You’ve no doubt heard about it from every major news source worth its salt, but now you can hear it straight from the team that did it, the winners of the NovaUCD Student Enterprise Competition 2020! Peter Gately, Kelly Kaulsay, and Scott Mulligan are the masterminds behind Formula Training, a Formula Student based start-up idea.
In their own words, Formula Training is an online subscription-based platform for Formula Student teams to learn all the fundamentals they need to contribute to and compete in the Formula Student competition. With a specific focus on new recruits to FS team, Formula training will allow them to catch up to their team’s standard far more quickly, and to save teams much needed time to develop and test their car. The platform aims to have content for every aspect of Formula Student, such as a dedicated video lecture bank, advice forums and articles explaining the technical details of the competition and its rules. This means that even the most experienced student can learn something new from Formula Training thanks to the accessible structure and continuously updated content. With the ability for teams to upload their own content to their accounts, Formula Training will be the comprehensive location for Formula Student education.
We all know UCD Formula Student is full of fantastic people and ideas, so with that in mind, we asked the team how they came up with an idea like Formula Training. They had this to say: “Having once been the new kid on the block, the lack of any educational platform like Formula Training was sorely evident. We all started in UCD Formula Student without any prior knowledge about anything involved in building a racecar or the Formula Student competition itself, and the desire for some structure to learn under eventually lead us to set about making one ourselves. This was coupled with gaining an understanding of what UCDFS stands for during our time in the team, with education being a key lens in how we all look at the Formula Student competition. With this in mind, developing a platform like Formula Training was inevitable given the teams dedication to promoting interest in STEM fields and making them accessible through education.”
The platform was conceptualized and developed during the NovaUCD Student Enterprise Competition, where the team received mentoring in all aspects of starting a business. Having completed this month long programme, and come away with €5,000 euro in prize money and invaluable feedback, the trio and the rest of the team in UCD Formula Student now have their sights set on making the Formula Training vision reality. By helping to educate teams globally, UCDFS will broaden their own expertise and secure funding for our own racecar.
