Tag: Olin Cup



Winners of this year’s Olin Cup will be announced Thursday, Jan. 30 at 5 p.m. in May Auditorium. $70K in seed funding is at stake. See companies in the final round below.

The keynote speaker at the Olin Cup Awards Ceremony will be David Karandish (BS’05), CEO of Answers.com.  David co-founded AFCV Holdings—now known as Answers—in 2006 with the mission of building and overseeing web-based businesses and technologies that connect information seekers to the most relevant content from both experts and consumer communities. Answers is headquartered in the Delmar Loop with offices in New York City and Mountain View, California.

The keynote and Olin Cup awards will be followed by a poster board session from all the finalists and a reception. Register at ideabounce.com.

Finalists in this year’s Olin Cup competition are:

      • Epi Squared*, developing an implantable mobile solution to reduce severity of epileptic seizures;
      • Farmplicity*, an online marketplace making it easy for chefs to acquire local food;
      • Genetix Fusion*, developing the next generation of transfection kits for biomedical researchers;
      • Nanopore Diagnostics*, developing products that provide immediate molecular diagnostic testing;
      •  Stumpy’s Spirits*, locally sourced grain-to-glass premium spirits distiller;
      •  SynerZ Medical, developing an outpatient device for treatment of obesity and type 2 diabetes; and
      • Zymplr, developing a helmet designed to reduce concussions in high-impact sports.

Teams marked with an asterisk * include Washington University students who are eligible for the $5,000 student cash prize.

More news from the Skandalaris Center:

As we conclude this year’s Olin Cup, we congratulate the finalists in the 2014 YouthBridge Social Enterprise & Innovation Competition, with links to their ideas:

  • Bridge Bread, http://ideabounce.com/yseic14/3896.html
  • Farming Blueprint, LLC, http://ideabounce.com/yseic14/3872.html
  • Girls Dreaming Big, http://ideabounce.com/yseic14/3847.html
  • Girls in the Know, http://ideabounce.com/yseic14/3765.html
  • IDWIL, http://ideabounce.com/yseic14/3851.html
  • Kulishana Cookbooks, http://ideabounce.com/yseic14/3818.html
  • LifeBridge Farms, http://ideabounce.com/yseic14/3812.html
  • Made for Freedom, http://ideabounce.com/yseic14/3526.html
  • Playing for the Cause, http://ideabounce.com/yseic14/3766.html
  • STEMs For Youth, http://ideabounce.com/yseic14/3820.html
  • Thrifty Boutique, http://ideabounce.com/yseic14/3885.html

We are able to support so many finalist teams this year with additional funding from the Brentmoor Foundation, so this year’s finalists include not only nonprofit ventures but commercial ventures with a social mission.  Save the date of Thursday, April 10 for the YouthBridge SEIC Awards Ceremony.

Upcoming Events:
·         This Friday, January 31, is the deadline for students and host commercial and social ventures to apply for the Skandalaris summer internship program. For more info see our website at sc.wustl.edu.
·         Next Wednesday, February 5, we will host a workshop on Social Value.  We offer this workshop separate from our Third Thursday events at this time of year to assist our YouthBridge SEIC teams in their deliverables for the competition, but the workshop is free and open to all.  In it we will summarize the approach we use to assess ventures’ social value measurement plans.  The workshop will be led by Ken Harrington, Managing Director of the Skandalaris Center.
·         Thursday, February 20, is our next Third Thursday Skills Session and IdeaBounce®.  The Skills Session topic will be “Marketing,” and the deadline to post your idea to be considered to pitch for the IdeaBounce® is Monday, February 17.
·         Monday, March 3, is the deadline to apply for the Skandalaris Center’s new Global Impact Award.  For more information see the Welcome Kit.




A mobile solution to the severity of epileptic seizures. Helmets designed to reduce concussions in high impact sports. A locally sourced grain-to-glass spirits distillery.

These are just a few of the seven final teams, announced Nov. 7, vying for $70,000 in seed money to start a new company during this year’s Olin Cup entrepreneurship competition.

Five of the finalist teams are student-owned or supported ventures and in the running for an additional $5,000 prize given to the best business proposal submitted by a Washington University student team.

“The quality and diversity of the ideas was exceptional this year and once again our judges asked, ‘How is it that the entrepreneurs and ventures keep improving every year?’  We think that the answer is that the culture of entrepreneurship continues to expand and improve,” says Ken Harrington, managing director of the Skandalaris Center.

Contestants submitted an executive summary of their proposed business to enter the competition. From that initial field of 40 entrants, 17 semifinalists were chosen to compete in the “elevator pitch” challenge that required a two-minute presentation of the business idea to a diverse team of judges representing several regional alumni, service providers and other members of the support community for entrepreneurs.

This year’s finalists are (* indicates student-owned or student-supported venture):

  • Epi Squared*, developing an implantable mobile solution to reduce severity of epileptic seizures;
  • Farmplicity*, an online marketplace making it easy for chefs to source local food;
  • Genetix Fusion*, developing the next generation of transfection kits for biomedical researchers;
  • Nanopore Diagnostics*, developing products that provide immediate molecular diagnostic testing;
  • Stumpy’s Spirits*, locally sourced grain-to-glass premium spirits distiller;
  • SynerZ Medical, developing an outpatient device for treatment of obesity and type 2 diabetes; and
  • Zymplr, developing a helmet designed to reduce concussions in high impact sports.

The final hurdle for the entrepreneurs will be writing and presenting a full business plan in January 2014. The finalists will each submit a business plan and give a 25-minute oral presentation to the judges with a question-and-answer period as the final phase of the competition.

The Olin Cup winners will be announced Jan. 30, 2014, at an awards ceremony.

The Olin Cup was created as a cross-campus activity in 1988 by Olin Business School, and has awarded funding to winning commercial ventures since 2003.

The competition is sponsored by Olin Business School, RubinBrown, Polsinelli and the St. Louis Regional Chamber.

-News Release by Neil Schoenherr, WUSTL Public Affairs

Photo credit: Ken Yee, Flickr




The Skandalaris Center for Entrepreneurial Studies announced 18 teams will compete for the Olin Cup this year. Olin_cup_logoThese semi-finalists will work with mentors and advisors on their business plans and elevator pitches before the next round of judging takes place Thursday, Nov. 7.

 

·         ARE Systems

·         Epi Squared

·         Farmplicity

·         Genetix Fusion LLC

·         Jenesis Project

·         JetLink Prime

·         Juntos

·         Made for Freedom, LLC

·         Modern Gym, Inc.

·         NABR

·         Nanopore Diagnostics

·         Pixi Medical

·         Priority Compass

·         Stumpy’s Spirits

·         SynerZ Medical

·         TeleDietitian

·         Turcosa

·         Zymplr

Next up for the semi-finalists is the Elevator Pitch Competition on Thursday, November 7.  The semi-finalists will compete privately that afternoon in front of judges, then at 6 p.m. they will present at the public Elevator Pitch Competition.  At the public event, the audience will have the opportunity to select their picks for best pitch. The person who comes closest to the judges’ evaluations will win $250.  Plan to attend now and register here.

The winners of the private Elevator Pitch Competition become the finalists in the 2013 competition. The round of the competition will be held on Thursday, January 30.

Photo: Florida Memory State Library, Miami bike race, circa 1922




The deadline to enter the Olin Cup business plan competition is Monday, October 14 at noon.  Two steps are required to enter:

1. Post your idea on  ideabounce.com/OlinCup13, and
2. Email executive summary to: olincup@olin.wustl.edu

More information about the competition and deadlines is available at IdeaBounce.com, click on the Olin Cup Welcome Kit tab at the top of the page.

The Olin Cup was established in 1998. With the support of the Skandalairs family in 2003, the Olin Cup began awarding $70,000 in seed funding to competition winners. A $5,000 prize is also awarded to a student founder or team.  Participants in the Olin Cup are coached and mentored by regional entrepreneurs and advisors as they hone their business plans and pitches throughout the different stages of the competition.  The Skandalaris Center for Entrepreneurial Studies manages the competition.

Olin Cup Sponsors include:
RubinBrown
St. Louis Region Chamber
Polsinelli
Lopata, Flegel & Co. LLP




For the first time ever, an all-undergrad team made it to the final round of the Olin Cup business plan competition and received one of three awards granted.

Sparo Labs, a medical device company that has developed a new spirometer to monitor lung function, was awarded $30,000. The team consists of four WUSTL undergraduate students.  The team is pictured above: Jon Koo (A&S), Abby Cohen (Engineering), Andrew Brimer (Engineering), and Chris Cassidy (Olin).

Each of the three teams also received a $5,000 cash prize, as they include current students or young alumni who worked on the ventures while they were students.

“The student grant means a lot to us because we are the first team of only undergraduate students to win it,” says Abigail Cohen, one of the Sparo Labs team members and a senior biomedical engineering major. “For us to be named one of the winners and also to get a $30,000 investment was a big milestone for us, and it means a lot to us.”

The ceremony was the culmination of a four-month competition among the contestants.

“We’re a hardworking team,” Cohen says. “Hard work pays off sometimes and it has paid off for us. We’ve got a good product, and people see that, and people also see that we’re really passionate about it and really excited about where it could go. We’re going to work our best and hardest to get it where it needs to be.”

Read about all the winners in Olin News.