Concrete boys and mobile success receive entrepreneurship award

’Best of the best’ to student businesses

Three students, just 21 and 22 years old, with their own company and a concrete invention with world potential, won ”Best of the best” and 40,000 kroner. The other award went to the company Shape, who designed a successful iPhone application.

Mads Løntoft, Alexander Wulff and Peter Hertz have established the concrete company Abeo A/S. Their aim is to make an invention from the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) a commercial product. Professor Kristian Hertz from DTU has invented Super-Light Structures, which make it possible to use much less steel and concrete during construction and still get a much stronger product than today.

Companies with future potential

- If the concrete is able to do just a fraction of what we have heard so far, then it is a revolution. And the "concrete boys" are an excellent link to technical developers at DTU. The growth potential is in the partnership between the technical experts and our own entrepreneurs, and Abeo will have no problem in establishing a growth company, says Mette Mønsted, who is part of the jury that totally agreed on the two winners.

One year – one application – salary for four

The other winning company, Shape, designs applications for iPhones, and has already made its first application. ’Expenditure’ keeps track of expenses and receipts for companies.

For instance, the mobile phone can scan a taxi receipt and make sure that it appears in the travelling expenses account. Apple has expressed their enthusiasm by putting Expenditure on the front page in their application webshop. In fact, Shape is so successful that the company is able to pay salary to the four owners each month, even though they are all studying or working concurrently with Shape.

The Best of the best-award means that we now can afford to take a person out for about a month where his only job will be to work with the development of new applications that will bring Shape even further, says a happy Christian Risom from Shape.

The awards were presented Friday 17 September 2010 at the CSE Lab at CBS.

More and more student business at CBS

At least one of the company owners has to be a student at CBS and have an office space at CSE Lab, which is the student growth house at CBS. Both winning companies have office spaces at CSE Lab. Students can also receive professional counselling and join networks with the aim of developing their companies.

The award money has been donated by Københavns Handelsstands Klub (traders in Copenhagen)