Accelerator Fund open for submissions
WHITPAIN>> Montgomery County Community College’s Karen A. Stout Start-Up Accelerator Fund, which made its debut last spring, has been reinvigorated with a fresh load of funding and is ready to help out another ambitious round of would-be tycoons.
Aspiring venturists who want to submit a business plan and then pitch their ideas to industry experts and others are invited to claim their piece of a pie worth at least $72,000 by applying at mc3.edu/start-up by the deadline of Oct. 9.
Thanks to the recent financial boost he received from the Accelerator Fund, alumnus and entrepreneur Jeremiah De Leon is now realizing his dream of getting his start-up, Align Team LLC, one of four winners in the pilot round of competition, off the ground.
“Growing up, I always had great business ideas, but I didn’t have the connections to make them happen,” De Leon said. “That’s why I created Align, an app that connects entrepreneurs. We were thrilled to receive an award from the Accelerator Fund, which is helping us launch the app globally and promote it through video and at conferences.”
The innovative process of putting success within reach of budding, self-made CEOs has been tweaked with a few structural changes, noted Philip Needles, vice president of student services, who oversees the program.
“The initial results were very positive and exceeded our expectations and we are expanding the design of the program to include multiple category areas for submissions, and making sure the right plans are being aligned with the right industries for evaluation and review,” Needles explained.
The original categories of nonprofit, for profit and “other” are still in place but have given way to several sub genres, including technology and software; healthcare; manufacturing and engineering, retail and culinary and products and services.
“Due to the diversity of the plans in the first round of submissions, we changed the structure to encourage a greater number of submissions in subcategories that provide more opportunities for entrepreneurs to submit,” Needles explained. “This will allow us to bring in additional evaluators with the expertise to help expand our award capabilities.”
Needles added that he is hoping to encourage more submissions by veterans, women and minorities.
“The structural changes will allow for more and greater rewards,” he explained. “We have the ability to work with the funders for more funding. It’s not like a business plan competition where there’s a fixed amount for prize money. Funding matches the approved plans and what their needs are. If we approve nine ventures, for example, that needed $83,000 in funding, that would be the amount we award. We’re really not constrained by limits in the initial evaluation.”
Another major change this year is that the pitches will be viewed by members of the college community, as well as potential lenders.
In addition to Align, the Accelerator Fund granted awards to three other ventures earlier this year, including oLIVE Devices LLC,which manufactures “smart eyeglasses” that translate speech to text for the hard of hearing.
Through Guide U, small businesses that offer a free Wi-Fi hotspot can advertise to the consumers who use their Wi-Fi.