What Karyn Costello (33), Hannah Carey (21) and Stephen Sugrue (30) did not expect was to eventually win the competition with their start-up Student Support, a mobile app that allows students to access personalised support services anywhere at any time.
''We had no idea, absolutely no idea. We were really happy we got through to the top 15.
''Coming down from 40 to 15, to get that far, we thought was fantastic. It [winning] was a complete and total shock,'' Miss Costello said yesterday.
Audacious is a year-long student start-up challenge jointly supported by the University of Otago, Otago Polytechnic and the Dunedin City Council.
From an initial 137 entries in this year's contest, 40 were selected to enter the second stage. A panel of judges comprising Otago Chamber of Commerce vice-president David Frame, Jason Leong from PocketSmith, Paula Hellyer from Glow Consulting and Alan Bauchop from ADInstruments, put the teams through a rigorous assessment process.
The teams were judged on how well they could explain their business in 60 seconds or less, a detailed business plan, and a Dragons Den-style grilling.
For the first time, Audacious teams were able to tell their story to a wider audience through an online tool that allowed anyone to vote for the businesses they liked best, and those votes contributed to the overall assessment.
The number of businesses that were ''more than just concepts'' and had some form of validation from customers, partners or investors came through strongly to the judges, boding well for the future, Mr Frame said.
When it came to Student Support, the judges praised the business for being well developed, having two major customers already - the University of Otago and Otago Polytechnic - and for its global potential in the tertiary sector.
Miss Costello, Miss Carey and Mr Sugrue got the idea for their project last year, as part of a software engineering paper they were doing.
The app provided all the support services available at the institution the user was studying at, whether it was for study or personal assistance.
The trio had been working ''really, really hard'' over the past 18 months and were in the process of trying to get into some other polytechnics. They hoped it would go nationwide ''pretty shortly'', Miss Costello said.
They had worked with Otago University Business School Maori student support officer Corey Bragg, who was still involved with the project.
He had a research paper on students struggling with studies and how that could be resolved.
Some students did not seek the assistance from support services they required and it could get to the point where they were withdrawing from courses, Miss Costello said.
If something like their app could be put in place, then it could potentially increase the number of people completing their courses, she said.
The trio had enjoyed their involvement with Audacious. They believed the opportunities that the Audacious involvement would provide were going to be ''absolutely amazing''.
''It's a big thing to get the recognition like we have ... and it makes it feel completely worthwhile,'' she said.
