 The Carroll School of Management held the first Boston College Venture Competition on Wednesday to foster entrepreneurship in BC students. Five groups competed for three spots in the finals.
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The first Boston College Venture Competition was hosted by the Carroll School of Management on Wednesday afternoon. The competition was founded by four BC students: Eric Hilberg, BC '06, Bill Clerico, A&S '07, Matt Becker, CSOM '08, and Paul Santora, CSOM '08, in order to give BC students interested in entrepreneurship an opportunity to present their ideas, receive feedback, and, for the top three projects, win money to launch their respective entrepreneurial projects. First prize was $10,000, second prize was $3,000, and third prize was $2,000.
"The reason I wanted to create this was because there was nothing else like it. I had been interested in entrepreneurship for a while and looked around and there was really no locus of that action here at BC and I thought starting a competition like this was a good way to do that. You see fliers for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology competition, but why do we send our students over there? We should have one of those, I thought," said Hilberg.
And so, Hilberg started working on the idea about a year ago, formulating and constructing a program that he thought would interest other entrepreneurial students at BC. After talking with a couple of his professors, Hilberg came into contact with other professors and alumni who showed interest in the idea. He eventually contacted several acquaintances - Clerico, Becker, and Santora - and a core of four students made up the group.
They eventually presented their idea to Dean of CSOM Andrew Boynton. His response was positive, but the group had to alter its plans in some ways before it took off.
The competition was sponsored by several companies: Highland Capital Partners, Goodwin Procter, North Bridge Venture Partners, and Solasta, Inc. Hilberg also pointed out that competitions like this one are common, so finding sponsors was not difficult.
A "kickoff" event for the competition, hosted at the beginning of the semester, explained the basics of the competition.
"It went really well. We made our first contacts for sponsorship there," said Hilberg.
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