulos from Bayes Business School, with the lecture “The power of purposeful curiosity: How asking the right questions will change your life” who attended the presentations, asked various of purposeful questions and gave out the awards to the CyEC winning teams.

This year we made some changes to instill greater motivation, encourage healthy competition and achieve greater impact, therefore the big prize of €17.000 for being the best startup went to Heroes Made, a SaaS platform for Social-Emotional Learning that is marketed at the most direct way to teach SEL in elementary schools. The company combines technology and evidence-based methods to bring all students on an equal footing for success.

In the category Best Startup Idea, the team Half Past Five (HPF) was awarded the second prize of €3000, for their courageous and humanitarian initiative for proposing an effective pain management system for cancer patients. The company aims to design an alternative way of acknowledging patients' perception of pain for a more targeted treatment.

The evaluation was a two-step process consisting of the grading of each section of the teams' business plan followed by the final pitching of the teams. What played a major role in the final decision was the ability of the teams to convince the judges of the soundness of their idea, the scalability, the teams' formation and their ability to execute.

All participating teams demonstrated great commitment to the acceleration program, overcoming obstacles, demonstrating progress and ability to implement critical feedback.