By: Deborah Johnson Wood
Picture this: you're on an elevator with an investor who can launch your product idea and make you a millionaire—and you're tongue-tied. The elevator stops, the investor gets off, and you stand there, wishing you'd entered the Idea Pitch Competition and learned to articulate your entrepreneurial aptitude in 90 seconds or less.
Tonight, 30 entrepreneurial hopefuls will find out how well they can make their 90-second business pitch when they compete in the Idea Pitch Competition sponsored by GVSU's student-run Collegiate Entrepreneurs Organization (CEO) and the Seidman College of Business Center for Entrepreneurship.
"We have students from all different majors come with different ideas," says Kevin Orlich, Idea Pitch director. "They communicate their ideas to judges, find out how they do, and there might be someone in the audience who will fund their idea."
Participants were required to attend one practice session before the competition, with the option of attending two more.
Tonight, judges from across Grand Rapids' business community will rank the students according to criteria that include how well the students explain the idea and how well the idea will fill an unmet need in the marketplace.
The top three winners will receive $1,500, $900, and $400, respectively.
Past winners include a student who used his prize money as a down payment for a house he leases to students (he now has five houses), and a young man who founded Responsible Boy Taxi Service for students who party too much and need a ride home.
The competition is free and open to the public. It will run from 6:30 to 9:30 at the Cook-DeVos Center for Health Sciences.
Source: Kevin Orlich, Collegiate Entrepreneurs Organization
Deborah Johnson Wood is development news editor for Rapid Growth. She can be contacted at [email protected].
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