On October 8, the 2021 DSU Startup Idea Contest was successfully held by the DSU Business Startup Project. This competition, held as part of the Initial Startup Package Project, came to fruition in order to discover young entrepreneurs with excellent startup ideas and to help continually revitalize DSU’s startup culture. Following the example of last year, the event was held both online and offline due to covid-19, and a total of about 100 people including offline presenters and online participants using Zoom attended.

Altogether, a total of 21 teams and 59 students participated in this competition, with 10 finalists being selected through document screening and a total of 2.6 million won being awarded to the final 6 teams. Among these teams, the Grand Prize was awarded to the IKI (Son Hye-soo) team from the School of Design, the First Prize was awarded to the U-Nano (Yang Ga-hyeon, Park Min-ho, Kim Jae-jeong, and Park Hyun-yeong) team from the Department of Computer Engineering, the Excellence Awards were gained by the Good Eye Deer and Smart Mobility teams, and the Encouragement Awards were granted to the Shelter and Eyedenti teams. In addition, all participants were given a meaningful opportunity to strengthen their understanding of starting a business and share their start-up know-how through being given a special lecture by Yoon-gyu, a young DSU entrepreneur and founder of the company 263 Design.

Jeong Deo-woon, Director of the Busines Startup Project, said, “The Startup Idea Contest is the first stage in which students can nurture and experience their university dreams of starting a business, for which the Business Startup Project will continue to provide active support. Currently, the Business Startup Project is operating various programs tailored to each start-up stage based on the start-up support system, so it is my sincere hope that many students interested in starting a business will participate. We will continue to nurture promising young entrepreneurs by utilizing the nation’s top-notch startup infrastructure.”

Meanwhile, in January next year the Business Startup Project is further planning to hold the “Practical Startup Contest” the largest campus start-up competition on.

Interview with Grand Prize Winner
Team name IKI
Team member Son Hye-soo (School of Design, Senior)
•Business item name
“Potato Play with the Five Senses”
•Item introduction
This is a five-sensory play product for infants made using safe edible materials such as potatoes and fruit powder, and which takes advantage of the viscoelasticity property of the potatoes

Q. What made you choose this item? Currently, it takes a long and complicated
process for parents to prepare materials for their young children to play with at home that utilizes and helps develop all their five senses, and it is additionally difficult to reorganize and store them after they have been played with. There are also concerns about the safety of the products being sold that need to be addressed. This is why the Five Senses Play “Posle” was developed. This design aims to provide safe and highquality products for providing educational and fun play to young children.

Q. What kind of programs did you participate in to reach this goal, and what were the results of your school startup program?
I was able to study a lot about startups by participating in the practical startup projects and startup clubs promoted by the Business Startup Project. As a result, teams I participated in were awarded the Grand Prize in the 2020 Startup Idea Contest promoted by DSU and the Encouragement Award in the 2020 Practical Startup Contest, and, in 2021, our ideas were selected as a preliminary start-up package promoted by the Ministry of SMEs and Startups. I am also participating in the 2021 Busan Startup Idea Contest which is currently in progress, and I looking forward to discovering whether or not I will advance to the finals next week. For now, I am so happy that I have won the Grand Prize in the start-up contests for two consecutive years in. I hope too that my juniors will also actively participate in such good startup programs, and likewise receive the many benefits to be gained from them!

Q. What kind of help did you get from your advisor?
Since this idea originally started as a work required for graduation, my professors filled in the gaps with a lot of help. Thanks to their expert assistance, I was able to get good results. Thank you!

Q. What are your future plans?
I plan to proceed with full-scale commercialization within this year, and crowdfunding will be the first step. Thank you for your interest!