{"id":24033,"date":"2018-11-09T10:02:32","date_gmt":"2018-11-09T15:02:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogarchive.utc.edu\/news\/?p=24033"},"modified":"2018-11-09T12:05:55","modified_gmt":"2018-11-09T17:05:55","slug":"students-pitch-their-business-ideas-to-pros-in-hatch-it-competition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogarchive.utc.edu\/news\/2018\/11\/students-pitch-their-business-ideas-to-pros-in-hatch-it-competition\/","title":{"rendered":"Students pitch their business ideas to pros in Hatch It competition"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Kenzie Butera pitches her team’s business idea to the panel of judges during this year’s Hatch It competition.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Hatch It Pitches<\/strong><\/h3>\n

BeforeWeBegin<\/strong><\/p>\n

Kenzie Butera (Women\u2019s Studies)<\/p>\n

Beth Rachlin (Psychology)<\/p>\n

Christina Buck (Computer Science)<\/p>\n

Deep Learning Drone<\/strong><\/p>\n

Murad Al Qurishee, Babatunde Atolagbe, Ammer Abdelhafiz Ali Elnaiem (Civil Engineering)<\/p>\n

Foodez<\/strong><\/p>\n

Andrew Cox (Economics and Entrepreneurship)<\/p>\n

LanguageGenies<\/strong><\/p>\n

Jacquelin O\u2019Gary (Psychology)<\/p>\n

Dan Mailman (Computer Science)<\/p>\n

Provality<\/strong><\/p>\n

Stephanie Honore (Computer Science)<\/p>\n

RBS Retrofit<\/strong><\/p>\n

John David Blankenship (Accounting and Finance)<\/p>\n

The Mailbox Doctor<\/strong><\/p>\n

Eric Jones (Business Management)<\/p>\n

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Judges are, from left, Kurt Schaffer, Richard Rhett and Sarah Mattson.<\/p><\/div>\n

Judges<\/strong><\/h3>\n
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  • Sarah Mattson<\/strong>: Small Business Specialist at the Tennessee Small Business Development Center on the North Shore. She is also a co-owner of Riverside Plumbing.<\/li>\n
  • Richard Rhett:<\/strong> Founder and CEO of Sierra Madre Research, an outdoor company that manufactures high-quality camping hammocks, shelters, insulation and accessories. He previously was on Shark Tank<\/em> and convinced billionaire Richard Branson to invest $175,000 in his company.<\/li>\n
  • Kurt Schaffer: <\/strong>Served as Project Management Consultant for NASA for eight years, then founded Episode49, a technology company that provides solutions primarily through web development, digital marketing and search-engine optimization<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n

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    Kenzie Butera is firing off some alarming statistics.<\/p>\n

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    • One in five women will be raped in their lifetime.<\/li>\n
    • Twenty million Americans are diagnosed yearly with a socially-transmitted disease.<\/li>\n
    • Rape is one of the costliest crimes in the U.S. with an annual cost to victims of $127 billion.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

      But sex education programs are woeful in the U.S., she says, with less than half the states mandating\u00a0 sex ed and, even then, much of the material is out-of-date, poorly taught and even medically inaccurate. She explains that the lack of good educational materials is the reason she and two other UTC students created BeforeWeBegin, an interactive, customizable web-based program that will teach students about \u201cno means no,\u201d healthy relationships, reporting abuse and other elements of sex education.<\/p>\n

      \u201cSo join me as we educate, equip and empower,\u201d she says, cool and confident.<\/p>\n

      Her audience, a panel of three judges, were so impressed with Butera’s presentation, they awarded her team first place in this year’s Hatch It competition in which UTC students prepare two-minute pitches then spend three minutes answering questions, all in a quest to convince the judges to \u201cinvest\u201d in their product or business idea.<\/p>\n

      Students in this year\u2019s Hatch It\u2014described as a \u201cnicer\u201d version of TV’s\u00a0Shark Tank<\/em>\u2014ranged from majors in business management, accounting and economics to psychology, computer science and engineering. Attracting students from a variety of majors was a specific intent, says Libby Santin, director of the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship in the Gary W. Rollins College of Business.<\/p>\n

      \u201cWe really wanted to engage students from across campus and get them excited about entrepreneurship and the passions they were interested in,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

      This year\u2019s competition received 35 submissions and seven were selected to give in-depth descriptions on, among other topics, why they thought their product would sell, who the competition was and how the business would actually operate.<\/p>\n

      Butera, a women\u2019s studies major, partnered with psychology major Beth Rachlin and computer science major Christina Buck to create BeforeWeBegin. As winners, they received $2,000 and a chance to learn more about business accounting and legal issues through workshops at Chattanooga\u2019s Co.Lab.<\/p>\n

      Second place and $1,000 went to Andrew Cox, an economics and entrepreneurship major who came up with FoodEZ, sort of an Uber for people who want access to healthy, chef-prepared food 24\/7 but don\u2019t want to cook. They can look at an online menu for meals in their area, then have it delivered to their home, Cox explains.<\/p>\n

      Unlike pitch competitions for business students, which often include a breakdown of costs for production, marketing, personnel and other financials, this year\u2019s Hatch It didn\u2019t require those details.<\/p>\n

      \u201cThe real requirement is that they can prove that there is a market for their idea,\u201d Santin says.<\/p>\n

      But all students can benefit from being able to convince another person that their idea is a good one, she adds.<\/p>\n

      \u201cThe first thing is the ability to sell an idea and get buy-in for an idea,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s rare when students get an opportunity to do that, but it\u2019s very common to have to sell an idea to someone, whether it\u2019s to tell your spouse where you want to go on vacation or your employer to hire two people to help you do the job.\u201d<\/p>\n

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