AACC students learn how to enter $100,000 Business Pitch Competition
Seventh-year business management student Dalton Leonard addresses the crowd.
February 4, 2020
AACC Students learned on Tuesday about the two main parts of the annual $100,000 Business Pitch Competition, the online application and the live pitch.
Stephanie Goldenberg, the Interim Academic Chair of Entrepreneurial Studies Institute said the online portion features students submitting a business plan.
“The first part is a ten page business plan plus three year financial projections and a resume,” Goldenberg said. “Students who are submitting have started a business and have been in business three years or less. It is for pre-launch, launch, or new growth for a business.”
Students have until April 2, 2020 at noon to submit the first part.
Goldenberg said the competition’s second section consists of a live pitch.
Third-year dual-track visual art and entrepreneur student, Nickie Lambert, won the Business Pitch Competition in 2019.
Lambert gave advice to future contestants.
“To paraphrase, Wayne Gretzky ‘I never scored on a shot I did not take,’” Lambert said. “So [the] most important thing is to enter it, to get the courage to do it, [and] go ahead with it. Once you get in the process, once you start with the entry, with the competition you will develop and grow your business and your idea.”
Lambert said the “first thing is just to start and the second thing is to, as you start, take full advantage of the immense opportunity that is here for coaching, for mentoring, for getting second opinions on your plan … and even for running your idea by peers, you know, and coming into the Hatchery and bouncing ideas off people.”
Business professor Steve Berry also notified students at the event of the Entrepreneurs Scholarship which has similar criteria to the Business Pitch Competition.
Second-year theater student Lauryn Damron said she hopes to get the scholarship.
“I learned a lot, I’m really excited to attend those workshops because I’m glad that those are just available to us,” Damron said. “I don’t know if I’m going to participate in this round for sure, but either way I’m glad to know what it is and that it even exists.”
