PULLMAN, Wash. — Washington State University students with business proposals that varied from walk-around computer keyboards, location-sensitive car safety software, Internet searching software, fantasy genre book publishing, and musician collaboration were the winners of the second annual WSU Business Plan Competition earlier this month.
First place honors and top prize winnings of $6,000 went to finance major Ralph Williams and political science major Peter Eichman for their Data Stream proposal detailing an on-board, accident-prevention system for vehicles. The WSU contest was the latest for the duo, who recently traveled to California for another competition and who will pit their idea against others at a business plan contest at Boise State University this week.
“Students from across campus came together in a unique forum that showcased their creativity and hard work. We were very fortunate to have a panel of top notch judges, experienced entrepreneurs, executives, and venture capitalists, to evaluate the business plans,” said Jerman Rose, director of the Center for Entrepreneurial Studies (CES) in the
The two-day event at WSU Lewis Alumni Centre was attended by 46 student entrepreneurs in 20 interdisciplinary teams. They were divided into five leagues to pitch their ideas and answer judges’ questions and the top team from each league advanced to the second-day final rounds. They faced a new panel of judges made up of executives, alumni, and entrepreneurs from several industries.
Taking second place in the competition with winnings of $4,500 was the KeyWi team, with its portable cylindrical keyboard product; team members are Chris Strahl, Chris Bloom, Reshad Kazimee, all MBA students, and, Nina Morton, an animal science major. Third place winner of $2,000 was the Sanford Software team with a software product for Internet searches; team members are Ben Ford and Eric Sandall, both computer science majors. In fourth place with winnings of $1,000 was Half Moon Publishing, a company for fantasy genre novels, with team members Mallory Schuyler, an entrepreneurship major, and Brett Noyes, a marketing major. Placing fifth with winnings of $1,000 was Musicish, a Web site business that helps musicians meet and collaborate to produce new music and contact label companies; team members are Cuong Pham, an MIS major, and Pyum Djourabchi and Matt Holloway, both business administration majors at WSU Vancouver.
Participants in the competition hailed from the business, engineering, and science disciplines. Some students were members of the Entrepreneurship 496 course, a senior-level entrepreneurship class taught by Joe Harris; exercises concentrated how to develop a viable business plan. Also participating in the competition were five teams from the WSU Vancouver urban campus, coordinated by marketing professor Uchila Umesh there.
Judges for both days carefully reviewed the business plans then allowed 15 minutes for each team’s presentation followed by 20 minutes of questions and answers.
Judges from the business community were: Scott Carson, VP of commercial airplane sales, Boeing; Dan Castles, CEO, Telestream, Inc.; Lee Gibbs, commercial loan officer for Zion’s Bank; Brad Jackson, CEO, Two Degrees LLC; Ron Johnson, venture capitalist, Biogenic Ventures; Carey Jonas, director of Strategic Planning, Washington Mutual Bank; Carly Lister, Customer Service Manager/Marketing Communication Manager, Comtech AHA Corp.; Lewis Lee, senior partner, Lee & Hayes, Patent Attorney; Jim Mooney, VP, Toyota Motor Co.; Patrick Murphy, VP Business Development, Mosaix Communications; Bettie Steiger, retired VP of technology & marketing development at Xerox.
Judges from WSU were: from the Department of Management and Operations, Susan Barnes, Ph.D. candidate; Val Miskin, professor; Richard Reed, professor and chair; and Jonathan Arthurs, assistant professor; and Denny Davis, biological systems engineering professor.
