GET YOUR IDEA SPONSORED

IT'S not too late to become a Sponsored Entrepreneur and get the perks of being immersed for three-months in a co-working space for free.

Local startups and entrepreneurs are being encouraged to apply for an experience complete with full-time desk membership at River City Labs, access to training and networking events, and help honing the legal, marketing and PR side of their fledgling business.

Credit Union Australia (CUA) has teamed up with River City Labs to offer the program to five entrepreneurs, with applications closing this Friday 24 July.

The last instalment of the program finished in May and saw Brisbane game education startup Zenva Academy carry out a $30,000 Kickstarter campaign.

Nicholas Burge of cloud-based call centre PowerDialer.co enjoyed his experience at River City Labs for Startup Weekend Brisbane so much that he has applied for the Sponsored Entrepreneur Program.

This is despite already having an office only a short walk away also in Fortitude Valley for his startup Tanda.

Burge and one of the Tanda founder's, Jake Phillpot, teamed up with others to create and pitch a new business within 54-hours that he says Tanda will be the first customer of.

"The actual concept of PowerDialer isn't new, it deals with cold calling and making it easier to track situations and interactions as they unfold," says Burge.

"There are a lot of big enterprise solutions that deal with call centres through, and for small to medium sized businesses whose staff actually have to cold call for work, there's not really a solution for them some desktop programs try to do it but they are quite bulky and don't work as efficiently."

PowerDialer.co in fact won Startup Weekend Brisbane.

The team beat 64 other startup teams, scoring $10,000 worth of Amazon credits, a mentoring package with CUA executives and a two-month team membership at River City Labs.

"We just brainstormed about what we could pitch leading up to it, knew we had to come up with something good, and it turns out we did," says Burge.

"Winning a spot into the Sponsored Entrepreneur program would put the cherry on top."