Do you need to reduce stress by organizing your time? Or perhaps you’re craving a non-alcoholic drink? Or you’re keen on supporting college aspirations?

If so, this year’s winners of the Bobcat Ventures pitch competition have you covered.

Hosted in Commons on April 6 and judged by three �ֲ���ý alumni entrepreneurs, the annual student pitch competition featured 11 student teams for the morning-long competition, which concluded with three winners collecting $15,000 in prize money.

This year’s first place winner was Aidan Stark-Chessa ’26 of Falmouth, Maine, who was awarded $8,000 for Honeysuckle, a cocktail alternative . 

“I have to tell you, the horsepower that �ֲ���ý students pitch with and present is just second to none,” said judge Ben Schippers ’04, co-founder of , a software design and engineering firm. “I mean, it’s really incredible.”

Schippers was on the ground floor of the program when it began in 2015. The pitches get stronger by the year, he said, and choosing winners “gets harder and harder and harder and harder. It’s really been this transformation, the arc from when we started all the way to now. It’s an incredible trajectory to see.”

More than a one-day wonder, Bobcat Ventures runs for most of the academic year, offering training, coaching, and mentoring programs that lead up to an annual pitch competition. Organized by the Center for Purposeful Work with the help of alumni, faculty, and staff, this program helps teams refine their ideas and prepare for both the springtime competition and the real world. 

For the first time in several years, Bobcat Ventures added a road show this year, traveling to the Boston area to meet with the �ֲ���ý Boston Business Network, a regional group dedicated to hosting dynamic gatherings for area alumni and parents. 

On March 29, the BBBN hosted a practice pitch session for several of the entrepreneurs. Around 50 alumni and parents attended the event, held at the Cambridge Innovation Center, hearing pitches and providing feedback to the students. 

Second prize ($4,000) went to Tanvir Thamid ’26 of Dhaka, Bangladesh, for Edbridge Scholars, a program supporting South Asian students’ college aspirations. 

Third prize ($3,000) went to Thomas Davis ‘27 of Marblehead, Mass., with Chunk (It)!, a time management platform.

Joining Schippers as judges were Pranav Ghai ’93, co-founder of , a financial data platform, and Carine Warsawski ’07, founder of , offering classic and out-of-the-box Jewish summer camp experiences for young adults and their friends. 

Here’s a look at this year’s winners:

Honeysuckle: Crafting Alcohol Alternatives

Founders: Aidan Stark-Chessa ’26 and partner and friend Seamus Woodruff, a Bowdoin student

Concept: Honeysuckle offers a refreshing alternative to alcoholic beverages, prioritizing flavor and affordability without compromising on taste or experience.

Stark-Chessa’s experience in the restaurant business includes a gig as a bartender in training at the trendy Portland restaurant Street and Co.

“I love eating food and drinking and just experiencing flavor in all sorts of ways,” he said in his winning pitch. “But I wanted an alternative to alcohol because I don’t always love how that makes me feel.”

Enter Honeysuckle, and an answer to the quest for great flavor minus the alcohol. “I use ginger juice and lemon juice. I make my own bitters out of gentian root and a sort of proprietary cocktail shrub, like a pickled fruit-juice, to create a sort of signature mouth-feel of complexity.”

Key Features:

• Complex Flavor Profiles: Using ingredients like ginger juice, lemon juice, and homemade bitters, Honeysuckle creates a sophisticated taste reminiscent of cocktails.
• Affordability: Honeysuckle aims to be competitively priced.
• Local Distribution: Initially focusing on sales through local cafes and coffee shops, Honeysuckle emphasizes community engagement and support.

Stark-Chessa explains why Honeysuckle meets a consumer need: “Many of you probably have felt the adverse effects of alcohol on your sleep. It shows here that having even as much as one glass of alcohol can reduce your sleep quality by 10 percent and that is a lot and that adds up, especially if you’re trying to be active throughout your life. So we’ve tried to create an alternative.”

Next Steps: Honeysuckle is in the process of food testing and hopes to launch its product into local cafes and eateries in the near future. 

Edbridge Scholars: Empowering Student Success

Founder: Tanvir Thamid ‘26

Concept: From first-hand experience, Thamid understands what it takes for an international student to attend a top college in the U.S., and his new resource Edbridge Scholars aims to provide comprehensive support for international students who wish to attend college in the U.S., particularly those from low-income backgrounds.

Key Features:

• One-on-One Mentorship: Edbridge Scholars connects students with guidance counselors who offer personalized mentoring and support.
• Extended Support: Students receive guidance not only during the application process but also for up to 18 months to enhance their extracurricular activities and overall candidacy.
• Affordability: Targeting affordability, Edbridge Scholars keeps costs low for both students and mentors, ensuring accessibility to those who need it most.
• Accessible Resources: Recognizing the limited access many students have to resources, particularly in countries like Bangladesh, Edbridge Scholars aims to bridge this gap and get clients into their dream schools.

Thamid explains why Edbridge Scholars meets a consumer need: “I come from a public school myself, and am also a lower middle-income student myself. The challenges that I faced when I was applying abroad was that there weren’t college guidance counselors available, and it’s true for over 90 percent of the public schools in Bangladesh. There is limited access to resources.”

Next Steps: In the most recent application cycle, Edbrige Scholars successfully helped students gain admission to colleges such as Lehigh, Cal Tech, and Amherst. With hopes to employ more tutors, and thus take on more clients, Edbridge Scholars aspires to provide more equitable access to college guidance resources. 

Chunk (It)!: Enhancing Time Management

Founders: Thomas Davis ’27 and two partners, Kaden Cassidy and Andy Nguyen

Concept: Founded by Thomas Davis ’27 of Marblehead, Mass., Chunk (It)! is a web application designed to revolutionize time management for students. Davis and his partners discovered that uncertainty about daily schedules was a significant source of stress for many people. To combat this, they developed Chunk (It)!, which helps users plan and predict — or “chunk” — their day effectively.

Key Features:

• Customizable Planning: Tailored to individual users, Chunk (It)! offers personalized scheduling and time-saving techniques with the help of AI.
• Healthy Sleep Schedule: The app includes features to promote a balanced sleep routine, recognizing the crucial link between sleep and mental well-being. It calculates the time needed to accomplish entered tasks, and creates a sleep routine accordingly.
• Break Planning: Recognizing the importance of breaks, Chunk (It)! schedules in time for rest and relaxation depending on how many breaks the user requests, as well as their tasks at hand. 
• Mental Health Focus: Developed with mental health in mind, the app aims to alleviate stress and promote overall well-being. 

Davis explains why Chunk (It)! meets a consumer need: “Andy, Kaden, and I found that we are actually most stressed when we don’t know what to expect from our days. More than two to five adults report that when they’re stressed, they feel like they can’t accomplish anything at all. Something needs to give, and we’re convinced that time management is the solution.

“It’s been well documented that an increase in predictability and control actually decreases stress. Chunk (It!) gives students more predictable schedules that they can control, without having to employ cumbersome time management techniques. By increasing predictability we are decreasing stress.”

Next Steps: Chunk (It)! plans to run a trial program at a high school in the 2024–25 academic year in Massachusetts, with hopes to expand its outreach.

Breaking barriers and providing access to higher education — that’s how two �ֲ���ý students will use their $6,000 first-place prizes from this year’s Bobcat Ventures pitch competition.

Jacob Iwowo ’23, a politics major from Beckenham, England, won for his startup, Up Next Academy, connecting young soccer players around the world with opportunities to play soccer at U.S. colleges through scholarship support.

Abby Segal ’23, a psychology major from Chelmsford, Mass., started her own business, Magic by Abby Segal, to inspire and encourage women to break into the male-dominated world of professional magic.

Both first-place winners have something big in common, the judges noted. Both their businesses are already up and running and making money, “an impressive place for a student-run startup to be,” said judge Emma Sprague ’10, a �ֲ���ý trustee whose business, Upswing Strategies, just merged with KNP Communications.

More than strictly a pitch competition, the student-run Bobcat Ventures program works in partnership with the college’s Center for Purposeful Work to provide year-round support for student entrepreneurs. 

Each year, a loyal group of alumni come to �ֲ���ý to serve as competition judges. This year, joining Sprague were Pranav Ghai ’93, co-founder and CEO of Calcbench Inc., who stepped in when longtime judge Chris Barbin ’93 could not attend, and Ben Schippers ’04, CEO and co-founder of HappyFunCorp. In addition to the judges, some 20 additional �ֲ���ý alumni, parents, and friends serve as Bobcat Ventures mentors and guest speakers throughout the year.

“Every year our work seems to get harder and harder,” said Schippers. “This year was definitely the hardest.”

Ghai, a parent of a first-year �ֲ���ý student, described the pitches as “high caliber,” and explained why. “It’s a complex thing to do: merge all of these different sources, make your story coherent, and then go in front of people who are judging you. And they pulled it off. They just really did a great job.”

Since founding Up Next Academy in 2020, Iwowo has helped connect international clients, mostly from the United Kingdom, with a network of more than 700 coaches at colleges and prep schools across the U.S. 

Soccer’s popularity in the U.S. has long lagged behind the rest of the world, yet the U.S. provides the best opportunities for young players to get a college education while playing the sport they love.

That’s where Up Next Academy comes in, says Iwowo, whose experience as an international student who came to �ֲ���ý to study and play soccer spurred him to start his business, a “vehicle to provide access to the only further-education system in the world that allows students to effectively combine high level academia and high level athletics.” Along the way, his clients have secured over $8 million in scholarships. 

Iwowo pitched his business last year, coming up empty. Returning this year shows his “hustle is real,” says Sprague, who, along with other judges have kept in touch with Iwowo and kept the encouragement flowing. “His determination and focus is really admirable. There are new, talented students at U.S. institutions because of what Jacob’s doing. That’s really cool.”

Segal is trying to break the top-hat-and-tails male stereotype of professional magic. 

“Magic is a boys only club, deeply rooted in sexism that I’ve experienced firsthand,” Segal said. “Magic is joyful. It’s inspiring, it’s interactive, it’s intimate and it’s memorable. And I want to be part of the solution to making magic more mainstream, young and inclusive. So let’s make some magic.”

During her pitch, Segal performed two sleight-of-hand tricks in front of the room, and completely captivated the judges. They could “feel it in her bones how much she felt that this business needed to happen and she was the person to make it happen,” said Schippers. “I can’t wait to see how she dominates.”

Segal has been running her magic business since she was a pre-teen, doing shows across New England at schools, special occasions, fundraisers, and magic venues. In February 2021, she appeared on the magic show Penn and Teller: Fool Us, where she demonstrated a nifty trick with an Etch A Sketch.

She will use her funding to stage a magic show in Chicago, which she says will be the city’s first one-woman, closeup-style magic act. That’s just the beginning: she wants to inspire and encourage more women to join the magic scene.

Winning $1,500 second-place prizes were Grace Biddle ’23 of State College, Pa., pitching NESCA$H, a prepaid card system for dining at local eateries in the NESCAC area, and Richie Nuzum ’23 of White Plains, N.Y., and Gus McAllister ’23 of San Francisco, with their Tinder-style restaurant decision app, Crave Swipe.

Inspired by Penn State University’s “LionCash” card system, Biddle wants to encourage students at NESCAC schools to dine locally, by turning school ID cards into credit cards usable at partnering dining businesses, and connected to an online cash account.

Nuzum and McAllister’s Crave Swipe is an algorithm-based app, relying on user input to figure out food preferences. They say it fills a gap in the restaurant decision app market, where most apps spit out randomized choices based on location, and can’t learn a user’s tastes.

Bobcat Ventures, a startup of its own back in 2015, has proven to be sustainable, and that’s impressive, said Sprague.

“One of the most gratifying parts of this program is how all of us, �ֲ���ý students, staff, and alumni, are carrying it forward together,” said Sprague. “Ultimately, it’s all about the people. Our investment and enthusiasm are in large part about the students behind the businesses, and all that we can see they are capable of in the future.”

Dollar for dollar, the best pitch at this year’s Bobcat Ventures competition was a startup that seeks to take cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin mainstream.

Described as a “next-gen payroll provider” by Justin Soh ’22 of Singapore and partner Shaun Wong, their startup, Stable, aims to solve a major obstacle preventing the widespread adoption of decentralized cryptocurrencies: how to convert them to a centralized currency, like the U.S. dollar, for practical purposes, such as a business needing to pay its employees.

Soh and Wong’s successful pitch took home the $10,000 first prize.

More than strictly a pitch competition, the student-run Bobcat Ventures program works in partnership with the college’s Center for Purposeful Work to provide year-round, wall-to-wall support for student entrepreneurs. A loyal group of alumni serve as mentors and competition judges. This year’s panel comprised Ben Schippers ’04, Chris Barbin ’93, and Emma Sprague ’10. 

Soh and Wong “had an incredibly clear value proposition,” said Schippers.

The competition, which featured six pitches, was a step up from 2021, when the entire thing was held online. This year, the competition was a hybrid effort, with the judges and some of the students on Zoom and the rest in Pettengill. Even with this hybrid model, the teams effectively connected with the judges, said Emma Sprague ’10. “Across the board, we were just so impressed, excited and energized” by the student pitches.

Soh and Wong “had an incredibly clear value proposition,” said Schippers. “As we look into this year and next year, it’s really dialed-in, and as a result of that, we feel that the success of the product is going to have a lot of momentum.”

Soh and Wong met in middle school, and have been friends ever since. A shared interest in digital currency and non-fungible tokens — NFTs — became Stable, an idea to solve the banking problem in cryptocurrency. The duo say that Stable will require no transfer or processing fees, making the platform compatible with . It will support over 300 decentralized digital currencies.

While Bitcoin and other digital currencies are nearly household names, their “mass adoption remains far in sight,” says Soh. But like any startup, the duo are looking to anticipate and stay ahead of the curve. “We as Gen Z will — and should — partake to engender a financially inclusive borderless world that accepts all forms of payment.”

The runner-up prize of $5,000 went to a pitch by Ben Aguilar ’22 of Belmont, Mass., and his partner, Bob Ranalli, a Tufts student, for an online platform aiming to do what an in-person campus tour or overnight visit does for a prospective college student: connect them with current college students. The site promises to do what a subreddit can’t: provide expert curation of expert insights.

The idea comes as many U.S. colleges, including �ֲ���ý, work to integrate relatively new online offerings forced by the pandemic, such as online tours and “ask me anything” Zoom sessions, with more traditional in-person approaches to recruitment, such as high school visits and college fairs.

“The college application process is pretty anxiety inducing — it’s just considered normal to be completely lost,” says Aguilar. “This has resulted in a lot of people making this major life decision on pretty superficial factors. I’ve even seen someone legitimately choose a school for their colors.”

Their website, Nescacguide.com — which is unaffiliated with the athletic conference — features a network of students who attend NESCAC schools and have volunteered to answer questions from curious prospective applicants, as well as an advisory board that has helped guide the venture. 

“I think what we were most impressed with was the ability to tell a great, compelling story and lay out not only a problem, but also a solution,” says Chris Barbin ’93. “And having it already active, and solving a real-word problem.”

Ninety years after Bing Crosby sang, “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” Biruk Chafamo ’22 has an affirmative answer thanks to a web application that brings an ancient lending tradition into the 21st century.

In May, Chafamo and his app won the $10,000 top prize in the annual pitch competition sponsored by Bobcat Ventures, a student-run entrepreneur group supported by the �ֲ���ý Center for Purposeful Work.

The , and it facilitates small loans to people who are not well-served by traditional banks. What’s distinctive about Equb is the source of the loans — from one’s own circle of friends, family, and community — and how Chafamo employs web technology to efficiently gather the funders and their money.

The idea of a friend group making loans to its members is not new. Known as a “rotating savings and credit association,” or RSCA, the concept is found in many countries, including Chafamo’s Ethiopia, where it’s known as ekub.

“Almost everyone, including my parents, use ekub to provide liquidity for one another and overcome their poverty,” Chafamo explained to the judges. “Ethiopian immigrants and also other immigrants here still use ekub as their primary form of finance.”

Chafamo explained to the judges how it works. 

“Imagine you’re trying to borrow money from a bank to buy an oven, but the bank looks at your very poor credit score and they slap you with a 20 percent interest rate. Then you remember that a lot of your friends have money sitting in their savings account, collecting less than 0.5 percent interest rate.”

Instead of taking the bank’s usurious rate, “why not form a group with your friends and take turns, borrowing and lending money to each other?” Besides helping out a friend, the entire group gets way better rates, both loan and investment, than a bank would offer, he said.

Evaluating the eight pitches this year were alumni judges Emma Sprague ’10, co-founder of leadership development group Upswing Strategies; Chris Barbin ’93, founder and CEO of Tercera.io, an investment and advisory firm focused on the third wave of cloud computing; and Ben Schippers ’04, cofounder of the web and mobile app developer HappyFunCorp.

Sprague asked Chafamo why, if the lending-circle tradition has been around so long, hasn’t it been made into a mobile or web app before. “Or has it?” 

Yes, it has, said Chafamo, naming LendingClub as a U.S. competitor in the space. But while LendingClub describes itself as a peer-to-peer business, “it’s really not,” he says. “They provide loans to users sourced from individual investors. My approach is to use the social connections that people already have to allow them to form their own lending groups.”

Barbin, who with Sprague serves on the �ֲ���ý Board of Trustees, praised the vivid sense of purpose behind Chafamo’s app. In a crowded entrepreneurial landscape, people are drawn to mission-driven businesses that have a clear purpose. 

“The purpose and mission come from your roots and your story. I love that,” he said. “With purpose- and mission-driven businesses right now, that’s what potential employees will be drawn to when you do start to recruit and scale. That’s very powerful.”

This year’s student entrepreneurs rose to the challenges of developing pitches during a pandemic year and effectively presenting them on Zoom, said Barbin. “I think we could have easily expected a little bit of a watering down because of the virtual environment. But things just got even better.”

“A huge shoutout to everyone,” added Schippers. “We saw a lot of work. A lot of practice. Our job was tough.”

Other pitches included a financial consulting firm supporting entrepreneurs of the African diaspora, an app that helps college students organize pickup games and schedule athletic field space, and a media company focused on the outdoor experience through the lens of social justice and the environment.

Presented via Zoom video conference on May 1, the event was seen by friends and family worldwide. 

The judges also awarded two runner-up prizes of $2,500 each.

Nicole Kumbula ’21, now a newly minted �ֲ���ý graduate with a major in chemistry, received a runner-up prize for her social-business pitch, Ukama Igasva, focusing on food security and community morale in her grandmother’s home village in Zimbabwe. 

The name comes from the Shona-language phrase “Ukama Igasva unozadziswa nekudya,” meaning “Relationships are not complete until they are solidified with a meal.”

With her funding, Kumbula hopes to bolster and sustain the ownership of cattle in her grandmother’s village, where cattle are valuable not just for household farming and transportation, but in community social rites such as marriage. Her own high school tuition, in fact, was funded by her grandmother’s sale of cattle.

“We know you could put the money to work immediately and, from a cause standpoint, you would and the community would see a massive impact,” said Schippers. “You can help unlock the future of your community.”

Armaan Mecca ’21, a physics major from Chennai, India, pitched Passionfruit, an app that addresses the problem facing up-and-coming musicians: how to monetize their music through streaming.

“Instead of an artist having to look for listeners, the listeners would come to the artist,” said Mecca. 

“The problem is especially compounded in India, where there’s only one path to success in the music industry, and that’s going through Bollywood,” says Mecca, who developed the app with cousins Hamza Mecca and Amr Mecca. “It’s more about who you know and how much money you can spend than how talented you are.”

, PassionFruit’s social platform focuses on music discovery. “Instead of an artist having to look for listeners,” and spending the little money they have on marketing, “the listeners would come to the artist,” said Mecca. 

Barbin said the app resonated with his own extensive experiences — 50-plus trips — in India. “I love what your solution can bring to the energy and passion for music and individualism in India.”

Bobcat Ventures promotes entrepreneurship with year-round workshops, alumni visits, and the signature annual pitch competition. Joining the judges on pitch day were club leaders Andres Carranza ’21, Kerry Manuel ’21, Pierson Rambusch ’22, J. Daniel Kim ’22, and Purposeful Work staffers Marianne Nolan Cowan ’92 and Peter Osborne.

In their closing remarks the judges made clear that Bobcat Ventures doesn’t begin and end on pitch day, and that �ֲ���ý entrepreneurs are there for each other.

“We will continue the conversation throughout the course of the summer and the fall,” said Schippers. “We will work with the winners and with anybody who wants to partake in continuing conversations about how they can pursue their ideas — you can have our continued support.”

For Julia Sleeper-Whiting ’08, co-founder and executive director of Tree Street Youth in Lewiston, one word to describe a great entrepreneur is “iterative.” For Google account manager Michelle Pham ’15, it would be “relentless.” For Mbali Ndlovu ’09, founder of activewear brand Lukafit, “persistent.”

Sleeper-Whiting, Pham, and Ndlovu joined an alumni panel discussion on entrepreneurship in Chase Hall on Nov. 4. Chris Barbin ’93, a �ֲ���ý trustee and founder of several companies, including IT consulting firm Appirio, moderated the discussion, which was hosted by the Center for Purposeful Work.

The Center for Purposeful Work hosted a panel on entrepreneurship on Nov. 4. From left: Moderated by trustee and entrepreneur Chris Barbin ’93, panelists Mbali Ndlovu ’09, Michelle Pham ’15, and Julia Sleeper-Whiting ’08 spoke about their experiences and offered advice to students. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

The panel marked the launch of this year’s Bobcat Ventures competition. Over the next several months, the student club will organize a series of workshops on how to design, run, and raise money for a new business, followed by a pitch competition for thousands of dollars in funding.

From their stories of founding their own businesses and working with other founders, Sleeper-Whiting, Pham, and Ndlovu offered plenty of advice and insights for budding �ֲ���ý entrepreneurs. Here’s what we learned.

Find a need

Sleeper-Whiting never expected to start a business. She came to �ֲ���ý wanting to be a veterinarian, but what she called an “epic fail” in a chemistry course left her searching for other paths.

Her sister, Anna Sleeper Cressey ’05, suggested she take an education course. For the accompanying placement in a school, Sleeper-Whiting helped out in an English language learning classroom at Lewiston Middle School.

Lewiston’s Tree Street Youth started because ”there’s kids who need support, and we’re able to do it,” said Julia Sleeper-Whiting ’08. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

After that, “�ֲ���ý was my extracurricular,” Sleeper-Whiting joked. “I was off campus way more than I was on campus.”

She continued to tutor students, recruiting her friends to help. She started a homework help program at a local church, and when participants exceeded capacity, she and Kim Sullivan ’13, who volunteered for the program, founded the full-fledged Tree Street Youth Center, which serves primarily immigrant and refugee families in downtown Lewiston’s so-called Tree Streets neighborhood, named for streets like Oak, Walnut, and Birch.

“We didn’t come into it thinking we were going to start a business or that we needed to think of budgets,” Sleeper-Whiting said. “It was just, there’s kids who need support, and we’re able to do it. What’s so complicated about it?”

“I’m always trying to learn how I can improve, with ideas directly from the customers,” said Mbali Ndlovu ’09, founder of activewear brand Lukafit. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Create a community

Ndlovu, who majored in African American studies at �ֲ���ý, always knew she wanted to start a business. But a business doing what, she didn’t know. So after graduation she took jobs at media companies, including Firelight Media, working to increase the representation of people of color in film.

Like many young professionals, Ndlovu tried but failed to establish an exercise routine. That changed when she found people to work out with.

“I started a meetup group for women of color in New York who were also looking for workout buddies,” Ndlovu said. “That grew to almost a thousand women who were looking for the same things I was. Through conversations with all those women, I got inspired to start my company.”

The result is Lukafit, which sells workout gear like leggings and bike shorts designed for women of color.

Be comfortable with ambiguity

As a �ֲ���ý student, Pham was a sociology major and founding leader of the Bobcat Ventures competition. Now she invests in and consults for the companies of friends, and in her role at Google she’s worked with company founders in fields ranging from healthcare to online mattress sales to develop advertising plans on the search engine.

An entrepreneur — or any young professional — should be comfortable with ambiguity, said Google account manager Michelle Pham ’15. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Ambiguity is a fact of life for entrepreneurs and many young professionals, Pham said. Departments at Google are frequently reshuffled, merged, or split.

“You can never get too comfortable, because the next day you might be working under a new director or under a new business unit with new goals completely,” she said.

Let the customers guide you

“I’m always trying to learn how I can improve, with ideas directly from the customers,” Ndlovu said.

Talking to customers is what an entrepreneur should do before anything else, she added, referring to Giff Constable’s book Talking to Humans, a guide for conducting customer development interviews.

How many customers? Thirty. “Not five, not 10 — 30,” she said. “Meet them in person or over the phone, and ask questions.”

Though she runs a very different organization, Sleeper-Whiting’s clients — the children and families of Tree Street Youth — are at the center of her model. “Nothing beats directly talking to your clients, talking directly to the people most impacted,” she said.

Since Sleeper-Whiting is not from the Tree Streets neighborhood, she developed a vision for the youth center by listening to children and their families. “Tree Street became an incubator for the kids’ ideas. You could have a really bold youth emerge who says, ‘I want to do X, Y, and Z.’ You’re like, ‘Okay, what can we do with that?’’’

For the panelists, the process of running a business and the relationships you build along the way are as important as the end goal. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Get support

Since founding Lukafit, Ndlovu has joined a community of “peer mentors,” fellow entrepreneurs who talk regularly to share ideas, resources, and emotional support.

“Entrepreneurship is very hard emotionally, financially, and socially,” she said. “You don’t hang out with your friends and family as much, so it can be very taxing on you, and it’s very important to have support. My peer mentors have been that support for me.”

Network, network, network

At �ֲ���ý, Pham said, it’s easy to take for granted the number of “interesting people” who visit campus. But after college, “nobody’s going to curate those events for you anymore.”

So, working at Google in California and then in New York City, Pham has made an effort to go to talks on her own, often sitting in small audiences to hear business giants like Charles R. Schwab speak. In turn, she invites people with interesting ideas to give talks to Google employees.

“You need to keep that curiosity going,” she said.

Chris Barbin ’93, whose startup Appirio sold for $500 million in 2016, recommended being comfortable with rejection and making sure employees are happy — and always making sure an investment is worth it. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Get a return

Chris Barbin has founded four companies so far; his first, IT firm Appirio, sold for $500 million in 2016, after being fueled by several rounds of investor funding.

If an entrepreneur is lucky enough that an investor takes interest — investors and venture capitalists passed on Appirio 21 times, Barbin said — the founder should then move heaven and earth to make the investment worth it.

“I will never not get a return for my investors,” Barbin said. “It is very important to me that if I take their money, they will get a better return than putting money in a safe.”

Don’t fail. Evolve

What happens when you fail? Barbin asked the panelists.

“I don’t fail,” Sleeper-Whiting replied, to audience laughter. She wasn’t joking. “If something’s not working, then you change it. Then you don’t fail, because you’re constantly evolving.”

“The greatest failure that some people have is that when they recognize that something’s not working, they’re too afraid to say that and pivot,” she added.

That pivot isn’t always easy. Sleeper-Whiting recalled Tree Street Youth’s recent move to a new building. Though the new space is nicer, “we lost a lot in moving away from our old building because there’s a lot of history and dynamic to that,” she said.

“We had to intentionally create space to grieve that loss in order to be able to embrace what we can do with this new building.”

Students attending the Nov. 4 entrepreneurship panel discussion in Chase Hall Lounge asked about the panelists’ challenges and rewards, the importance of building relationships, and how to balance raising money from investors and making a profit on the product itself. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Focus on process

One student in the audience asked whether the panelists preferred to focus on the process of running a business or the organization’s end goal.

“You have to work toward something,” Sleeper-Whiting acknowledged, “but I would say it’s process, not perfection. If you’re trying to get it right, at least in my field, you’ll die trying, because you’ll not get there. You’re working with lives, and it’s messy.”

Sleeper-Whiting said she sometimes craves a clear ending. She’ll go on construction jobs with her husband to help him paint, because the job has an end point. She’ll work on financial paperwork for Tree Street Youth “because it gets finished.”

But even when a goal is clear — like Tree Street Youth’s recently completed $2.4 million capital campaign — attention to the means is essential. “We constantly had to iterate to reach that goal,” she said.

Build relationships

Creating relationships is part of reaching any goal, “and those relationships aren’t going to go away once you get to that end goal,” Pham said. “You still need to maintain them to get to the next new goal.”

Relationship-building once saved Ndlovu from a supply-chain disaster. She recently expanded the number of activewear designs Lukafit offered and took pre-orders, not realizing that the factory she used required a minimum order for each design that was higher than the number of items she’d actually sold.

“That was one of my biggest learning curves,” she said, “but because of the relationship I had built with a specific sales rep, she was able to negotiate down for me.”

The Nov. 4 panel discussion kicked off this year’s edition of Bobcat Ventures, a student-run series of workshops culminating in a pitch competition to fund student businesses. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Consider the community

Sleeper-Whiting encouraged budding entrepreneurs to think about more than just profit. “There are a lot of social ventures right now that are combining product creation with providing for a community need,” she said. “Those stand out in today’s society.”

Pham agreed. Social impact is what millennials “care about, more than other generations,” she said.

“How are those products being made? Is there a social component?”

Figuring out where to store your stuff — the futon, the mini-fridge — over the summer is a perennial problem for dorm-dwelling college students whose homes are far from campus. Many opt for self-storage units, a safe but expensive solution.

But �ֲ���ý senior George DeLana can now offer an alternative. Nook, his online marketplace where �ֲ���ý students can rent summer storage space from nearby Lewiston residents, won the $10,000 first prize in the March 16 Bobcat Ventures student pitch competition.

Bobcat Ventures winner George Delana ’19 receives a check from judges Emma Sprague ’10,
Ben Schippers ’04, and Chris Barbin ’93. (Sarah du Pont ’21 for �ֲ���ý College)

It’s an “Airbnb for storage,” DeLana says.

Emma Sprague ’10, one of three alumni who judged the competition, said Nook had the combination of the right idea and the right leader.

“George presented a calm confidence that was incredibly compelling,” said Sprague, a �ֲ���ý trustee and co-founder of leadership development group Upswing Strategies. “It was clear he’d poured energy and thoughtfulness into the business and the pitch, and would bring steadiness and determination to Nook’s execution.”

Bobcat Ventures is a student-run group, supported by the Center for Purposeful Work, that promotes entrepreneurship with year-round workshops, alumni visits, and the signature annual pitch competition.

Evaluating the eight pitches this year were alumni judges who themselves have plenty of entrepreneurial experience: Sprague was joined by fellow trustee Chris Barbin ’93, co-founder and CEO of IT firm Appirio, and Ben Schippers ’04, cofounder of web and mobile app developer HappyFun Corp.

“The biggest thing that has helped us grow is just, talk to as many people as you can, get as much advice as you can.”

The Nook concept, DeLana says, is simple: “Homeowners living in college towns, around universities, who have an empty space like a garage or an attic or a guest room, can list their space.”

A 10-by-10 unit at the U-Haul’s storage operation in Auburn runs at about $115 a month. A similarly sized space in someone’s garage through Nook would be about $50, DeLana says. Nook itself would take a commission from the hosts and charge a service fee to the renters.

While other startups around the country have begun to occupy a similar space as Nook, DeLana believes his team will be able to execute the idea better than others.

To gauge interest, DeLana, whose business partner is Rachael Rosow ’18, pitched the idea to his classmates, who seemed enthusiastic. He also knocked on doors on and around College Street and found several homeowners willing to sign up — so far, tentative commitments total 4,000 square feet of space, he says.

Then, to prepare for the big pitch, DeLana talked to people — and more people, and more people.

“The biggest thing that has helped us grow is just, talk to as many people as you can, get as much advice as you can,” he says. “Ask them, ‘What am I doing wrong?’”

Repeating and refining the pitch was a winning strategy at the Bobcat Ventures competition. Taking the $5,000 second prize were Shane Ward ’21 and Isabella David ’22, who presented an idea for a room-cleaning service.

The alumni judges based their evaluations on three criteria, said Sprague: the passion and polish of the presentation, and the potential of the project.

It should be clear throughout the pitch, said Barbin, that the entrepreneur is excited about the project.

“From my entrepreneurial experience, the path and the journey is a huge part of the fun,” Barbin said. “It’s not just selling off the company or getting the next big customer win, but enjoying the process of it all.”

DeLana, a mathematics major, plans to spend time after graduation focusing exclusively on Nook: He and Rosow want to launch it in Lewiston-Auburn this spring, in time to meet the demand for summer storage.

George Delana ’19 poses in a room at Nash House, a student residence on College Street, where his friends live with many of the kinds of possessions that require summer storage. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

They created a rudimentary website before the competition and will use the prize money to improve it. DeLana himself will be the company’s first quality control officer, evaluating potential storage spaces.

He and Rosow hope to expand to Boston, where just 1 percent of the city’s student population would represent 1,000 potential customers.

Making a successful pitch, he says, involves a lot of pitches that miss the mark.

“Writing a pitch, pitching it to as many people as you possibly can, asking everybody afterward what you did wrong, and being open to what they have to say,” he says. “That’s the biggest thing — pitching a hundred times and receiving criticism.”

What do potential investors want to know about a new business idea?

A few key things, said Chris Barbin ’93, a �ֲ���ý trustee and one of three judges for the annual Bobcat Ventures student pitch competition, held this year on March 24.

“Is it a product or a service? Is it sold to a consumer or to a business? Can you define the market? Then you get into the question I ask every person: How do you make money?”

“That should roll off the tongue in 90 seconds,” Barbin told the 14 student competitors.

In his own 90-second pitch, Ben Nussbaum ’19 of Ridgefield, Conn., hit all the marks. His business, Floor, provided a service: It made physical space available to online retailers who sell things people might want to try on before buying. The market would be small apparel and accessory brands in New England. He’d make money by renting out space in a storefront in Portland, Maine.

During the Bobcat Ventures pitch competition on March 24, Ben Nussbaum ’19 proposed renting out a storefront at 492 Congress St. in Portland, Maine, to small online retailers. (Courtesy of Ben Nussbaum)

“This serves as an easy expansion platform for these brands,” Nussbaum told the three alumni judges, all entrepreneurs: Barbin, CEO of IT firm Appirio Inc.; Jennifer Guckel Porter ’88, managing partner of The Boda Group; and Ben Schippers ’04, co-founder of web and mobile app developer HappyFun Corp.

The pitch won Nussbaum first prize in the competition, with an award of $9,000. Barbin praised Nussbaum’s concept, clarity of thought, and detailed business model.

“What I loved about this was the big problem and the creative way of addressing the problem,” Barbin said of Nussbaum’s proposal. “The pitch went from big concept to detailed financials.”

Bobcat Ventures winner Ben Nussbaum ’19 (second from left) poses with judges Jennifer Guckel Porter ’88, Ben Schippers ’04, and Chris Barbin ’93 following the pitch competition on March 24. (Durotimi Akinkugbe/�ֲ���ý College)

The competition is the centerpiece event for Bobcat Ventures, a student-run organization that promotes entrepreneurship. Now in its fourth year, a record 14 individuals or groups made pitches, vying for prize money totaling $15,000.

With the help of the Purposeful Work initiative, Bobcat Ventures also hosts workshops on business and entrepreneurship, run by people ranging from �ֲ���ý alumni to Senior Lecturer in Theater Kati Vecsey, who taught the competitors about presentation.

“You get the fundraising skills,” said Ned Moreland ’19, a leader of Bobcat Ventures along with El Khansaa Kaddioui ’20, Cris Thompson ’19, and Shanina van Gent ’18.

“You get the verbal communication skills. You get to look at business models a lot, you get to look at the ways startups work, and you also figure out what doesn’t work.”

The skill-building and networking have been helpful for Nussbaum, who’s been going to Bobcat Ventures events since his first year and has participated in the pitch competition twice — last year, he took home third place for an app for used-car e-commerce.

He said that since he started developing business ideas, competing through Bobcat Ventures, and talking to other entrepreneurs in Maine, he’s learned that ideas need to be feasible and focused (he got the idea for Floor after reading research about online retail trends), and that talking to potential customers is crucial.

“With any idea, you think it’s whittled down perfectly,” he said. “But the second you start talking with the people actually paying for your product, it changes. You tweak it with their feedback.” Floor, he said, “morphed right when I started talking to brands, and I added things and took a lot of things away.”  

His shoe-leather work showed during the pitch competition. Nussbaum had ready answers to the judges’ questions about pricing, overhead costs, and the types of retailers he was targeting — mostly accessories, some apparel, all New England-based, with less than $1 million in revenue.

Ben Nussbaum ’19 told the pitch competition judges that in his Portland, Maine, store, online retailers could rent out booth-like spaces of various sizes. (Courtesy of Ben Nussbaum)

“You narrowed down the scope to get to a viable business, and you had a working prototype going with a physical store in Portland,” Barbin told him. “The complexity and problem statement was big, and you brought it down to something real.”

Nussbaum shared the total prize money with two other ventures. Swing Tips Pro, created by Nick Lynch ’19 of Westford, Mass., facilitates golf lessons via video; it won the $4,000 second prize. ReHarvest, a group of students who are creating an app that helps “gleaners” access farm crops that are left unharvested and get them to local food banks, won the $2,000 third prize.

Clarity, focus, and viability distinguished all the good pitches, Barbin said. But the very best ventures he saw were those that seemed to give the venturers purpose.

“Anyone can pitch a business,” he said. “You can tell after time if there’s real passion through the Q&A, when you’re asking the ‘why’ question. There were a few where you could tell it was meaningful. There was a reason why. It was in the blood, in the DNA.”  

Senior Ali Rabideau’s winning idea in the 2017 Bobcat Ventures pitch competition — worth a tidy $9,000 — grew from a summer job: helping a Lewiston nonprofit make some money growing and selling products made from medicinal herbs and flowers.

Rabideau, a talented organizer and gardener, worked at the Center for Wisdom’s Women, which provides safe haven and support for at-risk women experiencing homelessness, incarceration, abuse, or addiction.

Bobcat Ventures judge Chris Barbin ’93 presents first-place winner Ali Rabideau ’17 with a check for $9,000 to support Herban Works. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

“The women can tell you first hand the power of the plants and the products we have to heal the body and spirit,” Rabideau told the judges during her pitch. “Last summer, we sold $350 of our first three products” — calendula salve, calendula tea, and salted herbs. “We only had to stop because we ran out of plants.”

The business is called Herban Works, and “we have outgrown the garage, so to speak,” said Rabideau, a women and gender studies major from Natick, Mass., as she pitched the business.

She ended her presentation with a personal touch, handing the judges a sample of the salve. “Open it and smell it. It’s really nice,” she said.

President Clayton Spencer leads a pre-event discussion with the judges. From left, Ben Schippers ’04, Chris Barbin ’93, Tasnia Huque ’12, and Reid Christian ’12. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Now in its third year, the $15,000 Bobcat Ventures pitch competition is student-run and alumni-judged, with prizes funded by �ֲ���ý alumni and parents. Held on April 1, the day-long event began with President Clayton Spencer hosting a panel discussion with alumni judges, each of whom is in business: Chris Barbin ’93, Ben Schippers ’04, Tasnia Huque ’12, and Reid Christian ’12.

From there, a dozen students made presentations in areas like real estate, music recording, hair care, ride sharing, community-based NGOs, and fine art sales.

“Great job,” said judge Chris Barbin ’93 after Rabideau’s winning pitch. “I love the idea that you’re already to market on it.”

Barbin asked Rabideau, whose work at the CWW was funded by the college’s Harward Summer Civic Fellowship program, about the market penetration she hoped to achieve.  “We hope statewide and nationwide,” she answered, pointing to a similar but national operation, Thistle Farms in Nashville, Tenn., that has “been advising and supporting us.”

Phathutshedzo Rambau ’17 of Morebeng, South Africa, serves as MC for the Bobcat Ventures competition. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Fellow judge Ben Schippers ’04 praised Rabideau for how she “carried the brand” of the CWW throughout her presentation. “That goes a long way,” he said, noting that “the branded product is very strong, as well.”

“Love the mission,” said judge Tasnia Huque ’12, adding that Rabideau social-enterprise angle “is kind of buzzy right now, but it’s on trend, especially the focus on the wellness-in-women space.”

After Rabideau was equivocal when asked, by Schippers, if she would stay in Lewiston after graduation to grow the business, Huque advised her to be more certain when pitching. “Just say, ‘Yes.’ You want to project that this is your passion.”

Besides the thrill of seeing that big check come her way during the awards presentation, Rabideau is surprised to see herself in a new way.

“I never envisioned myself as an entrepreneur,” she said, thanking the college and the Bobcat Ventures team for helping to express a broad definition of entrepreneurship. “They actually came to me and said, ‘This is a social enterprise. This could work. Why don’t you apply?’”

Rabideau said that the knitting together of two strong strands of the �ֲ���ý experience — entrepreneurism and social awareness — “was my favorite part of the experience: Having the kind of work you value brought to life by an entrepreneurship competition.”

Judges Barbin, Huque, Schippers, and Christian listen to a pitch. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Bobcat Ventures awarded cash prizes to three other ideas from the dozen pitches.

Collecting the $4,000 second prize was Julien Lewin ’20 of Seattle, Wash., who pitched an idea for a laptop paper holder that makes it “easy to transcribe and read documents.” It’s superior to competitors, Lewin told the judges, because it holds documents above a laptop, rather than to the side.

The judges awarded two third prizes of $1,000 each. One went to Alexandria Onuoha ’20 of Malden, Mass., and her idea for Manetain Hair Care to fill consumer demand for natural and organic hair products. “Salons do not cater to natural hair care,” she told the judges.

Ben Nussbaum ‘19 of Ridgefield, Conn., pitched an automotive ecommerce idea. Unlike other online car-buying sites, such as Cars.com, Nussbaum said that Autolink would “digitalize the local buyer-seller interaction” — specifically the inspection of a used car, a tricky part of any long-distance car purchase — to create “true used-car ecommerce.”

“I thought all the presentations and pitches were great,” Barbin said. “I loved the diversity: tech, consumer, non-profit. Just really cool ideas.”

The judging panel comprised Barbin, a �ֲ���ý trustee who is CEO of Appirio, an IT firm based in Indianapolis, Ind.; Schippers, co-founder of HappyFun Corp., a web and mobile app developer based in Brooklyn; and Huque and Reid Christian ’12, associates with Cue Ball Capital and Battery Ventures, respectively.

Alexandria Onuoha ’20 of Malden, Mass., presents her pitch for a line of natural and organic hair care products. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

In closing, Schippers spoke of the nature of entrepreneurial competition.

“Unfortunately, there are a lot of ‘no’s,’” he said. “It comes with the territory. This doesn’t mean you’re not doing a good job, or your idea isn’t great, or it’s a failure. It’s part of the entrepreneurial spirit that you just need to keep going.”

Also speaking to the group was one of the founders of Bobcat Ventures in 2015, Matt Perejda ’14. “We had a ton of support from �ֲ���ý alumni to get this going,” he said, including trustee emeritus Bruce Stangle ’70.

Keeping Bobcat Ventures strong, Perejda said, reflects support “from the school, the students, the judges — everyone who puts in the work and gives their time. Life is busy, yet everyone in this room makes it happen.”

The growth of Bobcat Ventures, he said, “has been a wild run. We’ve come so far, and I’m super-excited to see where it can go.”

The student leaders of Bobcat Ventures are Creighton Foulkes ’17 of Belmont, Mass.; El Khansaa Kaddioui ’20 of Elhajeb, Morocco; Edward Moreland ’19 of Monkton, Md.; John Mulach ’17 of Rocky River, Ohio; Phathutshedzo Rambau ’17 of Morebeng, South Africa; and Cristopher Thompson ’19 of Macon, Ga.

Additional reporting by Sarah Rothmann ’19.

Michael Rocque

Continuing a year of forceful �ֲ���ý commentary on issues of race and mass incarceration, Assistant Professor of Sociology Michael Rocque’s op-ed column in the Bangor Daily News criticizes U.S. public schools for taking the kind of “” that the American criminal justice system has since the 1970s.

“Similar to the criminal justice system, stark disparities, particularly with respect to race, exist in school discipline,” Rocque writes.

At Bangor High School, for example, blacks represent 2.5 percent of the student body, yet “…are black students,” Rocque writes.

Do black students really misbehave more than their fellow students? Current research “tends to suggest not,” he writes.

At Bangor High School, black students represent 2.5 percent of the student body but account for 12 percent of out-of-school suspensions, according to the U.S. Department of Education’s Civil Rights Data Collection.

Rather, the numbers suggest that Bangor, like other U.S. education systems, has made a troubling “turn toward mass punishment,” where there’s “less [concern] with individual treatment,” he writes, and more focus on “rhetoric and strategies like ‘three strikes and you’re out’ and ‘zero-tolerance.'”

Those approaches “look good on paper but have failed in application.”

More important, he concludes, “we need to have a broader conversation about why our society in general has turned to exclusionary methods of control instead of more inclusive, reintegrative approaches.”

�ֲ���ý Admission

(paywall)

TIME magazine reporter Eliza Gray quotes Dean of Admission and Financial Aid Leigh Weisenberger and �ֲ���ý President Clayton Spencer in a story about “a major shift in the hypercompetitive, overstressed ,” namely, allowing students to share their creative voices in the medium of choice, which usually is digital.

Dean of Admission and Financial Aid Leigh Weisenburger.

�ֲ���ý and nearly 100 peer schools, including the Ivy League, have formed the Coalition for Access, Affordability and Success, whose aim, Gray writes, “is to increase economic and racial diversity on campus, and to make the application process more relevant and less frenzied.”

“For us, it is about keeping up with the student population and the way they live their lives.”

For one, the coalition will launch a “proprietary application process that will encourage earlier preparation and creative materials,” like personal videos and digital portfolios. (�ֲ���ý will introduce the optional process in 2017).

Weisenburger tells Gray that “for us, it is about keeping up with the student population and the way they live their lives….They do it in technology.”

The coalition also plans to launch free online tools “designed to help lower-income students plan for college earlier and narrow the gap with their more privileged peers.”

Spencer speaks to concerns that any change in the admission process will be leveraged by the wealthy applicants. “What you don’t want is highly produced TED talks from privileged kids,” says Spencer. “All of these things are potential expanders of access, and all of them have to be regarded critically.”

�ֲ���ý has a long history of trying to maintain a level playing field in admission.

In 1990, the college dropped standardized test requirements because it believed, and later was able to prove, that standardized tests are less effective predictors of college success than an applicant’s high school transcript and, worse, tend to narrow student access to higher education.

Ruth Goss Leavitt ’41

Ruth Goss Leavitt ’41, age 97, is the new holder of the Boston Post Cane in Turner, Maine.

If you’re a New Englander of a certain age, you know exactly what that means. If not, here’s the quick explanation.

The entry for Ruth Goss Leavitt ’41 in the 1941 Mirror yearbook. (Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library)

In 1909, the Boston Post newspaper gave handsome, inscribed canes to a few hundred New England towns, asking each town leader to give the cane to the town’s oldest man. Thus a tradition was born (women were included in 1930), as the towns ceremoniously presented their cane to each successive senior-most citizen.

The Sun Journal asked Leavitt if there is a secret to her longevity. “Not really. I’ve just taken life as it comes.”

�ֲ���ý Mail

Last week’s Boston Globe‘s story about the featured alumni from the 1970s to the 1990s talking about the glory days of �ֲ���ý mailboxes and mail from home.

Reporter Laura Krantz tells about the Chase Hall mailbox belonging to Steven Girvin ’71, today the Eugene Higgins Professor of Physics and Applied Physics at Yale.

Then, writes Krantz, “he said yes to a blind date in 1969 with a girl from Lewiston. After that date (and a few more), the box began to fill with love letters from the woman who became his wife.”

The �ֲ���ý package center “hums with eager expectation.”

Today, the emotion, angst, and excitement of mail call happens at the college’s package center in Chase Hall, a space once home to Dining Services’ recycling operation.

The postman rings rarely for the mailboxes in Chase Hall. Instead, the excitement is in the package center. (Sarah Crosby/�ֲ���ý College)

The center “hums with eager expectation,” writes Krantz, “as students queue — sometimes 40 at once — to retrieve care packages from home, Amazon deliveries, and other boxes.”

This fall, �ֲ���ý will open a new Post and Print Center, including a package center, in one of the new residence halls on Campus Avenue. (To the curious: No decision has been made about the fate of the old mailboxes.) While the new center will be sans mailboxes, the space where students receive packages will be welcoming and well-appointed.

Bobcat Ventures

“I think there’s a perception liberal arts students can’t be entrepreneurs,” Creighton Foulkes ’17 tells Kathryn Skelton of the Lewiston Sun Journal. “We want to spread the message that it is possible and it can be done and help give them the tools to do it.”

As judge Ross Brockman ’11 listens, Julia Grace ’17 of Chevy Chase, Md., and Sean Antonuccio ’17 of Las Vegas pitch HouseCat, a platform to connect NESCAC students looking for summer housing. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Foulkes, a leader of Bobcat Ventures, spoke to Skelton during the club’s $11,000 pitch competition on April 2.

Nima Olumi ’17 of Newton, Mass., won first place of $7,500 with his startup Lightyear Strategies, a marketing and branding company.

Second prize ($2,500) went to an idea for a campus smoothie cart, and third ($1,000) to a drone-based image production firm.

Funded by alumni and parent gifts, the competition was judged by:

• entrepreneur Daniel Vannoni ’05, founder of Housequarters and co-founder of other data-centric and healthcare start-ups in the Boston area;
• Ross Brockman ’11, co-founder of Downeast Cider House;
• Jack Keigwin ’59, a �ֲ���ý trustee emeritus who built family-owned FH French Co. into a major commercial real estate firm in Rhode Island and became a entrepreneurship professor at Bryant College.

Matt Perejda ’14, keynote speaker at the Bobcat Ventures pitch competition on April 4, 2015, is shown in 2014 with Analysis Group co-founder Bruce Stangle ’70. Stangle visited campus for the Voices in Entrepreneurship program. (Sarah Crosby/�ֲ���ý College)

“If you’ve been interested in hearing how entrepreneurs grab attention and funding for their start-up, for a prototype for a product or the development of an app, this is a must-see competition,” says Mike Mulach ’17, an organizer of the April 4 business pitch throw-down at �ֲ���ý.

Bobcat Ventures, a student organization dedicated to entrepreneurship, is sponsoring the competition for prizes of $5,000 or more starting at noon Saturday in the Edmund S. Muskie Archives, 70 Campus Ave. Please RSVP at this link:

Featuring 11 student teams who will make brief entrepreneurial pitches to a panel of alumni judges, the event begins with a keynote address by entrepreneur Matt Perejda ’14. The competition winner will be announced around 3 p.m.

Each team comprises up to four members, and each pitch will last 10 minutes or less, explains Mulach, a member of Bobcat Ventures from Rocky River, Ohio.

“The pace will be lively, the ideas will be fascinating and there’s serious cash at stake,” he says, likening the event to ABC-TV’s “Shark Tank.”

As a student, Perejda, the event’s keynote speaker, launched Bobcat Den Delivery, a successful college-based startup that sells and delivers late-evening snacks and meals from the college’s Dining Services operation to �ֲ���ý students on campus.

Here are the alumni judges:

•    Ross Brockman ’11, co-founder of the craft cider brewery Downeast Ciderhouse, who was named one of “30 Under 30” by Forbes magazine;

•    Patrick Jackson ’11, co-founder of SunRaise Investments, a Portland, Maine-based firm that provides solar-generated electricity to help nonprofit groups achieve financial savings and environmental leadership;

•    Victor Otley III ’83, a managing partner at The Gores Group, a private equity firm with approximately $3.5 billion in assets.

The competition’s case prizes are underwritten by sponsors including Bruce Stangle ’70, chair and co-founder of the Boston-based consulting firm Analysis Group Inc. and a longtime supporter and mentor of students interested in entrepreneurship.

Other members of Bobcat Ventures are Michelle Pham ’15 of Vancouver, British Columbia; Rokya Samake ’15 of New York City; Creighton Foulkes ’17 of Belmont, Mass.; Phathutshedzo Rambau ’17 of Morebeng, South Africa; and Shanina van Gent ’18 of Maassluis, Netherlands.