2014: Fourth Year
Six teams made presentations at the Tang Museum, vying for $40,000 in cash prizes. The winners were:
- First Place: Leaf Pile Media. Three English majors with a passion for story telling
-- Walter Barber 13, Ian VanNest ’13, and Andrew Zimmerman ‘13 – were awarded $20,000
for their plan to produce original stories on a variety of platforms ranging from
games and action figures to television shows and films. They raised more than $22,000
in a recent Kickstarter campaign to fund production of Champions of Hara, a new board
game they developed with input from friends during three years in Skidmore residence
halls.
- Second Place: Rum Dogs, Inc. Alexander Nassief '16 and Zach Rohde '14 were awarded
$10,000 to develop their Dominica-based luxury rum brand using a proprietary method
for aging rum in barrels submerged in the Caribbean Sea.
- Third Place: East Coast Lacrosse. Seth Berger ’14 was awarded $5,000 to develop his sports apparel business into a national brand. Berger continues to achieve double-digit growth. Exhibiting at the 2014 World Lacrosse Championship, Berger established contacts from all over the U.S. and around the world.
Awards of $1,000 were made to the other three finalists:
- Stella Langat '16, who proposed to develop Double Dee's LLC as Kenya’s first indigenous
undergarment production company;
- Adam Beek '15, who presented a plan to develop Munchi Heaven Agri as an organic farming
enterprise in Jamaica;
- Ezra Levy '15 and Marcella Jewell '15, who launched a Web-based enterprise, Open Campus,that matches college students with businesses offering real-world projects.
Judges in the competition included Ken Freirich plus:
- Nancy Cohen Wekselbaum '73, owner, The Gracious Gourmet;
- Jody Klein '85, chief executive officer, ABKCO Music & Records, Inc.;
- Susan Magrino Dunning '83, president, Susan Magrino Agency;
- Nick MacShane ’91, senior managing director, Progress Partners;
- Ellen Sherman ’68, producer, Dateline NBC.
- Nicholas Platt ’76, entrepreneur, finance and corporate executive, and mayor of Harding Township, N.J.