Entre Start-up challenge 2024 to build an MVP

I was honoured to be asked to mentor a group of masters students in data science as part of the Entre Enterprise challenge over 9 weeks to take a product concept through to build an MVP.

The group showed me a demo of their product that came from a simple idea, developed during their ‘Trustworthy Data Scientist’ course, taught by Professor Giulio Valentino Dalla Riva at the University of Canterbury. Their goal was to design an ethical interview system. The initial prototype focused solely on data science. However, they wanted to create a more general platform. We’ve taken the product from a POC to an AI platform called JIM -https://www.jobinterviewmate.com/. Give a try and put your job title in?

The platform uses a ChatGPT backend and Python front-end, utilising OpenAI’s APIs to help candidates practice for job interviews. You enter your job title and/or job description and it tailors questions to help you prepare for your interview. You then push a button to give your answer via audio and it gives you real-time feedback, critiquing your answers to help you learn, improve and be ready to ace your job interview - amazing!

The nine weeks of mentoring culminates in a three minute pitch night in which the group presents their MVP to their cohort, mentors and friends.

The pitch night happened last evening and I was so proud of the JIM Team (https://www.jobinterviewmate.com/) not only have they built a working AI product but they stood up, faced their fears and nailed their three minute pitch. Well done Sridhar, Yurou and Siyuan a great effort all round.

After the three minute pitch there’s two minutes for the judges to ask questions and here Shridhar responds with excellent answers.

Awwwww so kind and generous it really was a pleasure - the positiveness this team bought and their ability to react to feedback and get stuff done was impressive.

Well done to the ten start-ups and five whom made it through to the next round at PwC on Monday night to be into win the prize pool of $50k.

A great initiative and thanks to everyone involved at https://www.entre.co.nz/enterprise-challenge who made this happen :-)

I’m Paul, lover of coffee, animals, biking, surfing & skiing. Founder & Principal Consultant of Sunstone, an IT Recruitment & HR company specialising in recruiting IT roles within software, web, mobile, AI, blockchain, data, cloud infrastructure, security & networks in Christchurch & South Island of New Zealand.