Concord Hosts Collegiate Business Plan Semi-Finals

Julia Bolt, one of the competition’s organizers, addressing the crowd gathered for the student presentations.
Photo By Sarah Dalton

Last week, on November 11, Concord University hosted the semi-finals of the 11th Annual West Virginia Statewide Collegiate Student Business Plan Competition. Twenty-nine teams competed for the chance to continue on to the finals to be held in April.

    Julia Bolt, Assistant Director to the Brickstreet Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship in the College of Business and Economics at West Virginia University, said “This is for any full-time student in the state of West Virginia, both two- and four-year institutions. We had over three hundred submissions in the first round, from fifteen institutions in the state. So, we had from three hundred drop down to ten teams in each category; we just so happened to have a team not show up today, so that’s why we had twenty-nine. Five teams from each category move into the finals for a total of fifteen teams in the finals.”

    The teams were all competing for the chance to win ten thousand dollars to use towards starting their own business here in West Virginia; if they won, they would not be able to take their winnings and use it to get started anywhere else. As a part of the semifinals, each team had to submit a feasibility study the week before the actual event. The morning of, each team was sequestered with the ten judges for their category to go through one-on-one seven-minute interviews in a closed-down room. Then, finally, in the afternoon, each team gave their two-minute elevator pitches.

    “This afternoon was all of them doing it in front of a room of one hundred people. Both the other judges, the other teams, as well as the guests that were invited. The next round will be a full-fledged business plan,” Bolt explained.

    Among the invited guests were Dr. Susan Robinette, Chair of the Division of Business, and Concord University President Dr. Kendra Boggess. Robinette worked with Bolt to bring the competition here to Concord. “I’ve been involved with the competition just in encouraging students to enter from Concord, but this is the first time I’ve attended it,” Robinette said, “I really enjoyed listening to their plans and seeing the different ideas and the ways they planned to use the money they could win from the competition.” Six institutions were represented by the twenty-nine teams attending the competition, with thirteen of them hailing from the University of Charleston.

    Victoria Oyewole, one of the students from the University of Charleston, presented in the category of Lifestyle and Innovation. Her team’s project, URCovered, is a mobile app that patients and doctors can use together. “We were making a mobile app where the patient and the doctor are able to look at the patient’s formulary,” she explained. “So basically what drugs are covered on their plan and, you know, make decisions on which medication they’ll use. Because what happens right now is the doctor will prescribe a prescription, and you don’t find out it’s not covered from insurance until you get to the pharmacy and then after that you either leave without your prescription or you have to do a prior authorization process, which can take weeks. So, essentially our app is trying to streamline that.” Oyewole had a very positive reaction to the competition. “It was challenging because we’re pharmacy students not business students, so learning a lot of the business lingo – you know we’re very science oriented – it was good that we got to learn these skills. A lot of judges gave us really good feedback.”

    The thirty judges present came from all over; according to Bolt, the farthest one had traveled from to participate in the competition was Ohio. “They range from business-owners, academics, legal, financial, the whole gamut. Some are their own entrepreneurs as well; some are both academics and entrepreneurs. Somebody who has either been through it, or somebody who teaches it or all of the above,” Bolt explained.

    Eric Constant, also from the University of Charleston and presenting his Automated Pill Dispenser in the STEM category, said that while the entire experience was nerve-wracking it was still a great experience. “The judges were great and gave me a lot of good pointers on different things, different aspects of it.”

    Two of the other presentations given by University of Charleston teams were Fire Safety Innovations in the Lifestyle and Innovation category and the Charleston Area Community Garden in the Hospitality and Tourism category. Fire Safety Innovations developed a five-canister fire-extinguisher system that could be used to combat any type of fire; the Charleston Area Community Garden is a profitable greenhouse which sells all of the tools and equipment for gardening with and provides workshops for those who do not know how to garden.

    Overall, every team seemed to be well received. “I’ve been involved with this over a period of about twenty years,” said Boggess, “and it amazes me every year how many different ideas there are.” She said that the most important thing that she hopes students are able to take away from participating in this type of a competition is “that they can do it. That they can be successful. I mean, you have to try. And this is such a wonderful opportunity, because you’ve got all of these business people here who’ve been there, done that. They’re giving them free accounting services, free legal services. Setting up your business, I mean, with that kind of advantage? That’s huge, rather than having to learn it all on your own and making mistakes along the way.”

    Even if students who present their business plans in the competition do not make it past the semifinals, or do make it past and are unable to place in the finals, the competition is still an amazing opportunity. “Julia came and talked to students earlier in the semester,” Robinette said, “and there have been, as a result of this competition, a lot of the businesses, they get funding anyway. They may not win the competition but they stay in West Virginia and they continue.” One example that she gave was University Girls Apparel, a clothing line geared towards female University students.

    Boggess added that “everybody who starts a business fails. It takes time, to do it right. And they also have incubator space that they’ll give them to build their businesses in, free.”

    The final round of the West Virginia Statewide Collegiate Student Business Plan Competition will be held April 21, 2017 at West Virginia University.