The Big Green Entrepreneurship Competition awarded $2,000 to Hannah Murnen '06, Nathan Sigworth '07, Deborah Sperling '06 and Augusta Niles '07 on Monday night for designing a training bicycle known as the Gyrobike. The runner-up, Olivia Zaleski '06, pitched the idea of an athletic-apparel company that would design fashionable sportswear for style-conscious female athletes and will receive $500.
Judges of the competition, which was sponsored by the Club of Dartmouth Entrepreneurs, determined the winners of the contest after the four teams of finalists presented their business ideas to a packed audience in the basement of Carson Hall.
Finalists Bob Blake '06 and Ryan Wheeler '06 proposed a solution to the temporary housing crises caused by natural disasters, based on converting industrial shipping containers into self-sustained livable homes. The team of Peter Scheufele '06 and Darnell Nance '06 entered their design of the Cleat Guard, a device that slips over cleats and protects the shoes from damage and the wearer from slipping.
The finalists took turns presenting their products and business models before opening up to questions from the audience and judges. The competition placed an emphasis on the business aspect of the presentation, more so than the product itself.
"I learned that execution is more important than the idea -- how to make a legitimate business model, how to approach clients, how to build a business plan," Nance said.
Karan Danthi '07, president of CODE, stressed the importance and difficulty of trying to convince an audience that an idea is valuable. In the semi-final round of the competition on March 7, 10 teams presented their ideas in an "elevator pitch" that was judged and scored by any Dartmouth community members who chose to attend, regardless of their experience in entrepreneurship. Danthi said the elevator pitch was the most worthwhile part of the entire competition.
"If you can't convince the average person on the street, how are you going to convince a venture capitalist?" he said.
Professor Bill Martin '87 of the Tuck School of Business, who served as a judge and presented the decisions, praised all the finalists for presenting potentially viable ideas, but especially lauded the Gyrobike designers.
"Winning is a function of how well you've thought through the process," Martin said. "They seemed to have thought through all the questions the audience asked."
Danthi spearheaded the effort to expand the competition, first launched in 2002, from its previous focus on speaker events to its current format in which students have more of a hands-on experience and a greater opportunity to develop their business and presentation skills.
"The quality of the projects in the contest reflect the intention and the energy of the CODE leadership," said Professor Gregg Fairbrothers, who is also CODE's adviser. "This is by far the largest number we've seen of serious participants, and they also have a higher basic quality of ideas."
Sigworth, whose Gyrobike has attracted large amounts of attention, with a website receiving 60,000 hits and profiles in news outlets such as The New York Times, credited his team's advisers with spurring his interest in the project and a possible future in entrepreneurship.
"It's amazing seeing the resources here at Dartmouth for people who want to start something," he said. "It's amazing seeing how much people believe in you and will support a new idea."
This year's competition began Fall term, when more than 70 undergraduates attended a presentation given by Melissa Crounse '03, an associate product marketing manager for Google, on her experiences at the College and in the business world.
After attending workshops and enrolling in Tuck's Introduction to Entrepreneurship course this winter, the more than 25 teams of applicants met with CODE members to edit executive summaries of their ideas. After submitting the summaries, CODE evaluators cut the applicant pool to 10 teams and then narrowed it down to the final four after the elevator pitch.
