A Neat Way to Spend a Portion of My Weekend

Jay Love — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 14:15:00 GMT

A few days ago I volunteered to be one of the judges of the Top Dawg Business Plan Competition of my alma mater, Butler University’s College of Business Administration. This particular volunteer opportunity turned a cold winter afternoon into a delightful experience! Of course, such feelings tend to be common with most volunteer activities in the charity sector. It is such a shame that 100% of our country’s population does not engage in them.

My involvement stemmed from a breakfast meeting which occurred due to the outreach performed by the new dean of the college. Dr. Chuck Williams and I hit it off right from the start. It was hard not to embrace his enthusiasm and energy for the college, which provided me with such a strong foundation of sound and ethical business practices back in the 70’s. When he mentioned the Top Dawg Business Plan Competition and what it entailed, I was more than interested -- I was ready to help. I thought how much such an experience would have helped me earlier in life when I was putting business plans together for real. Who knows, maybe eTapestry would be twice the size it is now...

The first semester for most of the freshmen in the College of Business Administration culminates with the business plan competition. Imagine if you can, as a college freshman, being grouped with your peers, performing tons of research, creating a full business plan covering all of the elements below and then presenting it live in Clowes Hall to a large number of your classmates, successful alumni, judges, and of course all of your professors. Competitors’ plans and presentations had to properly include the following key elements:

Be entirely original in scope and nature of the business
Provide a full set of financial projections and strategy
Outline financing or start-up equity strategies
Provide a full marketing and sales strategy
Outline the first year cash flow (a must for any new or existing business)
rovide operations and management strategy
Structure the presentation for an investor solicitation meeting
Prepare for any question pertaining to kicking the business off

Now wrap this amount of effort around the fact that those groups who make the eight team final have the option of skipping the final exam, and the overall winners receive an automatic “A” for the course as well as numerous neat prizes. How is that for a little excitement and pressure?

As you might guess the competition was intense to say the least. Truly the stage was set for quite an action packed afternoon. We had everything but Randy, Paula and Simon from American Idol as the first group took the stage. I can honestly say the next four hours literally flew by for me. I can only guess it went even faster for the contestants.

Our groups were quite varied and oh so interesting to listen to and ask questions of. The finalists were Game-Core, Piatto, Summit Innovation Group, Dirt Dawgs, Blue’s Bed & Breakfast, Campus Commerce, Cal+Calc and Cust-Tee-Mize. Some are easy to identify, such as a video game parlor or the B & B, but others were quite innovative, such as an ethnic restaurant, an IPod fitness add-on, a cleaning service, a campus textbook online exchange, a screen printing business and a PDA focusing on nutrition.

I can honestly say many of them would have a good chance of becoming a successful business. When you mix in the skills and energy from this talented group of freshmen you would have quite a set of core founders for any new business. Should they come knocking in three more years they just may find a willing investor!

The Jay Love Blog : Top Dawg

A Neat Way to Spend a Portion of My Weekend