A team of Qinhuangdao Shi Yi Technology tests its VR helmet. [Photo provided to China Daily]

Tips for starters

Gold-medal winner Cui Jianxun offers advice for would-be entrepreneurs: "They need to have a clear long-term goal, but that does not mean they need to have a perfect product or a perfect team before entering the market.

"After all, entrepreneurship itself is imperfect."

Sun Hongbin, secretary-general of the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Education Alliance of China, one of the organizers, says the event's aim is not to cultivate huge unicorns but to encourage young people to have courage, innovative ideas, leadership and cross-sector learning capacity.

"Education is the basis of innovation and entrepreneurship. Our goal is to cultivate talent, and then comes great companies," Sun says.

One judge, Ding Hongwei, who's a supervisor of the Master of Business Administration at the University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, lauds the projects and those behind them. He says the quality was high, and participation came from many fields.

"The projects filled some gaps in industries and met real demands in the market. But participants need to better understand competitors at a global level."

Another judge, Li Zhu, who's a partner of the Innoangel Fund Team, urges candidates to pay attention to intellectual property and market scale.

"If the market scale of an industry is less than 10 billion yuan, it makes little sense to start a business, and if you cannot do 10 times better than others, there is no point in chasing frontrunners," Li says.

Zhao Hao, an investment manager at Sky Saga Capital, says the contest presents investors with an opportunity to find good projects and for project managers to show off their work.

Some will get support from the government and some will find business partners.

Ma Hongyan, a teacher at Tianjin University of Science and Technology, suggests students find a balance between academic study and entrepreneurship, and not act on blind impulses.

But perhaps the most succinct and best piece of advice came from one of the bronze-medal winners this year, Zhang Hualin, co-founder of Shenzhen Shenqing New Materials, which won with its fast-charging, long-life lithium battery.

"It's not easy to set up your own business," he says.

"But if you're determined to do it, you'll never regret it."