The Sullivan Center for Business and Entrepreneurship's eleventh annual Be Your Own Boss Business Idea Competition begins tonight in Zabriskie Hall at 7 p.m.
Every year, any Wells student can register for the BYOB Competition. After they submit a written business plan, the students are eligible for mentoring on their ideas through the Business Center. Up to $12,500 in prize money is available for students to win in multiple categories. Director Kevin Miles said most students who participate aren’t business or economics majors, and they don’t have to be to do well in the competition.
“Usually, about two-thirds of the finalists are typically liberal arts majors,” Miles said. “We’ve had everyone from English to political science and the sciences be first-place winners. It’s a lot of fun working with the students throughout the process. It’s a little bit different for everyone.”
Each student or team of students pitches their idea to a panel of judges. This year, a new portion of the competition will be introduced. Instead of preparing a full business idea, some students will have only 90 seconds to present. Miles said this format stems from the concept of a quick elevator pitch. He said it would potentially give the students more options for their presentation styles and might encourage more first-year students to practice pitching an idea in a shorter amount of time.
“You might have some people who have two ideas. They want to pitch in the regular BYOB, and then maybe have another idea that they want to just pitch in the 90-second pitch competition,” Miles said. “We also thought that it might be an opportunity for people who have an idea but are a little bit nervous, if those four minutes is a long time in the BYOB, so maybe it could be their initial try at pitching an idea.”
The competition first originated as Entrepreneurship Week at Wells, which started in the spring of 2011 when the college added business and economics majors and minors to its areas of study. It was re-branded into the Be Your Own Boss Business Idea Competition in 2014, which is now considered the main event during Entrepreneurship Week within the Business Center. Since then, dozens of Wells alums have won money, and some have gone on to successful careers with the business ideas they pitched.
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