A few years ago, Mr Leong submitted a business plan for what is now known as PocketSmith, the tech company he co-founded.
He laughingly recalled that he was ''so cocky'' that he took his father along to the awards and a celebratory dinner was planned later that night. He was ''gutted'' when his name was not read out, although he joked that he got over it very quickly ''after some tears and a lot of wine''.
However, he had the business plan for his proposal completed, he shared it with some friends and they went ahead and did it anyway.
PocketSmith, which was founded in June 2008, is a simple budgeting software tool that can help people manage their finances.
The company was ''growing really nicely''. He estimated last year's growth was about 400% - was trading in 170 countries and had more than 70,000 users worldwide. A third version will be released next month which would be the ''best version'' of the app so far, he said.
This year, Mr Leong is a judge for Audacious, joined by Paula Hellyer (Glow), David Frame (ANZ), Alan Bauchop (ADInstruments) and Louis Brown (Cultivate).
While he was gutted at the time to have his own idea rejected, what was really beneficial about Audacious was the motivation to ''get it going''. Now he was looking at this year's entries with ''so many people with really great ideas''. He did not ever want them to think of the competition as being ultimate validation of whether a business was going to be good or not.
He was impressed to see there was ''a lot of care out there'', that people were thinking about social causes. Some were more like projects than businesses, he said.
As they were preparing for the launch of PocketSmith's third version, the PocketSmith team was not sleeping much, but they were having lots of fun, he said.
He felt it was a privilege to be able to do it from Dunedin, a city which produced world-class products and which was also ''a great place to live'', he said.
Mr Frame, a private banker with ANZ, who studied with Mr Leong, said it was ''quite ironic'' that Mr Leong's idea ended up making him a business, while he was a former finalist, yet his idea went ''nowhere''.
He submitted a gas monitoring device but found out later that it already existed in the market and the idea ''just ran out of puff''.
He believed this year's entries were terrific''. As in previous years, a lot of entries were student-focused, which was understandable. There were also some which might have ''huge'' application worldwide, he said.
He believed the ''real benefit'' was not necessarily choosing a winner and ''putting somebody on a podium'' but getting young, vibrant minds into a thought process that they could start a business which, in the long run, could add value to the greater community.
