Heading to Vegas: Walton College Students Win More Than $35,000 in Awards; Will Compete for More

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Members of the Governor's Cup winning teams pictured with adviser Carol Reeves, center, are Kevin Oden (cycleWood Solutions), Joel Irons (TiFiber), Brock Hauser (TiFiber), Jack Avery (cycleWood Solutions), Alex Kieslich (TiFiber), Nhiem Cao (cycleWood Solutions). Not pictured: Pree Silva and Blair Cocanower (cycleWood Solutions), Craig Crismon and Bhanu Koppolu (TiFiber).

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. – Entrepreneurial education in the Sam M. Walton College of Business at the University of Arkansas is paying off, yet again, with this year’s crop of students succeeding in business plan competitions.

In the Donald W. Reynolds Governor’s Cup’s Arkansas business plan competition, a team of graduate students was rewarded for their cycleWood Solutions business plan with the $20,000 first-place award, the $5,000 Graduate Agriculture Award and the $2,000 Elevator Pitch Award given by Jack Avery in the 2011 Donald W. Reynolds Governor’s Cup business plan competition. The TiFiber team took the second-place graduate award for $10,000. The winners were announced at a luncheon held April 20 at the Statehouse Convention Center in Little Rock. The competition was managed by the Arkansas Economic Acceleration Foundation, an affiliate of the Arkansas Capital Corp. Group.

Both graduate teams will travel to Las Vegas on May 25-26 to compete for an additional $25,000 and $15,000 with winners of Donald W. Reynolds business plan competitions in Oklahoma and Nevada.

Just a week earlier, these two teams – cycleWood and TiFiber – also placed in the top 1 percent of teams across the world at the 2011 Rice University Business Plan Competition April 14-16.

Carol Reeves, who is associate vice provost for entrepreneurship, holder of the Cecil and Gwendolyn Cupp Applied Professorship in Entrepreneurship and associate professor of management, was faculty adviser for both winning teams. Reeves said, “There is great educational benefits to these students who spend time developing a detailed business plan and present it in front of judges who are real business people.”

Last year, student entrepreneurial teams advised by Reeves took in nearly $1 million in prize money from these and other business plan competitions. Many of those teams have used the prize money to continue their businesses after graduation.

Walton College Dean Dan L. Worrell said: “One of our objectives is to help students connect scholarship with practice and this is a great way for them to put their learning into practice in the real world. These Governor’s Cup wins continue to reflect the track record we’ve had at national business plan competitions over the years. We congratulate our students and Dr. Reeves for their hard work and determination to succeed in today’s society.”

The business plan for the student company cycleWood Solutions calls to make biodegradable, compostable single-use plastic bags that will replace high-density polyethylene bags currently used in stores. Team members are Walton College graduate students Nhiem Cao, Jack Avery, Blair Cocanower, Kevin Oden and Priscila Silva.

The team known as TiFiber is targeting the high-end water-filtration market with their titanium dioxide nanofiber sheets, which are much stronger and more malleable than existing filtration materials. Team members also include Walton College graduate students Craig Crismon, Brock Hauser, Alex Kieslich, Joel Irons and Bhanu Koppolu, a doctoral candidate in biomedical engineering.

The Donald W. Reynolds Governor’s Cup is in its 11^th year and is a statewide undergraduate and graduate business plan competition designed to encourage students in Arkansas, Oklahoma and Nevada to act upon their ideas and talents in order to produce tomorrow's businesses. This competition is aimed at simulating the real-world process of entrepreneurs creating a business plan to solicit start-up funds from potential investors. Students involved in this competition gain access to networks of successful entrepreneurs, lenders and investors, team-building opportunities, business planning skills and media exposure.

 Winners of each competition are encouraged to start their profit-making ventures with substantial cash prizes and technical assistance.

Franklin McLarty, senior vice president of Mclarty Companies/RLJ-McLarty-Landers Automotive was the event chairman and Gov. Mike Beebe was the keynote speaker.

TiFiber and cycleWood Solutions were two of six teams out of 503 applicants that competed in the final round of the Rice University Business Plan Competition. The other finalists were from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of Michigan, University of Notre Dame and University of Louisville.

“It was a great honor for both of these teams to be picked to compete in the Rice Competition and we are thrilled that each did so well,” Reeves said.

The Rice University competition, the world’s richest and largest business plan competition, awarded more than $1 million in cash and prizes on April 16. The competition was hosted by the Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship and the Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Business and co-sponsored by Fortune magazine. The 42 teams, picked from 503 submissions from around the world, received cash prizes and competed in six categories: social ventures and other technologies, life sciences, information technology, energy and green tech. The 200 judges were venture capital investors, entrepreneurs and business leaders.

CycleWood Solutions came in fourth place overall and was awarded $5,000 in prize money at the Rice competition. They also won the elevator pitch and best sales and marketing plan award.