Lion's Den 2012
Lion’s Den celebrates the entrepreneurial spirit in the College and in this year’s competition King’s Health Partners were included for the first time and the finalists represented all five of the College’s campuses.
Winners Zheng-Liang Zhi & Shuang Song of CellCap Therapeutics with their mentor, Zulfiqar Deo
The Lion’s Den Challenge is for postgraduate students and postdoctoral research staff at King’s. With a total prize fund of £10,000, the competition aims to identify, reward and assist outstanding business potential, whether based on research or perceived market need.
Lion’s Den seeks to generate real start-ups from the graduate and researcher community. All five of the finalist teams who pitched competed for the £5,000 prize for the Best Business Idea. Many of the teams also competed to win the £4,000 prize for the Best Business Idea based on King’s Research.
Participants attended sessions on networking, business basics, presentation skills, marketing, finance, intellectual property, company formation and business planning. The networking opportunities have been particularly effective at cross-pollination of ideas and forming teams.
Chris Mottershead, Vice Principal for Research & Innovation, awarded the prizes on 16 May in the Anatomy Theatre, Strand Campus.
Best Pitch, with an award of £1,000, went to ‘In Our Hands’ created by Pooky Hesmondhlagh from the Institute of Psychiatry. Pooky is using her research to create an e-learning service for teachers and parents supporting eating disorders in children. The ability to pitch well is a vital skill for most people throughout their careers and this prize recognises that however good the idea, or planning, realisation will be hampered by pitching poorly.
The prizes for Best Business Idea and Best Business Idea based on King’s Research both went to ‘CellCap Therapeutics’. Dr Zheng-Liang Zhi and Shuang Song, Medicine, won a total of £9,000; they are proposing to transform islet transplantation through nanoencapsulation of donor islets.
Pooky Hesmondhlagh, winner of the prize Best Pitch, leads her presentation