We are excited to share some awesome news from a recent UMBC alum, Stephen Ho. 

On January 8th, 2016 at 9 pm EST, Hungry Harvest, the company Stephen currently works for, will make an appearance on ABC's Shark Tank!

About Hungry Harvest:

Hungry Harvest delivers fresh produce to people's doors while also donating meals is donated to those in need. Their mission is to eliminate food waste as well as feed the hungry.

Congratulations Stephen! Just another alum changing the world. 

DEADLINE TO APPLY is Friday, December 11th

     

     

REGISTER & GET MORE INFORMATION HERE

The Sports Zone was once again packed for UMBC's fall Idea Competition held on November 12th. Out of many ideas submitted, the top eight were selected for the final competition. These ideas were pitched to a standing room only crowd and a panel of three judges. Contestants were given a strict 3 minutes to present their ideas.

The big winner of the night was team Honni which included members Marios Levi, Travis Askins, Gianni Cappelletti, and Robert Johnson. They represented the First Year Seminar class that came up with the idea this semester.  Honni: P2P Local Produce Finder, connects consumers and buyers with farmers, growers, and sellers. The health-conscious consumer selects any produce they are looking for, and the app immediately locates farmers and backyard growers within a certain radius which sell exactly what the buyer wants. Modeled off of Uber and Airbnb, Honni is a peer-to-peer service, meaning even a small time community-gardener can sell their produce through the app once they get verified.  While practicing for the presentation, Levi said his team was nervous, but when it came to the real pitch at the competition, he said "the pitch on the actual stage was the best presentation we had done". Their idea earned them $750 which will be given to the First Year Seminar class to support turning Honni into an actual business.

Jackie Airhart won second place for her idea Roll Call.  Roll Call would help professors keep track of attendance in classes by using chip timers that attach to a UMBC student's redcard ID. When a student crosses through a classroom doorway they would record their presence in the class by waving their card at a sensor at the door. This would also be helpful in times of crisis when people want to know where students are located. Jackie's idea earned her a $500 reward. Jackie said "I was really surprised and delighted that they picked my submission as a finalist. I entered because I always thought RFID technology was interesting." 

Patrick Dignan earned the third place spot with his idea CommonInvesting, a subscription based website that is geared towards average investors.  All the information comes from the moves and decisions the top 1% of the population is making. Patrick said "for students interested in entrepreneurship, the Idea Competition is a great way to both improve your idea, and meet people that truly want to see it become a reality. Although somewhat nerve racking at times, the event sincerely helped me, and will undoubtedly act as a stepping stone in my pursuit of becoming an entrepreneur."

There was a tie for the Best Presentation of the evening.  Emily Schultheis presented AdPlay, which is a website platform that enables marketers to gain customer feedback on their product packaging and/or advertising posters.  Players would earn money for each game played. Emily said "The Idea Competition presents a capital opportunity to build confidence, explore different techniques for public speaking, and practice engaging an audience of mixed academic backgrounds. Public speaking has never come naturally to me, but my technique has improved tremendously over the last few years by participating in the Idea Competition and other opportunities supplied to me through the Alex. Brown Center for Entrepreneurship. I'm very grateful for the chance I had to present this year!"  Her confidence and poise earned her $250.

Wei Liu, Jiayong Lin, and Lunzhong Yuan also tied for Best Presentation with their idea Bark Park.  Bark Park is a Uber style parking service that can be run on mobile devices. The Bark Park team would park cars for students and faculties for a charge. This team also earned $250.  After the competition Liu said "propose your idea, one day it may come true." 

A special thanks to alums Rob Baruch, Stephanie Day and Jim Kukla who were our judges for this year's Idea Competition. And to all the students who came out to listen and help select the winners!

The Entrepreneurs Panel Discussion of Fall 2015 will be held in ONE WEEK! Don't miss out on this awesome opportunity to network and ask questions to real entrepreneurs! 

This Panel will be held on on Wednesday, November 18 at 12:00pm in University Center 310. 

About the speakers

Danielle Burnett '05, President, Applied Technology Services - M.S.; Information Systems, University of Maryland, Baltimore County, B.S.; Information Systems, University of Maryland, Baltimore County; Certificate in Electronic Government, University of Maryland, Baltimore County; Project Management Professional Certification, Project Management Institute

Danielle's entrepreneurial journey began with an exorbitant amount of preparation and education. She incorporated Applied Technology Services (ATS) the year after graduating with her Bachelors from UMBC. At the time, she was working at J.P Morgan Chase as an IT Analyst, but she had a dream of being her own boss, so she formed ATS. In 2006, she brought on a family member and her first technical staff to grow and support her business while she still worked full time developing the business to the point where she could leave to run it full time. When she finally made that transition, ATS began to grow by leaps and bounds. Revenue doubled year over year until 2014 and she now has a staff of 14 employees and contractors supporting more than thirty (30) contracts. ATS is an IT solutions integrator and services provider providing solutions from the enterprise to the desktop to Education, State and Local Government customers. ATS is also a family business with four (4) family members on full-time staff and another one that supports their website.

Arsham Mirshah '08, Cofounder, WebMechanix B.S., Bioinformatics / Computational Biology, University of Maryland, Baltimore County

Being an entrepreneur is not as hard as it might sound. If you've ever had a lemonade stand, been paid to shovel your neighbor's driveway, or even participated in a fund raiser, you're pretty much an entrepreneur. Arsham started in high school, where he installed modified car stereos for fellow students, for a fee of course. He then tried some (and does not recommend) multi-level marketing. During the second half of his term at UMBC, Arsham was helping his friend grow a startup recruiting & staffing business. Today, Arsham is almost 7 years into growing his company, WebMechanix. The company's mission is to deliver impactful economic results for clients through expert digital marketing, and to do it faster than anyone else in the world. Arsham's personal mission is to empower and support people in reaching their full potential.

Mike Vess '98, Chief Technology Officer, Kinglet B.S. Computer Science, University of Maryland, Baltimore County

Mike has been a key player at several start-ups and is currently the CTO of Kinglet, a commercial real estate marketplace which provides flexibility and simplicity for small companies in search of office space. Kinglet's mission is to bring traditional office leasing into the modern sharing economy, like Zipcar did for cars and Airbnb did for travel. Since joining the company in June of 2014, Mike has been responsible for the initial launch and all iterations of the site and backend services that have followed. His previous experience includes Millennial Media, a Baltimore based mobile advertising company, where he helped the business grow over the course of 6 years to become a publicly traded company. He's fueled by Mountain Dew and misses his good friend sleep.