The panel of judges included Jeff Nytch from the Entrepreneurship Center in the Music School, Meg Ambrose from ATLAS, Frank Moyes from the Business School’s Deming Center, and Brad Bernthal of the Silicon Flatirons Center at the Law School. Presented with such an overwhelming selection of brilliant ideas, these judges were hard-pressed to choose winners, but they did their best to give recognition to some notable pitches and thank everyone for participating.

Winning for most original idea was Louis Dankovich, who presented a plan to develop bedbug traps based on CO2 management. Best pitch went to Felipe Recart for his charming presentation about providing Chileans with delicious kettle-baked potato chips instead of the thin, oily product that always leaves him with “a profound sense of remorse.” The wild card winner, Hamed Yazdi, presented his entire pitch in poetry, and the overall prize went to Sean Baxter for his online fashion game for Tween girls.

In addition to these outstanding presentations, there were many other compelling pitches throughout the evening, ranging from an actual working model of a carbon sequestration box and an app that lets people pay their friends by smart phone when dividing a big bill, to healthy beer, cool chicken coops, and covered wagon campers. Themes of the evening included a passion for social justice, community, and volunteering, an interest in health and the environment, and solutions to improve efficiency for a wide range of people.

Congratulations to everyone who got this year’s New Venture Challenge off to such a great start at Pitch Night! Remember to join us for Mentor Speed Dating Night on Monday, November 15th starting at 6:15pm in the Wolf Law School, with an Entrepreneurs Unplugged presentation followed by the opportunity to network with a wide range of business leaders. Let the games begin!

The panel discussion featured Nate Abbott and Natty Zola of Everlater, Sarah Schupp from University Parent, and Daniel Epstein of the Unreasonable Institute. After giving a short pitch about each of their companies, they discussed the challenges and rewards of starting a business, with the uncertainty of success and the long hours contrasting dramatically with the sense of ownership and excitement of being an entrepreneur. Members of the audience listened attentively and asked great questions, getting motivated to start their own ventures. Check out more pictures here!

Next week same time same place is Pitch Night, when ideas will fly and teams will form! See you there: ATLAS 100 at 6pm on Wednesday, November 3rd. Register to attend here and click on the email icon at the top right of this page if you’d like to pitch a business idea!

Now in its third year, the CU New Venture Challenge is an established part of the vibrant Boulder start-up community, helping connect students with the resources they need to become successful in the entrepreneurial world. Join us for our kick-off event on Wednesday, October 27th at 6pm in ATLAS 100 to find out how you can be a part of it.

-          Learn how to write a successful business plan

-          Meet mentors with deep expertise in your area

-          Connect with students across campus to form a team with diverse skills

-          Compete for over $25,000 in prizes

-          Increase your ability to find jobs in the Boulder start-up community

Participants like Streat Chefs, last year’s winner, and Everlater, whose founders went on to become TechStars graduates and receive an initial round of funding, got some of their first lessons in entrepreneurship with CU NVC. Other teams also gained valuable insight into the start-up process and made great connections with mentors in their field of interest, leading to enhanced job opportunities after graduation. While not everyone can be the next Mark Zuckerberg, everyone can gain experience with entrepreneurship and apply that knowledge to future career opportunities in a dynamic industry!

Register for the kick-off event on Wednesday, October 27th at 6pm in ATLAS 100 to take the first step on an exciting path.

Tom outlined that there are 4 ingredients that make money fly to you.

Flying Money Ingredient 1: Know what pain your customers are experiencing, and ensure you can provide a solution that is better than the one the customer could come up with themselves, and better than your competitors. Be the best. This could be the cheapest, fastest, highest quality, most convenient, most fun, most admirable values – whatever sets you apart.

Flying Money Ingredient 2. Be the best solution for the pain, don’t under-price it – position yourself appropriately. Talk about your solution in the terms of your customer pain. All sales are emotional. Make sure your customer understands why you fix their pain as they know it.

Flying Money Ingredient 3. You have to have the best brand (not just the best features). This means people believe you have the best stuff (even if you don’t). Perception is reality. Make sure that your potential customers understand that you are the best.

Tom also told everyone a real truth – Kevin Costner in the Field of Dreams was wrong. “If you build it, they will come” isn’t true. You need to get customers aware of your product when they are feeling the pain. Advertise! Word of Mouth is through social networks becoming far more powerful. It’s timely, it’s strong. It uses someone’s existing relationships to help sell your product. And they do it because they love your product. You can’t buy their love. Be proactive and ask any customer who’s had a good experience to tweet, blog or Facebook about it.

Flying Money Ingredient 4. You don’t need a big ad budget, you need vocal, raving fans. The fans who will tell other people about their love for you and your brand. You build them not by pontificating but by conversing with them. You don’t get to tell them to love you, instead you need to give them a reason to love you.

Tom then described how these four ingredients form a circle. When you have a group of Raving Fans, they then lead back to finding more customers in pain (step one), helping you drive the business.

For anyone who missed the workshop, some video clips are below and you can also find the entire audio file here.  Thanks to Joanne White for guest blogging.

How to Pick a Business from Paul Berberian on Vimeo.

The 2009 CU New Venture Challenge began Wednesday night with a full house in the Wittemeyer Courtroom at the CU Law Building to hear Paul Berberian deliver the rousing and interactive session called, “How to pick a business worth starting.”

Paul ‘s first slide, “how to pick a winner,” set the tone for the evening. A kid with his finger up his nose, nearly up to the knuckle, brought lots of laughter. Paul continued to describe the essences of what types of businesses were worth pursuing, how to choose one that suits you, and a few hard realities of working in a startup. He talked about his failures. His personal reflections on one business experience selling plastic name tags which resulted in him marrying with a “negative dowry” was one many entrepreneurs see as a reality. Luckily, that experience appears to be humorous when it’s eclipsed by successes. And Paul has had a few, to say the least.

Paul is onto his sixth business (solar panels), and admits he’s the guy who wants to have lots of money raining on him. For him, that’s a key aspect of the type of business he chooses. He said though, that there are other factors that weigh in for consideration when deciding on a business to launch, and that the audience should look for something that suits and fits in all areas of who they were, and what they wanted to achieve. He described the process of looking at 14 different companies over the last year or so. One example was a company that produced bulletproof vests. “I’m a pacifist,” said the air force veteran, “I did that stage of my life and want to move on to other things.” So, while the bulletproof vest company might have been a strong one, it didn’t go further on his list to investigate.

In a highly engaging presentation, Paul invited the audience to ask questions and be interactive throughout – and they did. Numerous times Paul was asked to offer more detail on specific process, and simply to ask additional questions. Paul answered everyone, and kept a perfect balance of information, entertainment and informality so no matter where you were in your business journey, there was value in his message.

The broader message that while you have nothing is the best opportunity to go out on a limb and start a business was directly aimed at the students in the room. Paul’s encouragement was a great beginning to CU’s New Venture Challenge for 2009/2010. Following the presentation, everyone headed upstairs to network, enjoy some refreshments, and chat with some local startups looking for interns.

Paul Berberian was the perfect beginning to the CU New Venture Challenge and fired up the anticipation for next week’s pitch evening. A number of people have registered their intent to present their budding idea at the event, being held in the ATLAS building at 6pm on Wednesday 18^th November. All members of the campus, and the broader community are invited to come along, hear ideas (or present their own), and network with others to hopefully start something that could be the next big thing. As long as, according to Paul Berberian, it isn’t selling plastic badges.