After winning award money from the Emerging Talk conference, student entrepreneurs are on their way to making their visions a reality.

Twenty-two student start-ups won seed funding at the Emerging Talk conference, an entrepreneurial expo hosted on April 11 and 12 by the Raymond von Dran IDEA organization. The winners earned various levels of funding to pursue their start-ups.

Jon Maser, a senior marketing and entrepreneurship and emerging enterprises major, presented his pitch and was awarded $5,000 to help expand his company, Advlo, which stands for Adventure Local.

During his time in the Semester at Sea program, he realized that local residents didn’t have the technologies to make their businesses visible to tourists, making it impossible to compete with larger, non-local businesses. He decided to start Advlo to help locals promote their services to tourists.

Maser said he hopes to use the money he received to reach out to locals around the world and inform them about Advlo’s services. He added that he hopes to expand his direct outreach to 15 countries by the end of the summer.

“It is a viable option to start your own venture. A lot of kids are focused on going to the career fair or where they can get their entry-level jobs or work up the career ladder,” he said. “Not enough people realize that the future is in your hands and there are a lot of opportunities out there to either start your own venture or join a small company yourself.”

Organizers structured the competition so that there were a variety of categories, said Gisela von Dran, professor emerita of the School of Information Studies and benefactor of the RvD IDEA awards.

“This year, if you notice in the description, we had a track for energy and sustainability, for healthcare, biotech, for social and nonprofit entrepreneurship, for products and services so we would be able to catch people or students who are interested not only in making money, but also in serving the community,” she said.

Students could compete in six categories for the RvD IDEA awards. Maser competed in the Social and Nonprofit category.

The Emerging Talk conference also hosted the Panasci Business Plan Competition, which was organized by the Martin J. Whitman School of Management, and the Invention and Creativity Competition, hosted by both IDEA and the L.C. Smith College of Engineering and Computer Science.

At the Emerging Talk conference, students had the opportunity to network with other Central New York professionals, hear speeches from students and professionals and attend panels about entrepreneurship. Kevin Harrington, the host of “Shark Tank,” delivered the keynote speech.

“The goal was to have students get off the Hill and interact with really the business community here and essentially open new opportunities, create new opportunities for them to network and possibly find mentors or even investors for their businesses,” said Tony Kershaw, the assistant director of IDEA.

Kershaw said the judges were looking for well-planned and researched companies. The judges focused on the experience and resources available to the company owners, he said. The presenters were also judged on their presentation skills.

Von Dran said the judges in the competition looked for students’ passion and energy as much as the quality of their ideas. But the judges weren’t only pleased with good ideas; they were also looking for students with high energy, collaborative and passionate attitudes.

Said von Dran: “We are looking for students who have the passion and commitment to really change the world to their ideas and we are looking for students who are possibly interested to stay in the Central New York area.”

Published on April 21, 2014 at 12:34 am

Contact: clmoran@syr.edu