AI interview coaching start-up wins NovaUCD Student Enterprise Competition
Athena, an early-stage start-up developing an AI coaching for high-stakes interviews, has been announced as the winner of the 2025 NovaUCD Student Enterprise Competition.
The prize was awarded at the end of an intensive four-week accelerator programme for student entrepreneurs at University College Dublin (UCD), where entrants from 10 projects pitched. Athena founder Zander Deans-Xiao was named the winner of the €3,000 NovaUCD one to watch prize, sponsored by Terra Solar.
Deans-Xiao, who has just completed a BSc in Economics and Finance at the UCD Lochlann Quinn School of Business, is developing the personalised, recruiter-trained AI tool that adapts to both the candidate and the job, helping candidates show up as their most confident, authentic selves in high-stakes interviews.
“It is a great honour for Athena to have been named the winner of the One to Watch prize at the conclusion of this year’s NovaUCD Student Enterprise Competition, especially as the pitches delivered by my fellow programme participants were excellent and of a very high standard,” he said. “Athena’s initial focus is on business, economics, and STEM students in Ireland and the UK applying for competitive finance and consulting roles. By combining generative AI with recruiter-informed insights, our platform delivers highly personalized, role-specific coaching. But Athena’s deeper mission goes beyond performance, it’s about helping candidates find clarity, confidence, and their authentic voice in moments that shape their future. We believe scalable AI should make people more human, not less.”
Ten early-stage student ventures and 20 participants completed this year’s programme. Over the last 11 years more than 90 early-stage ventures and 220 students completed the Competition.
Liam Cronin, director of innovation, UCD, said: “A key objective of the NovaUCD Student Enterprise Competition is to provide the students with the skills, the confidence, and the opportunity to further develop their business ideas and hopefully in time launch their start-ups in Ireland and even internationally. The final pitches delivered by the enthusiastic students, on a range of business ideas from sustainable agriculture to robotics to edtech to healthtech were all excellent, and I would like to congratulate all the participants for successfully completing the accelerator programme. I would especially like to congratulate Athena on being named the overall winner of this year’s programme and I wish Zander every success as he progresses his new venture in the months ahead.”
The four-week programme included a series of structured workshops and interactive workshops on such topics as, customer development; value proposition; working in teams; design thinking; prototyping, environment mapping; financial planning and effective fundraising and pitching, were covered.
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