Categories
McNair Center Rice Entrepreneurs

Spotlight on Rice Entrepreneurs: Elevator Pitch Competition

What is an elevator pitch?

The 8th Annual Rice Undergraduate Elevator Pitch Competition was held on Wednesday, November 16. Elevator pitches describe a problem or need and a design solution in 90 seconds or less. Judges evaluated the pitches based on technical merits of the project as well as the team’s perselevator-358249_1920uasive speaking abilities.

Who can participate in the Rice Elevator Pitch Competition?

Although the competition was open to any Rice undergraduate student or team with a business concept or idea, this year senior engineering design teams won each of the ten finalist positions. Some of the ideas pitched in the finals included cost-efficient retractable needles targeted toward patients in India, single-arm propulsion wheelchairs for low-income patients who have shoulder injuries and a mechanical hippotherapy device.

The 2016 winners: Diabetes Compression Sock

Jessica Griffiths, Nikitha Cherayil, Crystal Lin, Amy Fox and Lucas Navarro won First Place and the Popular Choice Award for their pitch. This senior engineering design team pitched their plan to design a more effective compression sock for diabetes mellitus patients. The inspiration for team’s design is personal; a team member’s grandfather had to wear traditional compression socks to prevent blood clots. Her grandfather struggled to put on these socks by himself, and resorted to enlisting family members for help. Many patients forgo the socks altogether due to this struggle. Jessica Griffiths says a redesigned compression sock could increase patient compliance in wearing the socks, which in turn would decrease their risk for blood clots.

Benefits of participating in the elevator pitch competition

Griffiths praises the elevator pitch competition for giving senior design teams a unique opportunity to showcase their projects. “[The competition] was good for us and the other teams to compete in, because we don’t usually compete against each other.” She also recommends that non-senior design teams enter the competition, particularly freshman pasted-image-at-2016_12_15-04_51-pmengineering students enrolled in ENGI 120. She says that “The entrepreneurship at Rice is one of the best in the nation because we have such creative students here, the Elevator Pitch Competition is excellent practice to learn to present not only something you’re working on but also yourself.”

Upcoming Rice Entrepreneurship Event

The 17th annual Rice Business Plan Competition, the world’s “richest and largest” graduate-level student startup competition, will be held April 6-8, 2017. Applications are being accepted through February 10.

Hundreds of teams apply to the competition, hoping to receive some of the over $1.5 million in cash and prizes available. Over 180 corporate and private sponsors provide support to the competition and investors from all around the nation volunteer to judge.

Categories
McNair Center Rice Entrepreneurs

Rice Entrepreneurs: East-West Tea

This month the McNair Center is spotlighting Rice entrepreneurs to celebrate National Entrepreneurship Month. To kick off our series, we sat down with Andrew Maust, operations manager for East-West Tea.

East-West Tea

East-West Tea began in the spring of 2016 as a project in Scott Davis’s undergraduate marketing class. Dr. Davis, a post-doctoral fellow at the Jones Graduate School of Business, had students develop business strategies catering to underserved markets on campus. East-West Tea founder Drew Sutherland observed that students frequently went off campus to get boba tea and developed a plan to sell the beverage on campus. At the end of the semester, Sutherland and team members Tommy Bennett, David Cooper, Glenn Baginski and Leo Meiste implemented their plan. East-West launched retail operations on October 12.

Impact on the Rice Community

Andrew Maust joined the team last spring after going to several tea tastings. Since then, he’s climbed the ladder from kitchen worker to operations manager.

Maust describes the relationship East-West formed with Rice as symbiotic. “One of [East-West’s] core foundations is serving the Rice community. While what we do isn’t necessarily the easiest logistically, or makes us the most money on profit margins, we think it’s really important to serve the students and help them out in our endeavors.”

Maintaining a healthy relationship with Rice is a balancing act. Rice Housing and Dining provides East-West with shared kitchen space in Sammy’s. Without their own kitchen, East-West must “maintain operations but also not encroach on other people’s space.”

Maust says another challenge is running a small business and keeping up with schoolwork. He works 15-20 hours per week in the kitchen, which is “more hours than [he] takes in coursework”.

Advice to Rice Small Businesses

Maust also gave some advise to students who want to start their own business: “It has to be a labor of love. Your first goal shouldn’t be ‘Ooh, what can I do to make money?’ Because in order to build something that lasts and is high quality, it has to be something that you put in a lot of time and effort for. Money is great, but first and foremost you have to have that drive, that passion and put forth a great product.”

This resonates with advice Bob McNair gave students at an event at the Baker Institute on August 29th: Strive to create value and success will follow.