Three ideas have made the finals of the enterprise competition this month, which has been taking place since the start of the academic year.

The three finalist ideas are: a clothing range for women over 5 foot 9, a new kind of travelling circus and an online marketing system for small travel businesses in developing countries.

The four judges from this year’s Enter-priZe competition have been busy filtering down the other 497 ideas that didn’t make it to the final round – an impressive number if you consider that in 2008, when the competition started, there were only 80 competitors.

The 500 initial participants had to channel their entrepreneurial spirits into a fifty-word business idea.

If the ideas stood well compared to the others they made it to the second round where the entrepreneurs had to develop it a little bit further by completing a simple template.

25 out of the initial 500 entered the second round, and they received £25 for making it to this stage.

Out of those, there are now three. But only one can win.

This year’s winner will be selected at an awards dinner to be held on 14th March, after the finalists present their ideas live.

The winner will receive a £500 prize, an ‘enterprise kit’ that includes £500 of market research from Marketest and a mentoring session with Julia Chanteray, a business consultant and the President of the Brighton and Hove Chamber of Commerce.

The other two finalists will also not leave empty handed.

They’ll receive £125 and the enterprise kit.

The other 497 entrant ideas included board games, charity pawn shops, an online fitting room and an-online dating site for Sussex students.

Last year’s winner Stella Sims, a Media & Film doctoral student, has been busy presenting her pop-up tea room idea to people, meeting with the organizers of the Brighton Food Festival and looking for a venue to turn Auteri-Tea (the name of the product) into a reality.

And she’s not alone; even those who don’t make it to the finals can see their ideas come into fruition.

This was the case with last year’s runner up, Expresso Mushrooms, who will be seeing their exotic mushrooms grown on used coffee grounds this spring.

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