AirStock took the honours and proved perfect start-up

Start-up Weekend, a University of Sheffield-hosted event designed to bring business ideas to life, saw AirStock, a venture conceived to provide broadcasters with an affordable source of production quality aerial video footage, named the winner. AirStock and runners-up Goodvid.io, which was created to help retailers find user generated video content for their websites, will now go forward to start-up competition, Global Start-up Battle. They will compete with other ventures created at Start-up Weekend events around the world, to win funding and business support from Google, Microsoft and Amazon.

Giles Moore, part of the AirStock team, said: “Our start-up has come a long way in a matter of hours. We came to Sheffield Start-up Weekend with an idea and left with a core team and basic viable product.

“We were able to refine our concept with experienced people from Sheffield’s technology sector and are really excited about pitching it to potential partners and investors connected through the global Start-up Weekend movement.”

Samantha Deakin, founder of Sheffield Start-up Weekend, said: “There is huge educational value in creating, sharing and crash-testing ideas, and – with a third of start-ups created at these events going strong three months later – we hope to have unearthed gems that could add significantly to Sheffield’s growing technology cluster.”

Sara Pates, enterprise business manager at the University of Sheffield, said: “Events like Sheffield Start-up Weekend help to stimulate sustainable start-up activity by connecting entrepreneurs with co-founders, complementary skills and the opportunity to learn by creating.”

The team that created AirStock over Start-up Weekend comprised VuAir founder Andre Ferreria, sales and marketing manager Mr Moore, marketing professional Rob Barr, software engineer Manu Matute and three students from the University of Sheffield: Jack Ross, Cyrus Sahirad and Dan Cunnington.

n A series of enterprise-focused events will take place in Sheffield this week, coinciding with Global Entrepreneurship Week. MADE: The Entrepreneur Festival, which recently attracted a new partner, business services company BE Group, will not take place in its full form this year.

Instead, the week will feature a number of different MADE events and associated fringe events. A return to the full festival programme is planned for next year. The festival is run by Marketing Sheffield.

Visit www.madefestival.com/made-2013 for full details for all events planned.