Lenka Jurasová and Zdenka Vilhanová Succeed in the Start Your Business Competition: Supporting Entrepreneurship with Modeling Clay from Coffee Waste. The Start Your Business competition encourages students to develop entrepreneurial ideas and connects science with practice. This year, Lenka Jurasová and Zdenka Vilhanová from our faculty won 2nd place with their project: modeling clay made from coffee waste.
Lenka Jurasová is a doctoral student specializing in biochemistry, while Zdenka Vilhanová is pursuing her bachelor’s degree in the same field. This gives them a broad perspective and access to information they also use in their business endeavors.
Meeting in the Course "From Ideas to Business"
Lenka and Zdenka met in the course "From Ideas to Business." The goal of this course is to introduce students to modern methods of working with ideas. By applying the Design Thinking method, students develop their own business ideas and learn practical information essential for starting a business, including legal, financial, and marketing aspects. In a safe environment, they try out the first steps of working with a business idea and adopt an entrepreneurial mindset. The course also covers principles of research implementation, intellectual property protection, and ways to transfer technology and knowledge beyond the university setting. The entire course is taught by experienced business consultants with many years of practice and includes an inspirational segment with discussions featuring Brno entrepreneurs.
Challenge Lab FoodHack: How to Reduce Food Waste?
During a hackathon organized by JIC, Lenka and Zdenka became fascinated by coffee chaff—the inner husk of the coffee bean released during roasting. Their solution to this challenge was an ecological modeling clay made from coffee chaff, as you can read in the interview below.
Start Your Business at MUNI
“We signed up for the Start Your Business competition, organized by the Technology Transfer Office of Masaryk University, not only because we enjoy entrepreneurship, but also because it gave us the opportunity to broaden our horizons and learn how to connect science with practice,” explain Lenka and Zdenka. “It was a challenge for us to develop our idea into a form that could appeal to the jury and potential investors. The competition provided us not only with space for development but also valuable consultations with mentors, which helped us advance our project significantly.”
Their project focuses on ecological solutions and the use of environmentally friendly materials. “Our goal is not to add more plastics to the world, but rather to offer compostable alternatives. We believe our product has both practical and educational value,” add our students. We wish them success in their business endeavors.
Get Involved in Start Your Business
Technology Transfer Office of Masaryk University, which oversees entrepreneurship at MU, introduced the competition five years ago. The sixth edition of Start Your Business will be announced in December this year.
The PowerGreens project, which introduces an innovative approach to producing protein powder, placed fourth in the Start Your Business competition. The team behind the project includes Marko Mećava (Department of Biochemistry) along with Matúš Grieš and Miroslav Rosputinský, students from the Department of Experimental Biology. You can look forward to an interview with them very soon.
Interview with Lenka Jurasová and Zdenka Vilhanová
Can you introduce your project Chaffean and what inspired you to create ecological modeling clay?
Last autumn, we participated in the Challenge Lab hackathon organized by JIC as part of the EIT Food program. One of the challenges was processing coffee chaff—the inner husk of the coffee bean released during roasting. Ecological modeling clay made from coffee chaff was our solution to this challenge.
How does the development and production of your compostable modeling clay work? What materials do you use?
We make the clay from coffee chaff and plan to explore other suitable materials considered as biowaste.
What are the main challenges you’ve encountered in developing the ecological product?
Finding a balance between a product that remains compostable and one that lasts long enough.
How did you use the 10,000 CZK scholarship during the second presentation round?
We used the scholarship to purchase domains, design packaging, test packaging, and buy raw materials for clay production.
What are your plans and vision for the project’s international expansion by 2030?
For now, everything remains open. From the beginning, we planned to operate in the Czech and Slovak markets. Then, we’ll survey neighboring countries and select those where our product has the best chance of success.
How has studying at the Faculty of Science, Masaryk University helped you realize your business plan?
In our final theses, our task is to verify a pre-set hypothesis. We regularly use this approach in our project as well.
What further steps do you plan to take to bring your project to market and attract customers?
The biggest challenge will be obtaining European certification to enter the market at all.
How do you evaluate the experience with mentoring and consultations during the Start Your Business competition?
Very positively—every mentoring session we attended moved our project in the right direction.
What advice would you give to other students who want to combine their studies with entrepreneurship?
Go for it!
Photo: Tomáš Škoda
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