The Digital Arts, Leadership and Innovation lab and the Dartmouth Entrepreneurial Network have restructured the award system for their “shark-tank” style entrepreneurial show The Pitch. Rather than jointly awarding prizes, each group will now independently choose two winners.
The Pitch was started in the spring of 2014 by both DEN and DALI to foster entrepreneurial spirit at the College. About 20 groups participate in the competition every term, each of which is allotted two minutes to pitch their start-up ideas to a panel of judges and the audience.
In the past, DALI and DEN jointly awarded three winners with first place, second place and third place prizes, respectively. Each winning group received financial support from DEN and development assistance from DALI.
In the upcoming competition, the two organizations will evaluate the participants separately, DEN director Jamie Coughlin said. The first place and second place winning groups selected by DEN will receive $2,000 and $1,500 respectively, in addition to DEN’s management support, he said.
On the other hand, DALI will award the DALI Partner Prize to individual founders and the DALI Team Startup Prize to student teams, said computer science professor and executive director of the DALI lab Lorie Loeb. She added that the winners of the DALI Partner Prize will work with designers and developers from DALI to build a functional prototype over a period of one to two terms. The DALI Team Startup Prize will give teams a full DALI lab membership, which includes shared co-working space, technical workshops and one-on-one mentorship from DALI senior designers and developers. Loeb said that DALI values its assistance at $7,500 per term, though neither of the prizes award winners with funding.
However, a team may potentially win both a DEN award and a DALI prize.
In addition to the four awards, the competition will continue to present the People’s Choice Awards, which is determined by the audience members.
Loeb said that these changes were implemented because winning groups might have different needs.
“Some of the winners don’t really need our help but they need funding,” Loeb said. “Some of them don’t need funding but they need our help. Some of them need both.”
Coughlin said that the two organizations started The Pitch to create a platform that allowed community members to present startup ideas in front of an audience. He added that DALI’s technical expertise is integral to The Pitch’s development.
“Most people have an idea, a problem they are uncovering and a market that they are interested in, but many of them lack the technical skills to be able to build what they are doing,” Coughlin said. “This is important because most of the ideas that we have seen throughout the years are software-oriented.”
According to Loeb, DEN has provided essential support to Dartmouth entrepreneurs.
“[DEN] teaches people how to build an enterprise and what kind of things go together to make a business plan or get a funding,” Loeb said.
One week prior to The Pitch, participants are required to attend the “Pitch Clinic,” a workshop designed to help students prepare pitches and navigate through different databases.
“We do [the Pitch Clinic] so that everyone is basically on the same page, with same information and advice,” DEN program manager Eileen O’Toole said.
O’Toole added that she believes the Pitch Clinic contributes to a huge improvement in the presentation and the information presented at the event.
David Washer Tu’17 and Master of Public Health candidate, chief executive officer and co-founder of ClearPay Healthcare, which won the People’s Choice Award last fall, said that the Pitch Clinic helped his team members cultivate valuable entrepreneurial skills.
“[The Pitch Clinic] helped entrepreneurs to think about the different aspects that I should communicate to the audience,” Washer said. “I had more practice to pitch, which is a valuable skill for entrepreneurs and needed for any venture.”
Washer added that DALI developers and designers were just as passionate about his venture as he was.
“At my first meeting with DALI, I was pleasantly surprised by the thoughtfulness of the questions that the team was asking about our venture and the healthcare system at large,” Washer said. “They invested a lot of time into learning about our venture and the problems that we are trying to solve.”
Sean Cann ’17, chief executive officer and co-founder of Seabird Apps, which won second place last fall, said that other entrepreneurial events hosted by DEN have helped Seabird Apps accelerate its expansion.
“We participated in Dartmouth Campus Ventures, an event where a number of startups pitch their ideas to students who are interested in joining our startups,” Cann said. “We are receiving a number of students from that event who are interested in working with us too.”
Applications for this winter’s Pitch are due Feb. 6. The show will take place on Mar. 2 at 7 p.m. in Filene Auditorium.
