Winners and runner up for the 2015 Elevator Pitch Contest with guest judge Kristina Montague, Managing Partner of The JumpFund.
Round 2 of the 4th Annual Elevator Pitch Contest pitted five teams of UTC students against one another for the opportunity to make their entrepreneurial dreams a reality.
The UTC Collegiate Entrepreneurs’ Organization (CEO Club) hosted the competition on Monday, Oct. 12. The competition gives contestants the chance to pitch their business ideas to a panel of expert judges within a 90-second time frame, similar to the reality show “Shark Tank.”
Nearly 20 students sent in applications to the pitch contest and of those, 15 business ideas were presented in round one of the contest. Winners from round one went on to the final round, which took place in the New Edney Innovation Center’s Floor 5.
The five final teams pitched their ideas to judges and answered follow up questions, testing their idea’s viability as well as their business acumen.
Cora-Leigh O’Neal and Mandy Power, Entrepreneurship majors and are frequent home-cooks, came out on top with their idea for “What’s In My Kitchen?” an app that will suggest recipes based on the ingredients the user already has in their pantry or fridge.
You can see O’Neal and Power’s pitch here:
The runner up was Lacey Hartman, Marketing major and life-long gardener, with her pitch for the “Friendly Flowerpot,” a pot with built-in moisture, temperature, and solar sensors that makes gardening easy by telling you at a glance what your plant needs on a digital display.
Watch Hartman’s pitch here:
Embed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MbnT1Yq7ixE&
Winners O’Neal and Power will receive $2000 and runner-up Hartman will receive $1000. Both winning teams will also receive complementary tickets to attend the Angel Summit, here in Chattanooga, October 13-14th, one hour of free legal advice from Miller & Martin, ninety minutes of free mentoring from CoLab and LampPost Group, and free pitch mentoring from Comcast.
The event was part of Startup Week Chattanooga, a multi-day celebration of Chattanooga’s entrepreneurial community. This year’s judges included Kristina Montague from the JumpFund, Mike Bradshaw from Co.Lab, and Louis Savard with Comcast Business. The event was MC’d by Monty Bruell, owner of the radio show “Start it Up” and chief marketing officer and VP of sales and marketing for RapidRMS.
For more information about UTC’s Elevator Pitch competition, click here.
