Each spring, the Hatchery Advisory Board of the John M. Olin School of Business chooses the top MBA and undergraduate teams in the Hatchery entrepreneurship course, naming them winners of the Olin Cup. The board, comprised of faculty, leading entrepreneurs and venture capitalists, assesses each team based on its presentation of the business plan it developed either for its own business idea or for an outside entrepreneur's venture.
This year, on May 3, 11 teams presented their business plans, including analyses of target market, marketing and operations as well as financial projections.
Winners in the MBA division are:
- 1st place: Sentinel Fire Solutions LLC, an exclusive supplier of a patented fire suppression technology to the automotive industry. The team -- Matthew Bailey, Kay Grabanski, Brian Jurcak, Frank Romano and Clint Rybak -- originated this idea.
- 2nd place: Connexus Inc., offering various Web tools allowing elementary schools to use the Web conveniently as an administrative communication tool. Team members Rebecca Hamilton, Caleb Stephenson and Nicolas Voiriot developed an outside entrepreneur's idea.
- 3rd place: Nexstar Financial Services, developing a business and marketing plan for an outside entrepreneur's expansion into interactive media. The team included Anar Desai, Justin Forer, Patrick Gilligan and David Hazelton.
Winners in the undergraduate division are:
1st place: BottleBid.com, an e-commerce start-up seeking to increase product availability and price competition in the alcoholic beverage industry by creating an Internet Trade Exchange for retailers nationwide. Team members Tucker Boren, Christopher Gimbert and Brian Katz originated this idea.
2nd place: Mitchell's Majik, a Missouri-based food producer that has launched two specialty food products -- Mitchell's Majik Spicy Mayonnaise and Mitchell's Majik Spicy Honey Mustard. Team members Cole Dunlavey, Jesse Falowitz, Jonathan Pardo and Robert Taylor originated this idea.
The first-place winners of the Olin Cup -- Sentinel Fire Solutions and BottleBid.com -- are eligible to be considered for funding from the Skandalaris Seed Capital Fund, set up this year (see related story). Business plans from recent Hatchery students also are eligible for consideration. Any funding is expected to be announced by the end of August.
