The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
Idea Pitch competition produces results
What do a wooden toy, vegan soaps and GPS golf balls all have in common?
They were each part of winning projects at the Lakeland Community College Idea Pitch Competition Nov. 14 — part of the school’s Entrepreneurship Week.
The Shark Tank-like challenge played out in Room T-129, where seven teams presented their ideas, their philosophies and their needs to five Northeast Ohio businesspeople: Steven Abbott from his namesake insurance agency in Chardon; Brittany Giomuso, president and proprietor of Mentor-based TraceBack Screening; Mario Jurcic, who owns Secure IT Asset Disposition Services in Oakwood Village; Cathy Walsh from the Ohio Small Business Development Center at Lakeland Community College and Jason Wuliger, cofounder and vice president at Beachwood-based SplashLink.
Event organizer Gretchen Skok DiSanto, director of Lakeland’s Entrepreneurial Center and assistant professor in the school’s business management department, typed in a Nov. 14 e-mail exchange that the competition was designed to help students with entrepreneurial ambitions further their goals.
“The college’s goal in creating this opportunity for students was to give students a platform to share their passion and ideas with the potential of taking home some money to help finance moving their ideas forward,” she writes. “It was about helping students to take one step forward in making their idea a reality.”
Beginning shortly after 12:30 p.m. Nov. 14, seven presenters — some with company and others who flew solo on stage — got five minutes to present their business ideas, followed by two-minute audience question-and-answer sessions.
The ideas, and their proponents, included:
• Plano, an app for people whose plans have just been canceled, by Gabriele Baltrunaite
• Hand-crafted, vegan liquid soap from The Nature Factory by Audreanna Cook
• Takeaminute Fitness, a gym concept for those with special needs, by Lauren Kozich
• Erie Airsoft Field by Tim Lazuka
• A feature film concept by Patrick McKeirnan
• A GPS-enabled golf ball and training app by Rachel Gundling, Nicholas Reimer and Nick Seketa called CaddyBall
• A new take on marketing a low-tech, interactive Japanese wooden pastime implement called Stray Kendamas by Anthony Sassano
Wuliger said he thought the competition went off without a hitch and was a great way to showcase some of the area’s brightest idea-makers.
“I think it’s extremely valuable that Lakeland put something like this together,” he said in a phone interview Nov. 14 following the competition. “We all had a chance to hear from entrepreneurs who are in various stages of developing their business strategies.”
He said he was affected by the participants’ presentations and what they represent in terms of the area’s talent.
“I was very impressed with the concepts and thought they were all great representations of the spectrum of entrepreneurship throughout Lake County,” he said. “It showed the vibrance of the entrepreneurial talent pool here. We have a lot of people with a lot of talent around here and it’s wonderful that Lakeland’s facilitating them turning their ideas into businesses.”
Although each entry had its strong points, some had more than others and only three were chosen to win monetary support for their concepts. These included:
• First-place winner Sassano with his Stray Kendama project, who scored $750 to apply to his concept
• Second-place winner Cook, who will receive $500 toward her Nature Factory’s vegan soaps campaign
• Third-place winners Gundling, Reimer and Seketa, whose CaddyBall project garnered a $250 prize.
For their parts, Gundling, Reimer and Seketa agreed that, although the competition inspired a certain degree of anxiety, it also inspired them to keep on keepin’ on.
“Oh yeah — definitely nervous,” Seketa said when asked how he felt on stage during the group’s five-minute presentation. Gundling concurred. “It was nerve wracking, for sure,” she said, adding that her teammates helped ease the stress of presenting their idea to the crowd.
First-place winner Sassano agreed it was good to have some on-stage companionship (his buddies Tommy Case and Drew Donnelly helped him demonstrate what kendamas can do).
“I felt very confident,” he said, adding that the companionship of his friend/ demonstrators helped.
“We all had a chance to hear from entrepreneurs who are in various stages of developing their business strategies.” —Jason Wuliger, cofounder and vice president at Beachwood-based SplashLink