InNUvation

November 15th, 2008, 1:00-3:30pm, McCormick Tribune Center

We are proud to host the 2nd Annual Entrepreneur Idol, an idea pitch competition emphasizing fun, vision, and delivery with competing schools across the Midwest.

Schedule

Semi-finals Round 11:00am – 12:30pm

• Teams are given 2.5 minute to pitch for a panel of judges. There will be rooms with teams from all universities competing at all times. The Preliminary Round Judging Panel will be comprised of experienced entrepreneurs, social entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, academics, non-profit founders, legal professionals, and patent experts.

Networking Lunch 12:30 – 1:00pm

• Lunch is served. Sponsors will be introduced. Businesses with info booths can use this time to recruit. Students will use this time to network with the different organizations and distribute resumes. Judges will meet during this time to whittle the competition down to eight teams.

Keynote Speaker 1:00-1:30pm

• Harper Reed and Scott Van Den Plas from Threadless.com/Skinnycorp will be kicking off the event and talk about their experience turning a custom t-shirt design website into a $30 million business and their upcoming adventures with Skinnycorp.

Final Round 1:30 – 4:30pm

• All audience will move into the main auditorium. Eight teams will be competing in front of a panel of four judges: An experienced entrepreneur, an entrepreneurship professor, a venture capitalist, and last year’s Entrepreneur Idol winner. Each team will be allowed 3 minute of presentation, using any visual aid to give its elevator pitch.

Entertainment will be provided at the break time and an audience vote will be conducted at the end of the competition for an Audience Favorite Award. While the judges deliberate for a winner, another presentation will be given by a successfully run student business. Winner and Audience Favorite Awards will be announced promptly afterwards.

The Competition

Entrepreneur Idol posts students with ideas against a panel of judges and audience members who will critique them based on the quality, creativity, and delivery of their concepts.

The competition will be a full day extravaganza filled with passionate competition and lively entertainment.  Elimination Rounds on Saturday will narrow the field for the Finals later that day. Helping competitors and audience through the stress and excitement of competition will be good food, educational speeches by successful entrepreneurs, and informational booths from leading organizations.

Participating Institutions:

Undergraduate students from more than half-a-dozen Chicago-land universities are expected to compete in Entrepreneur Idol.  Students may work as individuals or as teams and will be allowed whatever aids they feel are necessary for their presentations.
Participating institutions:

• University of Chicago
• University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
• Northwestern University
• Loyola University
• DePaul University
• Illinois Institute of Technology
• University of Wisconsin-Madison
• University of Dayton

The Awards:

• 1st Place - $25,000 funding with the Iventures10 program - Turn your idea into reality!
• 2nd Place - $1500 cash + Free Kaplan Prep Courses (GRE,GMAT,LSAT) for the winning team.
• Audience Favorite Award - $1500 cash prize. You decide who wins!

For more info and registration check www.EntIdol.com

Come hear how your peers started their businesses!

Thursday,May 29th

5 pm to 6:30 pm

Ford Motor Building, ITW (Room 1-350).

There will be free food.

Bios:

Matt Cohlmia is a senior in Industrial Engineering originally from Wichita, Kansas. He has been president of Chicago Unzipped for one year, and in that year turned the business from printing 1,000 copies of the 2nd edition to a planned 5,000 copies of the 3rd.

Li learned about money and finance from his penny-pinching grandmother and was fortunate to be born into a family with many business savvy people. He got his start in entrepreneurship when he joined a small company The Boxing Co., a Northwestern started summer storage and shipping company. As a consultant for Northwestern Student Holdings, Li has helped start two other student companies, NUTutors and Wildcat Express Delivery. He is passionate about real estate and Goldman Sachs.

Neal Sales Griffin has done everything from selling Christmas trees to starting two companies. Griffin’s interest in business began when he sold Christmas trees during junior high school for money. His interest was piqued and he began selling more items. When he graduates, this Learning and Organizational Change major in the School of Education and Social Policy, would like to do the impossible: become a venture capitalist. As a freshman, Griffin also worked with a startup, Context Media, founded by two Northwestern students: Rishi Shah and alumni Derek Moeller.

William Pulte, Jr., a Medill sophomore, has created two new ventures during his time at Northwestern. His first company, Campuslist, co-founded by himself and Jon Drake, is a online marketplace for college students. The second company that he is currently running is Great Lake Helicopters, a service that specializes in aerial photography in the North Shore area.