A winner is tough to call in business plan competition

Two Skidmore College students who have created a location-based pick-up sports network are the winners of the Kenneth A. Freirich Business Plan Competition .

Among seven finalists who made presentations Thursday evening in Davis Auditorium, Trevor Mengel '11 and Samuel Brown '12 will receive a $5000 cash award plus $8500 worth of marketing, accounting and legal services geared toward helping them develop Slingshot, a website interface and smartphone application that enables users to quickly join or organize pick-up games of any sort -- basketball, ultimate Frisbee, etc.

Sarah Belser-Ehrlich '11 was awarded a $2500 second prize for the plan she presented to expand an already thriving Plattsburgh-based cupcake enterprise named Just Call Me Cupcake. She also will receive 10 hours of market research services valued at $1500. (See video.) 

Maddie Sullivan '11 was awarded a $1500 third prize for her plan to expand Collegiate Records, a student-run university-wide record label and artist management company that is already booking concerts and helping to develop the careers of ten student groups.

Ken Freirich '90, who announced the competition in January, congratulated all of the students on the extent to which they had "stepped up their game" since the first round of the competition April 1.

"When you challenge yourself beyond your confidence level, that's when you really grow and learn," he said. "When you start to succeed and hit one home run, that's when you see that the possibilities are endless."

"In this whole process, I'm sure that all of you have learned a great deal more about who you are and that for many of you this has been a life-changing professional experience," said Paty Rubio, acting dean of the faculty.

An audience of about 100 was both impressed and entertained by the presentations, in which the student entrepreneurs were asked to deliver five-minute summations of their plans and then respond to probing questions from seven judges. All were remarkable in their own way, and one wished the judges had four additional prizes that they might have awarded as follows:

• Most Socially Important Plan. Having already established Quinghai Travel Social Service Center as a for-profit social business that provides itinerant minorities in Xining City in China's Quinghai Province such essential services as translation, storage and disease prevention, Spencer Xianjian Dangzhi detailed a plan to expand the center's ability to offer low-cost accommodations.
  
  
• Most Eco-Friendly Plan. Todd Powell '12 and Mike Cohen '11 proposed to build a business called FridgeCycle Exchange focused on the buying and reselling the compact refrigerators that college students purchase in vast numbers at the beginning of their college careers and then feel stuck with.
  
  
• Most Offbeat Idea That Might Make It Big.Three first-year students -- Malcolm Perry, Zack Rohde and Thomas Sellers ? have created MyBad Industries with the singular goal of offering people a creative way to "deliver apologies with an attitude." The core of their product line: a T-shirt that reads "MyBad" on the front and "I'm a work in progress" on the back. (See video.)
  
  
• Most Passionate Presenter. As the sole catcher on the Thoroughbreds' softball team, Carol Brown '13 made her pitch remotely via Google Voice because there too little time between games in the team's home double-header against Massachusetts College of the Liberal Arts for her to make it back to campus for a face-to-face presentation.

Alas, there was just one first prize and it was Mengel and Brown whom the judges ultimately decided best met their criteria. Acknowledging key programming assistance provided byPaul Sawaya,a student at Hampshire College, they delivered a well-rehearsed, fast-paced demo of Slingshot, showing the ease with which anyone can scan an online map for pick-up games scheduled by others or issue one's own call for other players. And they got a big laugh when they demonstrated Slingshot's ability to support online advertising by showing ads they had created for their Freirich competitors - Just Call Me Cupcake, SuperSports Clinic, etc.  (See video.)

In addition to the $5000 cash prize put up by Freirich, Slingshot will receive $8500 in professional services from the following:

• Saratoga-based marketing specialist Paula Tancredi Penman ($3,000);
• The Saratoga-based accounting firm, Flynn, Walker, Diggin, CPA PC ($2,000);
• The New York City-based law firm, Phillips Nizer LLP ($3,500).

As the second prize winner, Sarah Besler-Erlich will receive market research services valued at $1500 from Mary Taber, lecturer at Skidmore in the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science.