Perfect Pitch

Terps bring their big ideas to a big audience at the October 29 Pitch Dingman competition.

Competition winners Jon Grunewald, Bill Ke and Sascha Maraj of Inkup with University of Maryland President Wallace Loh.

A group of student entrepreneurs got an unusual opportunity to present their big ideas to an audience of University of Maryland Trustees and the university’s new president, Dr. Wallace Loh, as the Smith School’s weekly Pitch Dingman competition went to the Riggs Alumni Center on Friday, October 29. The event followed a University Board of Trustees meeting which focused on the importance of entrepreneurship to the university and the state of Maryland.

Pitch Dingman, a weekly program of the Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship, allows students to share a business idea that is evaluated by professional investment staff and entrepreneurs-in-residence. Presenters at this Pitch Dingman competition had already passed the first hurdle: one of the weekly informal sessions held every Friday during the semester. But at the October 29 competition, students were competing for cash—$2,500 in startup funding—in front of a distinguished audience including some of the university’s most influential alumni and friends.

Kevin Plank ’96, founder and CEO of Under Armour, opened the event, reflecting on the combination of enthusiasm and naivete that led him to start his own company. “I never believed it couldn’t happen,” said Plank. “I didn’t know enough to know what I couldn’t accomplish.” Plank said he wanted to encourage a commitment to enterprise among students and throughout the university. “How many great ideas are still sitting in a garage somewhere because someone is afraid to take a chance? They probably know too much. They’ve been told too much about how difficult it will be.”

Asher Epstein, managing director of the Dingman Center, described how the center helps young entrepreneurs take their ideas “from the back of the napkin to the first million dollars” before turning the event over to an eager roster of young entrepreneurs.

Entrepreneurs had just six minutes to make their cases to a panel of discerning and experienced judges: Robert Facchina’77, president and CEO, Johanna Foods, Inc.; Jason Finger ’94, co-founder, Seamless Web; Suzanne Hillman, partner, Hillman & Glorioso; John LaPides, entrepreneur-in-residence, Dingman Center; Kevin Plank’96, founder and CEO, Under Armour; and Tom Scholl, partner, Novak Biddle Venture Partners.

Companies ranged from the high-tech to the highly ambitious. Adam Hurwitz, of Carpe Muse, invented a stand-alone pocket that hooks over running shorts, allowing the user to carry his iPod or ID while on the go. CloudSolar’s founders Michael Armani and Ramik Chopra invented a patent-pending fluid that can make solar panels more efficient and cheaper to use. Enertaq’s founders, Max Epstein, John Silberholz, and Martin Long, created a 100% efficient system of virtual energy storage for utility grids. Inkup founders Sascha Maraj, Bill Ke, and Jon Grunewald, all current undergraduate students at the university, offer a printer-ink-refill service. And Matthew Ahdut and Efrayim Ahdut of Nuroll want to start a fast food sushi chain that allows people to customize their sushi the way Chipotle allows people to customize burritos.

Carefully dressed in their professional best and speaking with carefully prepared electronic slides behind them, students explained how their companies were going to become financially viable and fielded pointed questions from the panel. Judges were interested in strategy and metrics: how would you protect your intellectual property? What is the shelf life of your product? How do you plan to deal with a fragmented market? What makes your offering unique from others? Students defended their business plans—occasionally realizing that they had a bit more thinking to do.

In the end, it was the enthusiastic founders of Inkup who took the day’s prize--$2,500 in start-up funding—plus the Audience Choice award, another $250. Maraj, Ke and Grunewald plan to be refilling ink cartridges on campus, and hopefully reaping substantial profits, for the rest of the Maryland careers.

But Plank encouraged all the student entrepreneurs to continue to develop their businesses and pursuing their big ideas. “Don’t listen to us,” he laughed. “What do we know? When I started selling roses on campus, I never knew where I was going to end up. Keep on, keep going.”