Executive MBA Students Pitch Their Startups in “Terp Tank”

Executive MBA students took turns in the “Terp Tank,” pitching their businesses to seasoned investors like on TV’s “Shark Tank.” The panel of five investors was impressed with the business ideas from the 16 teams and some of the pitches may lead to investments.

The Oct. 16 pitch session was the culmination of the EMBA entrepreneurship Action Learning Projects, which started in April 2015. The projects are part of a course taught by Joe Bailey, associate research professor, and Elana Fine, managing director of the Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship. It wraps up later this month.

The EMBAs formed teams and came up with business ideas, then spent time testing and doing customer discovery. In mid-July, the teams gave an initial pitch to a group of angel investors at the Dingman Center. They took the next few months to fine-tune their pitches with better business models, financial projections, marketing strategies, competitive analyses, customer acquisition details, plans for hiring teams, and roadmaps for funding. 

“A bunch of the teams iterated considerably on the idea, who the target market was, the name – all kinds of things,” says Fine.

At the October session, teams had five minutes to pitch their business, followed by two minutes of answering questions from the panelists. Technically an investor pitch, the EMBAs could ask for money or for introductions to contacts in the panelists’ networks.

The students presented a gamut of business, including: a 55+ retirement development, Over the Rainbow, for the LGBT community; Eternal Legacy Pastures, a green burial company; a new kind of fantasy football and gaming simulation platform; a mobile medic service; an education technology company; and even a lifestyle-brand trailer hitch company, Monkey Grabber.

“As seasoned executives, these EMBA students have exposure to a variety of opportunities and problems in the market to come up with really viable business ideas,” Fine said. “They also have the leadership talent, the execution ability and the connections to be quite successful in taking these ideas to market. This course is poised to become a real business incubator.”

Fine said the course is a great way to leverage the Dingman Center’s network of investors and entrepreneurs-in-residence in a new way. The investors thought some of the business pitches have potential to be developed into successful ventures, so now the students are looking at next steps. Fine and Bailey are rounding out the course by bringing in an IP specialist to talk about protecting the ideas and a venture capitalist to talk about raising money.

“There is a reason why this EMBA program is ranked highly. It’s the students we are attracting, and it’s the opportunity that we are providing,” says Fine. “There are definitely people in the class who chose our program because this entrepreneurship project is required.”

Oscar Zeballos, a broadcaster with a successful media career and now a podcast technology startup, Free App Company, entered Smith’s EMBA program to gain the business acumen to grow his bootstrapped company.

“The EMBA experience at Smith -- and especially the experience through the entrepreneurial ALP -- really opened my eyes to not just the administrative side of building a business, but also the different paths that a company can take to create efficiencies,” said Zeballos.

“I was making money, but through the ALP process, I realized I could have been even more successful in the early stages,” he said. “This course and the ALP process introduced me to the idea that there are levers that could be pulled that might not take that much effort, but if you know which levers to look for, they could really change the dynamic of your startup.”