Spill the Beans

12/07/2022

Check out IBM’s challenge on the Xolvit app. How will you Xolvit? Head to the app stores and download Xolvit. We like to Xolvit, Xolvit..

12/07/2022

A letter from our founder & CEO, with love.
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Dear Spill the Beans Family,

There is nothing more rewarding as a start-up entrepreneur than to have a vision in your head, work your butt off to execute on that vision and then actually bring your vision to life in the real world. After all, an idea is just an idea unless you execute on it.

I’m super proud to introduce you to my new app called Xolvit (pronounced ‘zolve it’) that I designed, programmed and developed from scratch. Xolvit is like a socially responsible TikTok meets LinkedIn for young people!

In 6 months, I taught myself to program, working tirelessly around the clock, programming whilst my 3 girls were asleep, 4am starts, 2am Zoom calls, quick nana naps before school pick-ups, going through a traumatic breakup, moving house with my girls twice in 4 weeks.. facilitating workshops with schools, mentoring students, Board commitments, constant back and forth with Apple engineers to fix issues, more programming, more tech issues, RSI in my shoulder from programming(!) and oh, throw in covid just for spice!

So here it is. Xolvit. On the app stores and in beta.

I developed Xolvit to help young people create opportunities for themselves. It’s a problem solving app for young people to solve real world problems faced by socially responsible companies and NFPs. Organizations set challenges on the app, tracked to the United Nations SDGs, for young people (up to 25 years) to solve. Young people pitch their solutions in the form of a one-minute video pitch and the winners get to implement their solutions with the companies and win prizes.

IBM, Tech Council of Australia, Microsoft, RMIT, Melbourne Business School and UN Youth are just a few of the companies committed on the platform and we’re only just in beta!

We have a long queue of incredible companies looking to set challenges, but we’re limiting the number of challenges in beta phase, so click on the link below to join the waitlist!

http://www.spillthebeans.events/xolvit/

Xolvit is live on Apple and Google app stores. Check it out. Follow Xolvit on Insta

It’s bean a pleasure,
Helen Xx

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23/05/2022

Can it get any better!??? As part of the National Pitchfest Schools Competition in partnership with Village Cinemas, Brant Pinvidic - Best Selling Author, Hollywood Producer, Award Winning Director, Podcaster and Forbes Contributor, will be facilitating a masterclass as one of the prizes. And guess what the masterclass is on? Yep, you guessed it. Pitching!! How to pitch like a Hollywood storyteller. 🎥 🎞 So excited!!!

Head across to .events on IG and click on the Pitchfest competition link in our bio! Let’s get pitching Australia!!

28/03/2022

We love seeing students bringing their ideas to life! Massive congratulations to Lachlan and Blake! 👏🏻 👏🏻

Innovation, creativity, enterprise and entrepreneurship are imbedded in an education at St John’s Grammar. From Junior to Secondary School, a series of programs nurture and build students’ skills in agency, creativity and innovation and are supported by genuine, ongoing opportunities to develop and refine ideas, products and solutions and take them to market.

We’re continually inspired and amazed by the incredible ideas of our students. Today, in particular, we were so proud to see our students, Lachlan Miegel and Blake Tourneur, gracing the pages of The Advertiser for their award-winning business, HydroSoil. The story in today’s paper follows the news that Blake and Lachlan won the national Westpac Impact Youth Challenge competition. Their HydroSoil invention - sensors and an app that lets people know when their plants need to be watered – took out the top spot, beating more than 6200 other young Australians entered in the competition. You can read the article online here: https://www.heraldsun.com.au/lifestyle/smart/turning-teens-into-entrepreneurs-takes-hard-work-but-is-worth-it/news-story/615270c3054ce42971842a26946b480c

Their prize includes access to a panel of connected industry-leading professionals, a prize pack including a Microsoft Surface Laptop, an opportunity to pitch at the Spill the Beans event (aka like TED Talks for youth) as well as financial education, funding and membership from Westpac's Davidson Institute to further their business.

These young guns have gone from strength to strength at St John’s Grammar, embracing every opportunity to harness their entrepreneurial skills and, at 15-years-old, already have a wealth of experience under their belt in conceptualising, developing and marketing products to meet a business need. This is only the beginning for these savvy young men – we can’t wait to see what happens next!

28/02/2022

The National Pitchfest Schools Competition is now open! 👏🏻 🎈

We know the last couple of years have been difficult for our students, so let’s bring them something fun and educational.

Pitchfest and Village Cinemas have joined forces to create the ultimate school excursion and pitching competition, helping students solve problems and bring ideas to life – in the cinemas! 🎥 🍿

In partnership with Village and associated cinemas across Australia, we’re offering your students a fabulous opportunity to participate in a national, problem solving and pitching competition. We’ll facilitate our Pitchfest ideation workshops with your school, in a cinema near you!

PLUS, our incredible network of Entrepreneurs and business people including the one and only David Meltzer clap clap will be hosting MasterClasses with the winners!

Don’t miss out on this opportunity. Sign up now by visiting www.pitch-fest.com.

Huge shout out to our proud partners Village Cinemas, Tech Council of Australia, RMIT University, CyberClinic, UN Youth Australia, ASPiRE.

20/01/2022

It has seriously ‘bean’ such a pleasure hosting some of the world’s leading entrepreneurs on our Pitchfest show in 2021 and we can’t wait for more exciting announcements in 2022! 👏🏻 🎉 🎈

We recently hosted Sarah Davidson on Pitchfest, alongside co-panellist Colleen Callander. Sarah provided gold nuggets of entrepreneurial advice up and coming young entrepreneurs in the fashion industry, Madi Baker (16) and Celine Razbash (14). It’s no wonder young entrepreneurs are inspired by Sarah – she hung up her suits and heels as a lawyer to become a full-time entrepreneur, founder of Matcha Mylkbar, author, TV host and podcaster of award-winning podcast Seize the Yay. Sarah encourages everyone to seize their yay everyday and she certainly succeeded in doing that with our young entrepreneurs on our Pitchfest show.

Watch this space for more updates on Pitchfest and exciting news for 2022! If you want to join us on Pitchfest, head across to www.spillthebeans.events

06/10/2021

Do you know a young person with a Moonshot idea who wants to appear on our Pitchfest show with this man? No, not Tony Robbins, not Elon Musk, but none other than Naveen Jain!! 🚀 🌙

Naveen Jain, billionaire entrepreneur, founder of Moon Express (the only company globally with permission to harvest resources from the moon), founder of Viome, InfoSpace and many other moonshot ventures, is joining us on Pitchfest later this month! 📽📺 🍿

And guess what? We have an amazing opportunity for a young entrepreneur to join us on the show, meet Naveen and pitch their idea! In return, Naveen will give you some wise words of advice and practical guidance on how to move your idea forward. Sound like fun?

Click on the link below 👇🏼 to register your interest to appear!! 📺

https://www.spillthebeans.events/pitchfest-4/

03/10/2021

Spill the Beans is proud to announce the Y-Suite - Youth Advisory Board for Tango Energy. The Y-Suite will bring a fresh, youthful voice and perspective to the strategy and vision of Tango Energy’s future business decisions. Congratulations Y-Suite. Exciting times ahead!

If you’re a company looking to bring a youthful perspective and voice to your vision and strategy, reach out to us. Or if you’re a young person looking to make an impact on an Advisory Board, we’d love to hear from you. Click on the Y-Suite link here: www.spillthebeans.events to register your interest.

28/09/2021

Welcome Naveen Jain to Pitchfest! So who is Naveen Jain you ask? Naveen is an intensely curious entrepreneur who is not afraid to take on the audacious ideas that will push humanity forward. 👏🏻 🚀

Naveen is co-founder of Moon Express, the only company globally with permission to harvest resources from the moon. Yes, talk about a moonshot adventurer! 🌙 🥾✨

In addition to Moon Express, Naveen’s other current moonshot adventure is Viome, an AI-driven platform that analyses the interaction between food, our microbiome, and our human cells in order to develop precision nutrition to prevent and reverse chronic diseases. As a serial entrepreneur, Naveen previously founded InfoSpace, Intelius and TalentWise.

Naveen is Vice-Chairman of the Board at Singularity University, where he focuses on educating and inspiring leaders to utilize innovative technologies to address humanity’s greatest challenges. He is also on the Board of the XPRIZE Foundation, an organization that uses incentivised prize competition to push the limits of what’s possible — to change the world for the better.

There’s so much more to Naveen than meets the eye and we can’t wait for the kids to pitch their ideas to this incredible moonshot adventurer. We simply cannot wait!

Click on the Pitchfest link in comments below 👇🏼 to view Naveen’s full profile.

Watch this space as we bring you more news about Naveen and Pitchfest!

23/09/2021

Spill the Beans is proud to be a prize partner with Microsoft, for the Westpac Youth Impact Challenge! Our incredible friends at the Australian School of Entrepreneurship have joined forces with Westpac to bring together a nationwide initiative open to all young people aged 7-21 years. The Challenge aims to help young Australians solve problems in their local communities – what a great initiative! 👏🏻

The winners will have the opportunity to pitch their idea on our Pitchfest show with leading entrepreneurs from around the world who will provide advice and guidance on how to bring their idea to life. 💡

To take part in the Challenge, participants must identify a local problem and brainstorm an innovative business or social change idea to solve it. This is such a fabulous initiative. Head across to www.youthimpactchallenge.com.au to enter. Don’t forget to follow for further updates and to see the incredible work that ASE are doing for our young people.



19/09/2021

Welcome Sarah Davidson to the panel of our Pitchfest show for our Mighty Girls Month. Yay!! Sarah will be joined by former Sportsgirl CEO, Colleen Callander on the panel and they’ll be listening to two of our mighty girls pitching their charity and business ideas. It will be great to hear Sarah’s own childhood experiences and the wonderful advice she has for our pitchers on how to move their ideas forward. We seriously can’t wait.

Sarah was a lawyer, turned funtrepreneur! She’s the founder of Matcha Maiden, Matcha Mylkbar, author and creator of award-winning podcast, Seize the Yay. We’ll certainly be seizing the yay on Pitchfest. Click on the link below to view Sarah’s full profile with our other Pitchfest guests.