Entrepreneurial students with viable start-up ideas win 2010 Rutgers Business Plan Competition

$35,000 in prizes given to winners to give jolt to strong business ideas from Rutgers Business School students.

When around a business long enough, eureka moments to create a business that fills a need and makes money come and go. Sometimes an idea makes so much sense it’s a wonder it isn’t being done. But then the old adage “it takes money to make money” comes into play and the idea dies. Enter the Rutgers Business School (RBS) Business Plan Competition, an annual event that has been awarding cash prizes to entrepreneurial students for 10 years to give great ideas the push to start a viable business.

Sunay Shah (RBS MBA ’10) saw an opportunity to jumpstart his business idea by entering the 2010 competition. Shah’s winning idea, to provide patients waiting to receive care in a doctor’s office a hand-held interactive device with their personal health records and customized medical information loaded on it, was one of 31 business plans entered in the competition. Shah and partner Maria Frantz, who received a Masters in Science – Biostatistics from Rutgers, won the $20,000 first place prize to invest into their business.

“Servicing technology for physicians for the past 10 years, I started seeing a lot of things in doctor’s offices that could be done to close the information gap between doctor and patient,” said Shah, who founded his company StratiMed in 2008. “This money will immediately allow us to buy the hardware and software needed to start selling,” he said.

Open to students in the RBS Undergraduate, MBA, and Executive MBA programs as well as recent RBS alumni, teams competed for $35,000 in cash prizes provided by the Sales Executives Club of Northern New Jersey Foundation. “The Business Plan Competition shows Rutgers commitment to encourage entrepreneurship,” said Richard Romano, president of the Sales Executive Club of Northern New Jersey Foundation, and member of the RBS Board of Advisers.

There was a tie for second place between Equal Footing, submitted by Dan Spindler, Executive MBA – Marketing, 2010, and Big Day Network, submitted by Mike DeCesare, BS in Business, expected December 2010, with each team winning $7,500.

Spindler’s idea for Equal Footing came from his wife who teaches handicapped children. “We want to create a web-based tool to advance the life of people with disabilities,” he said. Spindler said the business plan competition money would help him do a lot of marketing to promote the idea.

With an enthusiastic grin, DeCesare said that his idea came from his mother who has always wanted to be a wedding planner. The Big Day Network website, which is hoping to “transform the event planning industry,” according to DeCesare, will be launched in September thanks to the business plan competition prize money.

The objective of the Business Plan Competition is to encourage the development of students’ business plans that have the potential to be funded and launched. More than just a competition, “it is a reflection of Rutgers Business School’s strong corporate partnerships and its emphasis on preparing its students and graduates to succeed in applying business concepts to real-world challenges,” said Michael R. Cooper, PhD., Dean of Rutgers Business School.

Previous winners were in 2009, The Intersect Fund, a micro lender based in New Brunswick and comprised mostly of volunteer Rutgers Students, and in 2008, Bookswim, a book rental service with a similar business model to the one Netflix uses.

Media Contact: Daniel Stoll
973-353-5879
E-mail: dstoll@business.rutgers.edu