“You have two minutes set up time,” Greg Hill, the Global Student Entrepreneur Awards Coordinator of the Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO) said as the student set up his Powerpoint and gave out the handouts to his presentation.
“Your two minutes are up,” Mr. Hill said authoritatively to the student. “As soon as you start talking, your 12 minutes of presentation will begin.”
I sat in the back and watched as six amazing students from various colleges around the US presented their business plans to entrepreneurs, like myself. All of us had various backgrounds and education levels and yet, we had the power in our hands, collectively, to help each one of these students grow and thrive.
We were asked to judge these students on four different sets of criteria: the entrepreneur, business fundamentals, lessons learned and growth and future plans.
I sat still in my chair from 2 pm to 5 pm. I didn’t move (well, I did to get some coffee and noshes). I was totally engrossed by their presentations.
The whole thing reminded me of my days with the Long Island Capital Forum and how my group and I organized the entire day for entrepreneurs looking for venture capital or angel investments. I sat through those presentations too. As interesting as those presentations were, these were even more interesting.
The following students presented: Ray Williams of SkillAddiction, an interactive gaming site; Juliette Brindak of Miss O and Friends, who created an interactive web site, products and more just for tweens; and Julian Marshall of Julian Marshall Multimedia, who makes video and animation for corporate and private clients.
The other three were: Brittany Rose of More than Cheer, LLC, who has a cheer leading school for students; Dinesh Wadhwani of ThinkLite, who has an energy efficient light bulb company and Joseph Davy of EvoApp, who had a contact management system that collaborates with Salesforce to delve even deeper into contact relationships.
After the presentations, EO held a cocktail party. While we sipped our wine and ate hummus, we waiting patiently to hear the results. The winner of the New York Regional would meet up with other finalists from around the country in a month or so in Kansas City to compete for the grand prize.
And the winner was: Joseph Davy of EvoApp!
I just have to say that this was such a rewarding day for me. I really enjoyed the whole experience and look forward to doing it again next year.
Related articles
- “Juliette Brindak, 20, runs a $15 million website for girls” and related posts (personalmoneystore.com)
- Global Student Entrepreneur Awards Named As Featured Event in Global Entrepreneurship Week 2010 (eon.businesswire.com)
- Global Student Entrepreneur Awards Named As Featured Event in Global Entrepreneurship Week 2010 (kauffman.org)
Your article is inaccurate.
There were 2 winners selected, who were Dinesh Wadhwani of ThinkLite and Joseph Dave of EvoApp
Before I left, I spoke with Greg and he told me that Joe was 1st and very, very close behind was Dinesh. If they decided to give Dinesh the tie, I was not privy to it.