From First Idea to Silicon Valley

At this year’s CPI Demo Day of the start-up promotion programme “Creative Pre-Incubator”, student teams of all Lower Austrian higher education institutions presented their business ideas. Two USTP students convinced the jury with applications that help people in their everyday lives. Julian Pecho won a ticket to participate in a summer school in Silicon Valley, while Katharina Wurm secured herself an exclusive workshop in Austria with a renowned tech designer from Silicon Valley.

Developing innovative solutions to current challenges as well as practical applications is at the centre of education and research at USTP – University of Applied Sciences St. Pölten. The institution has a set of measures in place to support students, with the programme of the Creative Pre-Incubator at their heart.

Sports Platform and Music Learning App

The CPI Demo Day held at IMC Krems recently showed the results of this commitment. Two USTP students were particularly successful in the competition:

Julian Pecho, a student of the bachelor degree programme Data Science and a graduate of Creative Computing, impressed the jury with his idea EsportEvents. This platform pools professional e-sport broadcasts in a central location and uses artificial intelligence to analyse real-time game data to offer users an optimised viewing experience. For his idea, Pecho won a ticket to participate in the Berkeley Method of Entrepreneurship Summer School in Berkeley in Silicon Valley.

The second USTP winner was Katharina Wurm, a student of the bachelor degree programme Interactive Technologies. With her idea Tunimo, she developed a gamified music learning app for children that helps them to practise on their musical instruments on a regular basis and allows teachers to guide their pupils individually. For her project, she won a ticket to the Austrian Startups Summit in Vienna where she will participate in a workshop with tech designer Gigi Wang from Silicon Valley.

With Courage to Creativity and Innovation

“Innovation is achieved where people have the courage to strike new paths and develop solutions to real challenges. This is exactly where we support our USTP students with great commitment – from the initial idea all the way to business foundation, if it comes to that. The awards won by Julian Pecho und Katharina Wurm impressively attest to the creativity, innovative capacity, and entrepreneurial spirit of our students. My sincere congratulations”, says Ulrike Wieländer, Section Head Young Talent, Innovation, and Start-Ups at USTP.

The top-class jury of the CPI Demo Day featured experts of the Province of Lower Austria and of the innovation platforms ‘tecnet’ and ‘accent’ as well as the trade representative of the Austrian Economic Chamber in San Francisco who took part online.

Creative Pre-Incubator

The Creative Pre-Incubator (CPI) is a programme for innovative business founders and a cooperation between the Lower Austrian universities of applied sciences and the ‘accent’ incubator. For several years now, the CPI has been successfully implemented at USTP, IMC Krems, the University of Applied

Sciences Wiener Neustadt, and FHWN Campus Wieselburg. It is also part of the Province of Lower Austria’s spin-off initiative SCIENCE TO BUSINESS. The CPI was developed in a cooperation between USTP and the ‘accent’ incubator.

Further Information

• EsportEvents
• Tunimo
• Creative Pre-Incubator at USTP