Saturday, November 16, 2013

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.