Past Events & Winners
"Winning the competition definitely opened some doors for me. When I meet people in the entrepreneur community, many of them say, 'didn't you win a business plan competition?' so that is always a good introduction. Also, the man from Qorvis recommended that I change my company's name, which you can see I did."
President & CEO
Encore Path, Inc. (formerly Newregen)
The first-place award was presented to Newregen, Inc., a developer of an arm-training device that helps victims of stroke-induced paralysis regain arm function.
Second place went to Accelign, a biomedical company developing a hardware accelerator that quickly fuses or "registers" medical images from multiple sources to accurately create a single three-dimensional image.
The two remaining finalists were Blue Dart, a molecular engineering software tool used for drug modeling and development, and IMPACT Education, LLC, a company that develops low-cost educational kits that university professors can use to teach MEMS fabrication outside of expensive laboratory facilities.
The competition was open to any student or group of students and involved judgment by an expert panel of the quality of business plan executive summaries and presentations. Colleges represented by the 12 presenting teams include: University of Maryland at College Park, University of Maryland, Baltimore County, The George Washington University, Howard University, and George Mason University.
Judges included prominent Washington-Baltimore area entrepreneurs, investment banking companies, and venture capital firms, such as The McLean Group LLC, RedShift Ventures, Columbia Capital, and New Markets Growth Fund. Sponsors for the event, which awarded over $30,000 worth of prizes were: Kile Goekjian Reed & McManus PLLC, Qorvis Communications, Bhagat LLC, and The Entrepreneur Center at the Northern Virginia Technology Council (NVTC). The keynote speech was given by John May of New Vantage Group and a luminary in the regional angel/venture capital industry. According to May, who is also the Chair of the Angel Capital Association, "I am honored to have made a contribution by speaking at the MIT Enterprise Forum's event and enjoyed addressing the students, some of whom I'm sure I'll be crossing paths with in the future."
"The judges and MITEF committee members were deeply impressed with the presenters, their ideas, and their passion," says Al Mink, Chairman of the MIT Enterprise Forum of Washington-Baltimore. "We wish to thank all involved who made this inaugural event a success, including the audience who came out on a Saturday afternoon to witness the Chapter's first shot at a business plan competition. We're already mapping out next year's competition to make it even better."