By Sarah Dolan, News Staff
Eight teams of Northeastern students from a variety of majors presented their final business plans to an estimated crowd of 100 people as part of the Husky Innovation Challenge on Friday. At the end of the Demo Day, which was held in Curry Student Center, five teams of one or two students were awarded $1,000 prizes in different categories. The event, which attracted students, local entrepreneurs and venture capitalists received a shout out from the popular Twitter account, BostonTweet, highlighting the challenge that would feature “Northeastern’s brightest innovators.”
Northeastern students Punit Shah, Aaron Gerry and Praful Mathur said they created the Husky Innovation Challenge over the past year out of a desire to give entrepreneurial students guidance throughout the process of creating a start up company, something that they found to be lacking on the Northeastern campus.
“The Husky Innovation Challenge is really about building a community,” Gerry, a junior biology major, said to the crowd Friday night.
The challenge kicked off at the beginning of the spring semester when eight teams of students decided to make their ideas a reality and discover if they were viable ventures. Over the course of the competition, the teams attended six boot camps every other week to focus on a different aspect of starting a business. They learned how to pitch an idea, create a prototype and were able to hear from entrepreneurs working in the city of Boston.
“I’ve always wanted to hopefully own my own company some day, so this was a good test run,” said Patrick Feger, a middler graphic design student and co-creater of Hush Buddy. The product is a wireless earbud that would be used as an alarm clock, to prevent being woken up by a roommate’s alarm.
Trent Thakur, a sophomore entrepreneurship major, found that the boot camps helped to make his idea a reality.
“The boot camps were basically fellow entrepreneurs helping each other, bringing minds together that think similarly,” Thakur said.
Thakur and his teammate Eric Santagada presented their plan for Astro Lounge, a late night venue that would be open after 2 a.m. for young adults in college towns and cities. In January, the only thing the pair had was the name Astro Lounge, explained Thakur. Yet on Demo Day they were able to present a comprehensive business plan, a menu for their venue and a virtual tour of the space they would like to build.
The Demo Day began with each team presenting its one minute rocket pitch the crowd. Following the pitch deliveries, audience members were encouraged to visit the presentation tables for each business plan, while the judging occurred. The judges were not disclosed to the student teams until the end of the evening.
After initially hearing the rocket pitches from the teams, judge and local entrepreneur Aaron Gowell was impressed with the quality of the presentations and business plans.
“There are ideas in this room that venture capitalists would actually fund right now,” said Gowell, president and CEO of Silver Rail Technologies, a company that “provides technology solutions for the distribution of train tickets and other rail-related products,” according to their website.
The five categories for prizes were broken into Game Changer, Time to Market, Sustainable Venture, Best Presentation and Crowd Favorite.
Scriptbots, an online service that allows high school students to showcase different aspects of their personality and achievements beyond college essays and recommendations through photos, music and video, took home Sustainable Venture and Crowd Favorite. The service, developed by Elizabeth Horgan and Dick Pruitt, already has universities signing up to offer the technology to their applicants.
The Game Changer award went to BossTown, a educational tool that would help professors teach skills and simulate experiences that students may encounter when opening a small business and striving to maintain it as a sustainable venture.
Best Presentation was awarded to Golcio, a web service that would simplify conducting business in Latin American markets and Time to Market went to BandZu, a online management tool for bands to store information, photos and share tour dates with fans.
“I’m proud to have seen so many student ventures being developed and recognized through the first Husky Innovation Challenge,” said Shah, co-founder of the event and a senior business major. The turnout at the event “shows how much Northeastern values innovation,” Shah said.
The Demo Day event also included keynote speeches from three Northeastern alumni, Joselin Main, Jason Evanish and Kabir Hemrajani. Main is an Internet marketing consultant, yet is better known as Mr. BostonTweetUp for organizing the largest social media networking event in Massacusetts, according to event materials. Evanish graduated from Northeastern in 2009 and now runs Greenhorn Connect, a website for entrepreneurs. Hemrajani is a graduate of the College of Business Administration who now works with Riot Vine, a digital grapevine for discovering fun events and communicating with friends through Twitter and Facebook, according to their website.
