The University of Tennessee is giving students an opportunity to build their companies while studying.
Four UT student startup companies were given a total of $35,000 dollars from the Boyd Venture Challenge Award. The challenge awards startup companies created by UT students with up to $20,000 in seed money. Winners and award amounts are determined by a panel of entrepreneurs, a certified public accountant and lawyers focusing on start-up companies.
“The students have to have a legally formed company in order to apply. The students submit an executive summary of their business,” Tom Graves, operations director of the Anderson Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, said. “They will tell us what they do, what their market is, what problems they are solving, what their business model is, what their competitive advantage is, and ask for the amount of money they think they need to achieve certain milestones in their company’s growth.”
The companies were selected from a group of 15 applicants. The applicants had to submit their business’s executive summaries to the judges, who then selected the winners. The winners then had to pitch their businesses to the panel of professionals, who determine if they are awarded seed money and how much.
The four winning companies were Promethus Group LLC, a company specializing in risk management and travel security founded by MBA candidate, Christopher Ruel, and senior in honors computer science, Jared Smith. SimPath is a company that offers fast and low cost DNA assembly solutions for synthetic biologists in the bio-based manufacturing industry; it was founded by doctoral candidates, Rob Moseley and Ben Mohr.
GeoAir identifies mold hot spots to allow farmers to treat them; it was founded by MBA candidate, Alex Adams. The last company is In With the Old, a company which specializes in repurposing and selling vintage college apparel.
“It started this summer, a friend and I figured there wasn’t a central place you could buy vintage UT clothing, so we went to several thrift stores in the Knoxville area and bought up all we could find,” Baker Donahue, the founder of In With the Old and junior in communications, said. “The Boyd Venture Award was a huge pick up, we are interested in expanding. We have another location at Auburn University. We want to invest in Alabama and UNC locations and hopefully get those up and running by January. The money will help us provide them with a startup of inventory and initial advertising.”
Prometheus Group LLC was awarded $17,600, SimPath was awarded $10,000, GeoAir was awarded $5,000, and In With the Old was awarded $2,400.
The Boyd Venture Challenge is administered through the Anderson Center in UT’s Haslam College of Business and is made possible by Randy Boyd, founder and executive chairman of Radio Systems Corporation. Since the fund began in 2011, 33 student-owned companies have been awarded a total of $277,000.
