Student innovators
UD freshmen present three-minute pitches of original business start-up ideas
8:25 a.m., Dec. 17, 2015--Walking billboards, water-saving showerheads and keys that can never be lost – these innovative ideas took home the top awards at this year’s 3-Minute Pitch Competition at the University of Delaware.
Seven teams of UD freshmen, all from the First Year Experience course in the business administration department, competed with original ideas for products and services. In the audience were hundreds of their classmates and a panel of distinguished judges.
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Before the competition started, Jack Baroudi, deputy dean of UD’s Alfred Lerner College of Business and Economics, shared some words of encouragement with the students.
Baroudi began with a quote from management expert Peter Drucker: “Entrepreneurship is neither a science nor an art. It is a practice.”
“The event that brings us here today is all about practice,” Baroudi added.
“A cornerstone of the Lerner College is experiential learning, which means that we intentionally integrate theory and practice to provide learning experiences that are cross-disciplinary and hands-on, learning that is applied to the real world.”
Baroudi said the students will find that this is just one of many opportunities that will be available to them during their UD careers.
“I encourage you to take advantage of every opportunity that comes your way,” Baroudi said. “We want your budding entrepreneurship to carry on the Lerner tradition of starting up new companies and inventing new products and services that provide solutions to complex, global and fast-changing challenges.”
Keyper
One of the winning teams, Team Tecla, created a solution to the expensive and time-consuming problem of lost keys, the Keyper.
Team Tecla, made up of freshmen Thomas Burkhart, Laila Costello, Curtis Curlo, Anna Fournaris and Emily St. Pierre, realized how common this problem is on college campuses after conducting an informal survey of 49 UD freshmen.
The survey found that less than halfway into the school year, 16 percent of the students had already paid $98 to have their keys replaced, and 49 percent of students had lost their keys for over 24 hours.
“We’re here to introduce you to a product that’s going to save thousands of college students across the country hours of worrying and thousands of dollars,” St. Pierre said.
The Keyper is a keychain that connects to campus Wi-Fi and reports its location. Students with lost keys can then find their keys on a map with functionality similar to that of the popular Find My iPhone app.
Team Tecla explained that their invention is perfect for college campuses because campus Wi-Fi systems offer a wide connectivity range. UD, for example, has 2,011 square acres of college campus covered by Wi-Fi.
Saving Spout
Calling themselves The Biz Kids, Amanda Flores, Megan Harley, David Kratzer, Ryan O’Donnell, Joshua Stillman and Jonathan Wood presented another winning idea, the Saving Spout.
“Showers account for about 20 percent of the average household’s water usage, so limiting time in the shower can really save on water,” Harley said.
The Saving Spout encourages consumers to take shorter showers by reminding users how long their showers are lasting.
The showerhead features an adjustable timer so that consumers can set their desired shower length. Then, two minutes before the time is up, the timer triggers an opening in the apertures to lower the water pressure for 15 seconds. This serves as a reminder to finish up.
The team said that the average showerhead uses approximately 4 gallons per minute, compared to the Saving Spout’s 2 gallons per minute. This could help users to save nearly 8,000 gallons of water, or approximately $100, per year.
Advertees
David Galvin, Scott Pecoriello and Thomas Weber presented a winning idea in Advertees, a company that provides “walking billboards” to advertisers in the form of advertising T-shirts.
“Advertees has the potential to change and revolutionize the advertising industry by crowdsourcing college students to wear local business advertisements on their T-shirts,” Pecoriello said.
Each Advertees shirt features a QR code that unlocks a discount to a nearby business, creating incentives for customers to be on the look out for Advertees deals.
Pecoriello added that the QR code scans also provide valuable data to the company and its partner businesses.
“It’s cheap and it’s highly effective,” he said. “We’re able to prove that what we’re doing actually works.”
Judges and awards
The panel of esteemed judges included:
- Dan Freeman, director of the Lerner College’s Horn Program in Entrepreneurship;
- Ryan Harrington, education and non-profit coordinator for 1313 Innovation;
- Susan Murphy, entrepreneur and educator; and
- Mona Parikh, adjunct instructor in the Horn Program and community builder for the Archer Group.
Before announcing the three winning teams, Freeman encouraged students in the room from all seven presenting teams, as well as the 126 total teams who originally competed for a spot in the competition.
“Ultimately what matters isn’t what an expert or somebody who has more experience thinks about your idea or your solution to a problem,” Freeman said. “What matters is what your customers think.”
“So if you weren’t one of the teams that was selected as a finalist today, that doesn’t mean that you don’t have a great idea or that the problem that you’re interested in solving isn’t worth your time,” he continued. “It’s the market and it’s your customers that are the ultimate judges.”
Article by Sunny Rosen
Photos by Duane Perry