Fall 2013 Business Concept Competition Results

A quick recap of this year fall’s Center for Entrepreneurship Business Concept Competition.

• Peter Farsai won the contest with his app and associated website Outdoor Ally, which helps hunters and fishermen to understand local laws and proper regions. Apparently there are quite sizable fines if one is caught with say the wrong type of ammunition for a certain animal. Quite often hunters are unaware that they are even breaking a law. His app et al would be a great help to outdoorsmen and women everywhere.  
•  The judges’ task was difficult and a bit arduous as there were twenty (20!) students who presented their ideas. I want to thank each for their contribution: Professor Daren Otten of the College of Engineering and head of the Sustainable Manufacturing here in Chico; local entrepreneur and a proud parent Chico State Entrepreneurship alum, Dan Roberts; Andrew March, one of the founding members of the CEA and now the general manager at CoffeeTable, an app and website for catalogs:   Katie Simmons, CEO of the Chico Chamber of Commerce; Mark Nemanic, CEO of 3Core; and Kevin Kinnell -- , who up until a few days ago was Entrepreneur in Residence at ChicoStart and now is head technology officer at Work Truck Solutions, a local startup with national plans.
• I was quite impressed with all the presenters, that being said, I have to say that the members of the third place team who presented their idea PartitionPal, an easy to set up and inexpensive dorm room divider, were very impressive. Why? Because the Center or Entrepreneurship is dedicated to connecting students across campus. Though we are housed in the College of Business we actively encourage students from all colleges to bring their ideas to us and hopefully to collaborate. PartitionPal is the product of two College of Business Students: Luis Mejia and Chris Medellin, but the engineering was done by five students from the College of Engineering, Anyway, it is a great example of cross-college collaboration, which is one of our goals at the Center.
  

• You may want to know where the winners go from here? The winners by the way were: Peter; Mandy Swearingen
  
  in second with her idea GRUPZZ, an easy way from students to collaborate in groups; and the aforementioned PartitionPal team in third place along with Sean Kvarda, for a Search Engine Optimization tool who also got the third place award. The prize money, while nice ($500 for first place; $300 for second and $100 for third) is hardly adequate. 
• The Center has an Accelerator Fund, all of the winners can now present their ideas to our Due Diligence Board and request seed money of somewhere between $5000 and $10,000. Last year we awarded over $30000 to qualified groups of students. Furthermore, all students who receive funding from the Center immediately qualify for consideration for further funding from the 3Core Seed Fund. Past recipients of awards from the Accelerator Fund include Andrew Gazdecki of Bizness Apps and the team from Upper Park Designs.

And You Will Sink That Second Shot

It’s getting down to the wire; well the last three weeks, for entry into this semester’s Business Concept Competition. Power Points are due by 5:00 PM on Wednesday, October 30. So I thought it would be fun to start thinking about what happens when you get past winning the Competition (check out the first few seconds of this video, from my favorite sports movie – you WILL sink this shot) and get to launch.

One of the more amazing things about starting up these days is the wealth of information, ideas and advice available to entrepreneurs of all ages. Just blogs alone will yield vast amounts of food for thought.

Want to know what to do when you’re about to launch? Check out Up West’s blog. Up West was founded by two Israelis, Gil Ben-Artzy and Shuli Galili, who have tons of experience helping Israeli tech firms. Since Israel has the second most startups in the world after Silicon Valley, it might be worth talking a look. Here’s a post by Tali Saar called “ Keep Calm and Launch Your Startup”.

Here’s a post-launch checklist from a young entrepreneur named Danielle Morrill, a Y Combinator grad, with an astounding amount of expertise.  Here is her “Post Launch Checklist: 10 Tasks You Should Complete”.

Last, just to complete the circle, here’s a post on getting your first 1000 users from a company called YesGraph.

What I find so terrific about all of these blogs is that once you start reading, it’s hard to stop because each blog will lead you to other blogs and more ideas; which will lead you to even more blogs and more ideas…uh, but don’t forget to do your own work as well.

Let the Games Begin! Business Concept Competition Fall 2013

Big news at the Center for Entrepreneurship. It’s time to get fired up for our biannual BUSINESS CONCEPT COMPETITION. We’ve been holding this competition every semester for the last six years and it has been quite a ride.

First a word about what the contest is…and isn’t. It is decidedly not a Business Plan contest. We are not looking for full blown 20-30 page plans. Rather we are looking for ideas; great thoughts, really, that can be turned into a business. At this stage all we’re looking for is a short PowerPoint that outlines your proposal. 

The contest is held in two parts. Part I looks over your PowerPoints. A panel of anonymous judges does the looking. We hide the judges’ identity because we don’t want them to be unduly influenced by any possible relationship with a specific contestant. So, the judging is an impartial as possible. Past judges have included successful entrepreneurs; young entrepreneurs; past board members of the Collegiate Entrepreneurial Association; current business owners, general managers and more. PowerPoints are due by 6 PM on Wednesday, October 30.

The judges whittle the contestants down to a more manageable number usually somewhere between 15 and 20 finalists who then will appear before a panel of judges on Finals Night which will be held on Thursday, November 14 at 7 PM in Holt 268. As always there are cash prizes for the winners.

For a complete set of rules and the contest PowerPoint template, go to http://www.csuchico.edu/cfe/.

The Contest is open to all Chico State students in all colleges. Past winners have gone on to some big things. Many have been funded by our Accelerator Fund. Some have gone on to turn their ideas into actual businesses. See the Upper Park Designs and Bizness Apps web sites for detail.

So get your thinking cap on. Our slogan this year is: “The best way to start a business is to find a problem and solve it.” We invite you to start solving.   

By the way, we’d love to hear from past students and alumni about their experiences and impressions of the Business Concept Competition. Post your comments on our FaceBook  page or at the bottom of the CfE Blogger page.

Good luck everyone!

Back in the Saddle

September 1 2013

Hi again.  A new school year, 2013-2014. Lots of exciting changes and new venues of exploration for the Chico State Center for Entrepreneurship. We have a new faculty member, Jim Downing, who brings a wealth of new ideas and experience for his years in Chicago. We have a new lineup of professors in the curriculum. Great leadership in the Collegiate Entrepreneurial Association.  We even, now, have a center. That’s right, a real room. Glenn 221. Come on by and check it out.

But before I blather on about the coming year, join me on a quick detour to my hometown, Detroit Michigan. I’m not going to brag about the Tigers, though they are looking awfully good. No, today’s topic is jewelry. You read that right – jewelry. And not just any jewelry, but kids’ bracelets and rings made out of rubber bands.

Choon Ng, is a mechanical engineer, who up until about 18 months ago worked for Nissan in the Detroit area. In 2010, according to an article in Entrepreneur magazine “With his wife’s formal blessing and access to the family’s $11,000 in savings, Ng spent $1,000 submitting an invention record, a preparatory document filed before submitting a patent. Ng, a crash-safety engineer at Nissan at the time, had generated 28 iterations of what is now known as the Rainbow Loom.” 

The Ng's eventually invested all of their savings and then some into getting molds produced in China and bringing in the first inventory which included delivery of exactly one ton of rubber bands to their home in suburban Motown. One ton.

Rainbow Loom is an ingenious mechanism that allows children to weave jewelry out of multicolored rubber bands. The Ng family – whose two teenage daughters, as you might imagine, were instrumental in helping Dad figure the mechanism out – produced a number of how-to videos on YouTube. It took a while, but about a year ago, they received their first major order from the Learning Express in the Atlanta area and the rest, as they say, is history. Now available throughout the nation at the Michael’s chain, Rainbow Loom has taken off.

My hope, of course, is that Rainbow Loom augurs new interest in all weaving, but that’s a topic for another day. In the meantime, it’s great to be back.

Source:  http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/228081#ixzz2dfddkugJ

Another Cool Way to Raise Capital

I’m back. It’s been a long time since last I blogged, but the summer is no time for any of us to slow down; certainly not entrepreneurs. And especially not young entrepreneurs.

Speaking of which, I just came across a new website dedicated to getting young entrepreneurs – really young people in general – off the ground. It’s called Upstart and the basic idea is to let young people raise capital in exchange for a small share of future earnings.

Note the above “future earnings”, that’s key to the Upstart model. According to the web site: “Upstarts share a set percent of income with their backers over 10 years. Payments are waived for years in which the upstart is in school or earning less than $30,000, but an extension year is added, up to a total of 15 years. Upstart Network collects monthly payments and reconciles each upstart’s income annually via their US tax returns. Total payments are capped at 5 times the initial amount raised.”

Note the upstart, him or herself, will repay the money whether or not the original goal is met. The business might fail; no matter the investors still get paid.

By the way, Upstart seeks to fund anyone who has graduated since 2008, not just entrepreneurs; so some of the candidates for funding are seeking to retire student debt. Others are seeking funds to learn coding or another marketable skill. But most are trying to launch businesses. The range is interesting as well.  There is one attempting to put together a Google Glass app for healthcare. Another is trying to build a socially responsible clothing company. And on and on and on.

So it’s crowdfunding with a twist. The site proclaims a goal of 8% returns, who knows? It’s just another example of the incredibly fertile ground for young people today in the world of startups, er upstarts.