Business Pitch Competition

Ideas came to life at the 1st One Northwood Business Pitch Start-up Competition this November on the Michigan campus. In a pilot competition, sixteen participants pitched their enterprising concepts to a judging panel to win a part of a $5,000 donor gift to get their idea rolling. The donation was generously provided by the Bauvervic Foundation and was offered to help grow and cultivate the entrepreneurial new collegiate ventures in the State of Michigan.

The night started off with an introduction and pitch process overview from Georgia Abbott, the director of the Alden B. Dow Center for Creativity & Enterprise. The competition got underway with 40 spectators listening to the pitches. Student pitch presenters represented six majors, and included freshman, MBA students and students from ADP. The ideas that were pitched also had great variety, including an inner-city bicycle taxi service, niche financial services, and an online recording company. The judging panel consisted of Dr. Timothy Nash, Chris Moultrup NU ‘07, Lois Wilkins DeVos ’04, Paul Fisher, Dow Corning.

The judges had their work cut out for them! Meeting after the pitching was competed, they chose the top seven seed award winners, dividing the $5000 into one $2000 award, two $1000 awards and four $250 awards. Those who did not receive seed cash did not go home empty handed. Valuable written feedback from the judges provided in a packet to all participants, providing participants further commercialization input on their ideas as well as feedback on pitching style and potential improvements.

Through the success of the pilot program on Northwood’s Michigan Campus we are looking to develop a competition at both the Florida and Texas Campus. In the future we hope to make this an intercollegiate competition between all three campuses. If there are any alumni interested in volunteering as judges for future competitions or providing specific donations to future NU Business Startup Competition, please email Georgia Abbott, abbottg@northwood.edu