A big weekend for entrepreneurship

A biodiesel production company. A jewelry design firm. An enterprise that gives tourists authentic experiences in South African townships.

These are just a few of the new businesses Skidmore students plan to develop through the fall and pitch in February in the first round of the Kenneth A. Freirich Business Plan Competition. Now in its sixth year, the competition will award students up to $60,000 for plans to develop both for-profit businesses and non-profit organizations oriented to social entrepreneurship.

“Your decision to enter the competition could change your life,” said competition founder Ken Freirich ’90 at an orientation session Sunday. “There’s a key quality all of you will learn: Entrepreneurs find ways to make things happen.”

The meeting’s main purpose was to brief students about the competition prior to the Oct. 9 deadline for submitting a simple online “intent to compete” form. Students in all majors are encouraged to enter by this date, though entries will be accepted on a rolling basis through the first two weeks of the spring semester. You’ll find the form and full details about the competition here.

Roy Rotheim, professor of economics and director of the competition, emphasized that students who submit ideas for non-profit enterprises oriented toward social entrepreneurship will be awarded prizes similar to those who develop for-profit businesses.

“So if you have an idea for doing something good for the planet or society, by all means submit the form and briefly tell us what you propose to do,” he said. 

Rotheim encouraged any student who has an interest or question about the competition to connect with him by email at rrotheim@skidmore.edu.

A serial entrepreneur who is now president of Health Monitor Network, Freirich said he founded the competition in 2010 so that Skidmore students could have the same kind of transformational experience he did when, as a sophomore in 1988, he launched a magazine for college students that achieved distribution on 35 campuses in three states.

“That’s when it all started for me, and I’m grateful for the support and education that Skidmore gave me. That’s why I started the competition: To encourage all of you to pursue your passions.”

In another event oriented to entrepreneurship, 65 students from colleges around the Capital Region met Saturday at the Tang Museum for “Design Thinking: Ideation Team-Building,” a workshop focused on concepts of branding and new methodologies for brainstorming and prototyping innovative ideas.

Two successful local entrepreneurs shared their experiences:

• Ken Rotondo, president and founding Partner at Mind Genomics Advisors and an expert on customer experience engineering, and consumer intelligence, discussed his partnership with American market research and psychophysicist Howard Moskowitz, who pioneered the concept of “intermarket variability” as a marketing strategy--the idea that makers of just about any product should appeal to diverse customer preferences by offering multiple variations.

• John Ciovacco, president of Aztech Geothermal, recounted his experiences in founding Cyclics, a plastics manufacturer, by purchasing a suite of patents from General Electric, and then creating a team of geologists and engineers to become a leading environmental services and remediation firm with crews that have drilled thousands of wells and excavated hundreds of sites since 1997.

The program was the first in a “Startup Series” sponsored by Accelerate518, a consortium of colleges and universities in the Capital Region dedicated to the teaching of entrepreneurship.