Are student unions the secret to building a billion-dollar fintech business?

It’s no secret that most student unions and societies could do with more funding to finance their “educational activities”. But is solving this issue a viable path to building a unicorn?

Taking that bet is TeamFirst, a fundraising platform for university societies and sports teams, which also helps brands reach students (read: millennials) with local and national discounts.

The startup is one of three startups pitching at StrategyEye’s  Building a Billion Dollar Startup event, the latest in their series of knowledge and networking events at The Escalator in east London.

The event, taking place on Wednesday 30th September, will bring together some of the brightest minds in the startup scene. Pitching alongside TeamFirst is Lobster, a marketplace to find and license photos on social media and Localistico, which helps small businesses with online discovery for their physical locations. Each startup will deliver a five minute, rapid-fire pitch to the investors and potential customers in the room.

The evenings’ keynote presentations will be delivered by startups that have already achieved billion dollar valuation: cloud communications startup Twilio and long distance ridesharing service BlaBlaCar, which attained unicorn status following a $160m funding round earlier this month.

An additional keynote speaker will be announced in due course.

The presentations will be followed by networking pizza and drinks with 130 tech investors, entrepreneurs, consultants and advisors. The evening promises to be insightful and engaging, with real opportunities to learn from and network with top tech players.

This is the third instalment of StrategyEye’s Building a Billion Dollar Startup. Previous keynote speakers include Spotify, Uber, AirBnB, Sailthru and YPlan.

Early bird tickets end on Monday 21st September, so visit the Building a Billion Dollar Startup event site to get a 40 per cent discount.

 

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