Entrepreneurs compete for grant money

Senior Julia Erickson, a professional dancer, couldn’t find the right energy bar. So she… Senior Julia Erickson, a professional dancer, couldn’t find the right energy bar. So she developed one.

Using ingredients from her kitchen, Erickson crafted the recipe for Barre — an energy bar for dancers.

In May 2010, she and her business partner, Pitt graduate Aaron Ingley, another dancer, began selling the Barre products at the Pittsburgh Ballet Theater School, where she has danced for 11 years.

The next year, Erickson pitched Barre at Pitt’s 2011 Randall Family Big Idea Competition. She won second place in the Business Growth Idea category, and now the energy bars are sold at more than 150 locations across the country.

“I felt like the competition was a great way to flesh out the elements of the business that we maybe had not fully developed,” Erickson said.

Wednesday, the Randall Family Big Idea Competition will return to campus and give six new student teams the chance to compete for more than $75,000 in grant money.

The third annual competition, hosted by Pitt’s Institute for Entrepreneurial Excellence, will begin at 6 p.m. in the University Club Ballroom. The event, which aims to provide student entrepreneurs in undergraduate and graduate courses at Pitt with the opportunity to meet potential investors, is open to the public and free to attend.

“The end goal [of the competition] is to create sustainable, viable companies in the region launched by students,” said Mike Lehman, the director of marketing and student entrepreneurship at the Institute for Entrepreneurial Excellence. Lehman has overseen the competition since its start in 2009.

The three-hour showcase will include a reception, remarks by entrepreneur and Katz Graduate School of Business alumnus Greg Coticchia and presentations from previous years’ winners.

Lehman said that the students who will compete Wednesday night for grants have already worked hard on their projects.

Student entrepreneurs submitted their applications in the fall, with 156 teams applying before the November deadline. From these, a panel of judges including local business experts and Pitt alumni selected 18 teams to move on to the semifinal round.

The semifinalists had to submit more thorough applications in January, responding to detailed questions about their businesses. These questions resembled those that angel investors ask startup companies, such as who the company’s target market is.

Of these, the judges chose six finalists, who each then submitted a full business plan. Lehman paired the finalists with business executives from the Pittsburgh area who volunteered to mentor students on their projects.

Although less than half of the teams made it past the semifinal round, one semifinalist team will still also win on Wednesday. The audience members at the competition will cast their votes for which of the 12 semifinalists should win a $1,000 prize in the Wildcard round.

One of the finalists, Nicki Zevola of Pitt’s School of Medicine, will present on FutureDerm, the blog about skin care and health that she has run for five years. Zevola entered the competition to get closer to her goal of gathering $300,000 in seed money for her new product, UV Pods.

Zevola intends to launch UV Pods, non-resealable containers with the recommended four ounces of sunscreen for a user’s facial protection, this June.

She said her idea — on which she already holds a provisional patent that grants her one year of protection while she files a full patent application — is simple and meets a market need. Zevola said that most consumers use only about half of the recommended portion of sunscreen.

“I’m not interested in reinventing the wheel. I’m interested in inventing things that are new and innovative,” she said.

Zevola said that her blog through FutureDerm has already proved “very profitable,” and described the process of entering the contest as a great way to refine communication with investors.

Lehman also emphasized that networking is an important component of the competition.

“My goal is that every student, whether a finalist, a Wildcard entry or a past winner, will leave there with at least one contact that they can use to leverage their business forward,” he said.

The 2012 finalists are:

Drug Delivery Platform:

Hunghao Chu and Noah Johnson, Swanson School of Engineering

DVsphere:

Bernice Huang and Mona Liu, School of Medicine

Adam Ignotofsky, College of Business Administration

Jason Sanders, Graduate School of Public Health

SensorTech:

Benny Dippel, College of Business Administration

Anthony Perros, Katz Graduate School of Business

Smart Pace:

Daniel Ludwig, School of Medicine

TactSense Technology:

Paul Johnson, School of Medicine

UV Pods:

Nicki Zevola, School of Medicine