On May 5, 2026, the final of the course “StartUp: From Idea to take off” implemented within the project “Innovative Spring – 2026,” took place. During the event, student teams presented their developed startup projects to international experts and potential investors.
This year’s course final was held in the format of negotiations between teams and international investors in order to assess the readiness of the projects for investment attraction. Lecturer Assoc. Prof. I. B. Katernyak emphasized that the event is not only a competition of ideas, but also a platform for open dialogue, experience exchange, and collaboration between students, faculty, and business representatives.
The student projects were evaluated by invited international experts and representatives of the business sector. Among the guests of the event were Thomas Karlsson, Chief Executive Officer of Sörmlandsfonden AB, a venture capital fund with an active business network in the Södermanland region (Sweden), and Professor Mary Shepard Speight, fformer Professor of International Business and Entrepreneurship at the University of Wisconsin (USA). The experts familiarized themselves with the students’ startup ideas, asked questions to the teams, and shared their own experience in innovation, entrepreneurship, and business development.
The participants of the final included students from various faculties of Lviv University, who presented startup projects focused on technology, education, psychological support, environmental initiatives, and social entrepreneurship. Among the presented ideas were the ReStart platform for veteran employment, the AI Mental Agent for preventive psychological support, the Gymini ecosystem for the fitness industry, the Travel Buddy Match service for finding travel partners, and the Animal Shelter platform aimed at supporting animal shelters and ensuring transparency of charitable fundraising.
Participants also presented educational and career solutions, including the CareerStart platform for creating professional CVs and Aurora SkillGraph – an AI mentor for personalized learning. Special attention was drawn to startups related to sustainable consumption, automotive sports technologies, energy solutions, and cultural leisure platforms
