Business Plan Competition Propels Graduating Entrepreneurs
By Scott Jackson
Winners of Washington State University’s 2024 Business Plan Competition secured more than $50,000 in total to kickstart their ventures, with some top team members attributing their success to the skills they acquired at the Carson College of Business.
Grateful for the support they’ve received, the winners are now focused on next steps for their businesses, with some aiming to leverage additional support from other WSU programs.
Startup ventures find success at competition
First place winner Cordoba took home the most money at $17,500, which includes the $15,000 Herbert B. Jones grand prize. Cordoba is an AI plug-in meant to ease communication between architects and their clients. Using specialized AI similar to ChatGPT, clients can specify designs for their homes and generate functional 3-D models for architects to reference.
Third and fourth place winners Snap Chains and Serenity Spaces surpassed second place winners, PicsGenie, in terms of total money and merit prizes won. Snap Chains boasts a design for more resilient tire chains that are easier to install than existing products, and Serenity Spaces allows individuals to rent furniture packages for temporary lodgings. PicsGenie is an AI tool that can generate purchasable, custom T-shirt designs from text prompts.
Participants say the competition is the perfect place to hone their entrepreneurial skills and gain a starting point for a real-world business. Chris Larsen (’24 Finance, Entrep.), from the Cordoba team, says this is his second time participating and credits the competition with inspiring him to study finance in addition to entrepreneurship.
“Going through the Business Plan Competition really helped me understand what I wanted to do post-graduation,” Larsen says. “Pursuing the financial aspect of the business really pushed me toward pursuing a career in finance.”
Extracurriculars build on essential skills
Behind each of these innovative ventures lies a strong foundation built at the Carson College.
“The knowledge I acquired from the Carson College was instrumental in us placing fourth in the competition,” says Desiree Lane (’24 Entrep.), from the Serenity Spaces team. “It provided me with a comprehensive understanding of the components essential for a startup and played a significant role in developing our venture.”
Many participants agreed some of the most powerful learning opportunities were extracurricular events, clubs, and activities like the Business Plan Competition.
“The best training you get from Carson College and classes at WSU in general is the voluntary stuff you aren’t required to do,” says Jared Kelnhofer (’24 Data Analytics), founder of PicsGenie. “The real learning happens when you go just a little bit above and beyond—for me, at least, that’s when the opportunities really started to open up.”
Kelnhofer says these events give students a chance to network with alumni and industry leaders while affording them real-word experience like pitching to potential investors or working with a cross-disciplinary team.
Larsen says opportunities like these, combined with the skills gained from actual classes, give Carson students the ability to understand every facet of a real-world business, from basic finances to macroeconomic trends and how they will affect their ventures.
“The Carson College and the Business Plan Competition turned me from a dreamer with a business idea into someone with the technical and analytical skills to realize those ideas,” Larsen says.
Winners plan to continue building ventures
Regarding their post-graduation plans, the competition winners said they plan to continue developing their businesses while balancing other commitments.
With her partner still in school for another year, Lane says they plan to continue to refine their business model and assess feasibility through the summer, potentially re-entering the Business Plan Competition when it returns next spring. The Serenity Spaces team is also considering applying to the WSU Center for Entrepreneurship’s Jones Milestone Accelerator (JMA) program, which offers $20,000 in seed funding to participants so long as they meet certain milestones.
Kelnhofer says PicsGenie has already been accepted into the JMA, and by improving the function of the product and exploring business-to-business opportunities, he believes the venture will thrive. Kelnhofer says this project has shown him he has a passion and aptitude for working in “startup land.”
“If it goes really well, it’s going to be my full-time job,” he says. “If it doesn’t work out, I’ll work on a startup in Spokane, or I will go to California and work on startups there.”
While Larsen has a financial analyst job lined up with a company called Weave, he plans to continue working on Cordoba on the side.
“The next step is to secure some funding from an angel investor or a small venture capitalist, continue to develop the software, and prepare it for market,” he says. “We’re going to start beta testing soon, and we’d love to keep pursuing it and build something that architects can really use.”