The third CINE event focused on entrepreneurship training was held in the last week of October. Master’s, doctoral, and postdoctoral fellows from the center participated in a series of activities aimed at identifying technologies with the potential to generate products and presenting possible businesses through pitches (short presentations made by entrepreneurs to persuasively explain the value of their startups).

“The Startup Generation for Energy Transition Workshop was a milestone for many CINE researchers,” says Professor Hudson Zanin (Unicamp), CINE’s Technology Transfer Coordinator who led the organization of the event. “For the first time, graduate and doctoral students had the chance to transform their laboratory ideas into business models,” he emphasizes.

Through activities led by mentors from Escalab, a center that brings technologies from the laboratory to the market, the thirteen workshop participants learned essential tools and methods to identify real business opportunities and objectively analyze their viability.

“The learning curve was exponential,” says participant João Marcos Kanieski, who is doing his post-doctoral research at CINE. “In just five days I learned how to prepare a robust presentation for potential investors or partners, the pitch, starting with the problem statement, moving on to the solution, competitive advantages, technical and economic feasibility, technological maturity, tips on text narration and public speaking,” he adds.

In total, five pitches were presented by the participants on the last day of the event. The presenters showcased their business ideas in the solar energy storage for rural areas, biogas quality monitoring, sustainable national batteries, fast charging of electrified vehicles, and electronic tags. A panel of representatives from companies operating in the energy, transportation, and investment sectors attended and evaluated the presentations, providing important suggestions.

“The event allowed for a 360-degree view of the venture; today I think about my startup in a completely different way,” says João Marcos, who is working on creating a network of charging stations based on the use of stationary batteries. “Before, I viewed our solution in a very technical way; now I see it embedded in an economic and social context,” he adds.

According to Professor Hudson, events like this help build bridges between scientific interest and the pains and demands of the market, which are not always aligned. “We want to see cutting-edge science flourish with an entrepreneurial spirit, made by Brazilians who believe that knowledge can—and should—become development,” he says.

The workshop was organized by a team from CINE (post-doc Bruno Bitarães and analysts Camila Pedroso and Tatiana Pessanha), along with Eduarda Rezende, from the Escalab team.