AN app that supports teenagers through puberty, and a software company that helps satellites become smarter, have been named as joint winners of the Oxford Said Entrepreneurship Forum annual pitching competition.
Luna is on a mission to change the way that puberty is taught, talked about and experienced by teenagers. Luna is an app for girls and non-binary teens, aged 11-16, to educate, empower and support them on their journey to adulthood.
It offers fun, engaging and factually accurate content on topics such as skincare, period care, anatomy and mental health. It also helps users to get expert answers to questions and to buy, try and review age-appropriate products.
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Luna was founded in 2021 by Jas Schembri and Jo Goodall, ex-management consultants. Both completed their MBAs at Said Business School in 2020/21.
They were inspired to set up the company when a university project highlighted their lack of education about adolescence at school.
Co-founder Jo Goodall said: “As adults, we both still have questions about our bodies and health. We also have friends that could have prevented health issues had they known about certain topics and red flags when they were younger.
“This generation has misinformation available at the touch of a button. We want to help them understand how best to navigate their teenage years, so they emerge as happy, healthy, successful members of society.”
The other winning team - Little Place Labs - is helping satellites become smarter. It is bringing machine learning and AI capabilities onto satellites to increase their ability to generate critical insights whilst in orbit, in near-real-time. It means they can detect objects and events such as climate and natural disasters, and can assist with commercial/defence applications.
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Little Place Labs was founded in 2020 by Bosco Lai, Gaurav Bajaj and Liubov Sergeeva - all current Executive MBA students at Said Business School. They are supported by business and technology teams of nine members and three advisors who are veterans in the defence and space industry. While they all come from different professional backgrounds, they have a common vision of changing the world for the better by connecting space, technology and people.
“Using wildfires as one example, which we have seen some of the worst years in history recently, and we know that quicker detection with satellite data plays a huge part in mitigating losses,” said co-founder and CEO, Bosco Lai. Luna and Little Place Labs were among eight Oxford-affiliated start-ups that pitched their ventures to a panel of judges at the Oxford Said Entrepreneurship Forum last month. The two winning teams shared a £5,000 prize.
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