2014 Business Pitch Competition
On November 11, seven finalists came together to compete in the 2014 Business Pitch Competition, sponsored by the University of Richmond’s Entrepreneurship Club, the Innovation and Entrepreneurship program and the Richmond chapter of the Association for Corporate Growth, for a grand total of $5,000 in prize money and the chance to pitch to local angel investors. After deliberation from the panel of judges that included Charles Merritt, CMO of Knox Payments, Kevin Passarello, COO of Pong Research Corporation, and Bryan Bostic, founder of 2B Technologies and SMARTBOX, the winners were chosen.
The first place prize of $3,500 and the opportunity to pitch to investors went to Nick Creegan, ’15, and his app Taps. A business administration major with concentrations in finance and innovation and entrepreneurship, Creegan and his longtime friend and fellow Boston native Dillon Kerr, a senior computer science major at Connecticut College, partnered to design a product “around creating a useful community for fellow craft beer enthusiasts.” The app enables users to search crowdsourced and crowd validated tags that describe the flavors and characteristics of different craft beers in order to facilitate and encourage exploration.
Creegan shared, “We started the business as a side project between us. We’d already been working on the idea for some time now, so our preparation for the competition focused on finalizing the details of the monetization strategy and growth plans. Our biggest obstacle for the future is scaling quickly enough to gain legitimacy and usefulness in the eyes of the consumer. Our plan is to build the community city by city, so we hope to put the money toward marketing and promotional efforts in addition to covering some of our travel expenses during that process.”
The second place prize of $1,000 went to Eliza Breed, ’15, a business administration major with a concentration in marketing, and Brooke Wilson, ‘16, a healthcare and society major, for their product The Look, an app strictly designed for on-campus dating. Breed and Wilson, Division I athletes on the golf and lacrosse teams, respectively, got the idea after attending an intramural flag football game and noticing an attractive student whom they did not recognize. “We tried to search for him on Facebook and Instagram, but we couldn’t find him. We thought it was bizarre that even on a campus of 3,500 students, we still don’t recognize everyone, so we created The Look, a dating app from a woman’s perspective, meeting women’s needs.”
The app focuses on enabling users to easily and securely share information through unique features and browse profiles of students within their own school community. One such feature is “FindMe” in which a user can choose to share one’s real-time whereabouts with another user to encourage a meet-cute scenario.
Finally, the third place prize of $500 went to Killian McGiboney, ’17, for his product Future By Drones, a new way to showcase high school athletic talent through drone-based videography. The physics and mathematical economics double major started the project as an offshoot of his startup by the same name. “The business is focused on providing virtual tours of golf courses, schools and resorts among other spaces, and it’s really taken off for me already. This new project was the next step for my franchise, and my goal is to revolutionize sports recruiting.”
The four other finalists in the competition were Jeff Weinert and Will Klingner, founders of CoolNearYou, Anne Sofie Beck Dinesen and Christine Agerholm, founders of MeTime, Garrett Lanigan and Josh Stoudt, founders of Thumper, and Ian Oh and Madison Price, founders of Lync.
“The amount of work the students put in was extraordinary,” said Eric Martin, director of the Innovation and Entrepreneurship program at the Robins School and founder and CEO of 80amps. “The students were deeply engaged in the process. Presenting a terrific pitch was a point of pride for them.”
Susan Cohen, assistant professor of management at the business school added, “I was really impressed with all the students as they’d thought out very complex issues around ideation and validation. Everyone pitching was a winner.”
Photo credit: Kevin Heraldo
From left to right: Bryan Bostic, Killian McGiboney, Kevin Passarello, Eliza Breed, Brooke Wilson, Nick Creegan, Charles Merritt