Grove City Students Win Prizes for Business Ideas
GROVE CITY, Pa. – Grove City College student Andrew Graber was able to drum up some support for the business he’s building at the Center for Entrepreneurship + Innovation’s 2018 Wolverine Venture Battle + VentureLab Showcase, held earlier this month on campus.
Graber, founder of Māhlon Acoustics, won first place and a $9,500 cash prize in the Wolverine Venture Battle, which pits groups of student entrepreneurs against each other in a war of ideas for new businesses.
Graber made the winning pitch for an idea to sell handmade wooden drums called cajόns that are designed and crafted by musicians and artists in Nashville, Tennessee. He plans to use the money to jump start the business over the summer and hopes to be able to bring a product to market soon.
- Graphrite, a durable and unique tool for engineering and math students that aids in the drawing of clean and accurate sketches and graphs on homework and notes conceived by students Samuel Kenney, Madeline Williams, Austin Zick and Keith Meikrantz. The students won $7,000 in prize money.
- Te Amo, an organic Peruvian tea business created by Mark Sotomayor and Ryan Budnik, won $2,000 in prize money.
- The GeniusCorps, an educational inclusion program to change the mindsets of students by teaching STEM skills engineered by Jordan Hörst and Rebecca Krupp completed the winners’ circle and took $1,500 in prize money.
Judges listen to the pitches and act as “investors,” distributing $5,000 each in prize money to one or several teams. Judges this year were Matt Knouse, Performance Roofing Associates and Performance Realty Group; Scott Wilkes, The Penn-Ohio Group; Michael Kuremsky, Seek Company; Wendy Mascio, CompletIt Consultants; and Eric Hanson, Apex Foodservice Group.
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