The BUT Student Entrepreneurial Spirit Award was won by Discyo, an app that can tell what you like

The BUT Student Entrepreneurial Spirit Award competition, which was held by BUT for the very first time this year, was won by the Discyo application, a project of four students from the Faculty of Information Technology. Their solution can give the user advice on what film to watch, what podcast to listen to or what videogame to play. The algorithm can tell what are the user's preferences across various media and what the user might like. The competition of student ideas is held by the Brno University of Technology in co-operation with the South Moravian Innovation Centre.

"Discyo provides information across different media. For example, if someone liked the Iron Man film, the application may recommend a podcast with the leading actor," says Petr Buchal, highlighting the interconnection between various media. Furthermore, the selection of films and series is not limited to a single provider such as Netflix, HBO GO or Apple TV+. The user will receive recommendations across all platforms and the application will give him recommendations on which source offers the most content that aligns with the user's preferences.

"So far, the application was only available for the first couple dozen users who helped us to test things and provided feedback. In January, Discyo will be made publicly available for free in Google Play and App Store. Discyo will provide users with recommendations on films, series or interesting audio podcasts," Buchal describes the planned launch. In the future, the media offer will be expanded to also include books, videogames and an option to select content suitable for multiple users. "If, for example, someone plans to watch a film with their girlfriend or some friends, it will be possible to set films or series suitable for multiple viewers as one of the parameters," explains Buchal, who have worked on the project for over a year along with two of his classmates and one fresh FIT BUT graduate.

After the user downloads the application, all they need to do is input the content they liked recently, which should not take more than a minute. Furthermore, the students plan to connect Discyo with Facebook or the Spotify music player, where it will be possible to download data on user's preferences to date in order to customise the offer even more. The application itself will be available for free, but some functions will only be available with a premium account which should cost under two euros. In the following year, the students will also introduce the Discyo application at the Innovation Leaders Summit virtual fair, which will be organised by Tokyo, Japan.

Students tuned up their entrepreneurial idea thanks to the university Pojď podnikat! (Start a business!) programme in which they were led by lecturers from the South Moravian Innovation Centre and regularly received feedback regarding their project. Applications for the next year of the competition can be submitted until the end of this year; newly, the competitors do not need to attend a series of workshops, but may directly register their idea. In the finals of the Student Entrepreneurial Spirit Award, the expert jury consisting of representatives of BUT and the South Moravian Innovation Centre divided a total of 400,000 Czech crowns among the students' projects; as the winner, Discyo received over 130,000 Czech crowns to help kick start the business.