‘Silicon Valley standard’ pitch for wireless electric vehicle chargers wins Sydney schoolgirls STEM cred
Seven teen trailblazers from a Sydney girls’ school have emerged victorious in a Shark Tank-style competition, leaving the panel of would-be investors stunned by a pitch more Silicon Valley than Year 8 science. Here’s how they did it.
Education
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Seven teen trailblazers from St Ursula’s College in Kingsgrove have emerged victorious in a Shark Tank-style competition in which Year 8 students from across the state delivered “Silicon Valley standard” pitches to a panel of would-be investors.
Teammates Sophie Steel, Elena Vidanovski, Ella Rentzepis, Isabella Saoud, Maria Katsaros, Jacinta Shori, Eden Vonhoff have developed a novel solution to a major frustration with electric vehicles – the availability of plug-in charging stations – by designing a wireless charging system.
Branded “Wattway”, the product would be built into existing infrastructure including in public carparks, at traffic lights and in private parking sports, with the girls also designing an app to track charging and take payments.
“We had a lot of ideas, but it was very hard to agree on any of them … it was a lot of trial and error, and we actually came to our (final) idea the week before,” Elena said.
“It was a little bit nerve-racking, but I think that we were all pretty confident about our solution and we knew the content in the presentation really well,” Jacinta added.
The “Pitch For The Planet” competition was the culmination of a six-month program run by The Orbispace Initiative, a charity founded by Silicon Valley software entrepreneur Anna-Grace Millward in her mission to train the next generation of female innovators.
The program aims to boost girls’ confidence in STEM in hopes of encouraging them to pursue science subjects in their senior years of high school, and in their future careers.
St Ursula’s College teacher Kaitlyn McDougall said she was “blown away” by how much her students had grown throughout the program.
Ms Millward said the young age of the competitors – who are all in Year 8 – “is something the judges quickly forget” in the face of “Silicon Valley standard” ideas and delivery.
“Their knowledge is super impressive, but so are their soft skills, to defend their ideas against our investors’ tough questions,” she said.
The ‘sharks’, One Ventures venture capital investor Kate Madden, Visa’s social impact lead Lucy Anderson, Director of UNSW’s Digital Grid Futures Institute John Fletcher and Quest Payment Systems CEO Jan Mason, interrogated the St Ursula’s girls on where they’d find the money to get the program off the ground.
The Wattway team were swift to rattle off the names of the federal government grants they’d be applying for.
“(The judges) often say they’re unimpressed by the quality of the adult pitches they hear afterwards,” Ms Millward said.
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