Startup Weekend: App to make collecting donations easier for charity wins

From l-r: Judges James Donald, Justine Gilliland, winners Baha Mashaboob and Ahmed Mohamed, and judge Eve Kawana- Brown. Photo/ Supplied.

An app to make donating to charities easier was the winning idea of Startup Weekend Taranaki 2020.

Startup Weekend, which ran in Hāwera this month, is a three day event designed for entrepreneurs who want feedback on an idea, a co-founder, funders, or other support.

Ahmed Mohamed, from Hāwera, presented the initial pitch for the winning idea at the start of the weekend.

"Basha Mahaboob from New Plymouth was interested in the idea so he joined my team."

The name of the app, PayEzy, was suggested by Basha. PayEzy aims to utilise QR codes to support quick and easy charity donations without the need to constantly carry cash.

Ahmed says his idea was to develop an app that can be used by the charities for collecting donations.

"The focus is cash donations. With the trend toward contact-less payment, having this app will help the charities who can't afford to develop their own solutions and allow them to get donations contact-less or online."

Ahmed says he is pleased the team won.

"I was really excited to win the Startup Weekend. When I started, I was not even thinking about winning, I just want to know if my idea was good or not. The win is a reward for the efforts we put in during the weekend."

Basha says he enjoyed the weekend.

"It was an absolutely great atmosphere, where everyone worked hard on their ideas and helped each other wherever possible. The mentors helped us to fill the gaps at every phase of the execution from time to time by giving valuable feedback on the presentation."

Ahmed says the challenge of the weekend was the time-frame.

"It was 54 hours to prepare a presentation for an idea which needs to be delivered within five minutes. Although it was long weekend, with lot of work to be done in a short time, it was very enjoyable. "

The next step is to explore the idea in more detail and see the expected cost and source of funding, Ahmed says.

"Winning the first place gives me a boost and push towards developing a business around the idea."

Second place went to Wing It, a team developing a concept designed utilise drones
to deliver high-value parts to remote work sites, and third place went to Adore, a plant-based icecream.

Organiser Katherine Blaney says Startup Taranaki is regionally-focused and the team were pleased to be able to bring the Startup Weekend event to South Taranaki for the first time.

"It's exciting to note that it's the smallest city in NZ to host the event."

Graham Nelson says each team completed a huge amount of work, supported by mentors along the way.

"The teams put in so much effort and energy over the weekend as they work to understand the problem they want to solve, validate their solution, and create a viable business model around it."