 Media Credit: Ryan Joyce Various BC dance groups performed in O'Neill Plaza in celebration of the third annual Asian Pacific American Heritage Month.
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"Everything you do before you're 30 can be forgiven, and failure can be exciting."
Not the typical businessman's credo, but one which Dean of the Carroll School of Management Andy Boynton strives to convey to students through the Boston College Venture Competition.
In its second year, the event provides an opportunity for young entrepreneurs to present business plans, financial statements, and deliver pitches to a distinguished panel of alumni judges. And in typical business fashion, there's a huge incentive involved: Not only do students get invaluable feedback, but also the judges award a total of $15,000 to support the startup companies.
Whittling down the field from 20 teams to just five at Tuesday night's final presentations, the six judges - who come from diverse business backgrounds - selected College Mogul as the winner to receive $10,000. Group Runner, which produces tools to manage the publicity of groups, received $3,000 for second place, and Anaptyx, LLC., a "green" wireless Internet service provider, got $2,000 for third.
Other competitors included myCollegeBody, a health and fitness magazine aimed at the college female demographic, and In Connection - proposed by a team of all freshmen - which forges alliances between students and corporations.
College Mogul, as described by Miles Lennon, one of the founders and a senior at Columbia, "profiles and reviews new and existing companies that are launched by students or recent graduates."
"We heard about our peers starting businesses - thousands of them - but when we researched to find a news site that tracked what people were doing, we couldn't find one," explained Alex Lindahl, another founder and CSOM '08.
Lindahl and Lennon got the inspiration for such a site from their own previous experience with running a startup company, where they had found it useful to track their entrepreneurial progress on a blog. This sparked curiosity in the community, they said, which got them publicity, support, and interest - all crucial elements to a startup's success.
"We also want the site to be a center for entrepreneurs to get resources and to share and bounce ideas," said Henry Khachatryan, another member of the winning group and CSOM '08.
2008 Woodie Awards
