Yesterday I served as a finalist judge for the Seattle University Albers School of Business & Economics Entrepreneurship Center 12th Annual Business Plan Competition. Steve Brilling, Executive Director of the Entrepreneurship Center, gathered a stellar group of finalist judges to review the written business plans and sit through the pitches of the final four business plan presenters and vote on a grand prize winner and a second place winner. See photo above with several of the judges pictured.
The Finalist Judges included:
Dave Anastasi, eDocument Sciences
Janis Anderson, Niviera Corporation
Paul Bialek, Frazier Technology
Frank Clement, Redhook Brewery Board of Directors
Cathi Hatch, ZINO Society
Rebecca Lovell, NWEN
John Meisenbach, MCM
Bill Monkman, Precision Aerospace
Teresa Russell, West Coast Paper
Adrian Smith, Ignition Partners
Ruth Tressel, Ruth Tressel, LLC
Ben Straughn, Perkins Coie
Mark Yates, T-Mobile
The four business plan finalists included:
Broadspeak Inc.: A design and intellectual property company that will develop, market, and sell language translation solutions consisting of software and online services.
Greenstone International: founded to commercialize Estradero, a product that when applied to clay, creates low cost, long-lasting and virtually maintenance free green roads, worldwide.
Safety Innovation: Inventor of CleanCoat, an innovative garment to reduce spread of infections in healthcare delivery
Sweet Stache Brewery & Alehouse: an on-site brewery located in Seattle’s upper Queen Anne neighborhood dedicated to providing great beer, quality food and a relaxing atmosphere where neighbors can find their third place.
Finalist Judge, Adrian Smith, was responsible for facilitating our discussion. I’m pretty sure if asked that he would liken it to herding cats. There were lots of smart people in the room who had definite opinions and they were not all the same. Drum roll please! Ultimately, the First Place winner we selected that received a check for $10,000 was Greenstone International and the Second Place $2,500 prize winner was Safety Innovation. All of the would-be entrepreneurs did a great job with their pitches and the visual slides and embedded videos were well done.
I won’t be surprised to see at least a couple of these companies being presented at a ZINO Society Roundtable Investment meeting within the next few months.
That kind of competition can boost the level of your skills in business planning. You should probably join.
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