Smith Students Win University Business Plan Competition

Two current Robert H. Smith School of Business students and a recent alumnus were among the top winners of the sixth annual University of Maryland $50K Business Plan Competition that wrapped up Friday, April 7, 2006.

Winners were selected from six finalist teams in three categories: undergraduate students, young alumni, and faculty and graduate students. Finalists beat out 16 semifinalists and 58 initial entries in the competition, which was organized by the A. James Clark School of Engineering's MTECH Ventures, an entrepreneurship program that helps university students and affiliates turn technology ideas into viable products and bring them to the marketplace.

Samuel Fine, a Smith senior majoring in finance and Hinman CEO, won the first-place $12,000 award in the undergraduate category, along with business partner Michael Altman, fellow Hinman participant and senior engineering major. The team co-founded I-Receipts, a service that aims to eliminate paper receipts for consumers and businesses by instantly recording purchases on an Internet database where users can access purchase information.

Michael Altman and I were driving back from New York and were discussing how annoying paper receipts were to hold onto when we came up with the idea of I-receipts, Fine said. Currently there exists a product that allows for scanning of the receipts, but there is still no way to capture purchase information immediately after a purchase takes place. I-Receipts will store purchase information on an Internet server instead of a computer hard drive the current option utilizes. It will allow for retailers to advertise price savings to customers and thus provide them with another revenue stream, Fine pointed out.

Fine and Altman plan to take the service nationwide through promotions. They hope to be able to offer full-scale receipt capture from online purchases and brick-and-mortar retailers in three years.

I think that everybody can easily relate to this need; paper receipts are ubiquitous and bothersome and this will be consistent with most peoples goal of streamlining their lives, Fine said.

Smith student Peter Orlicki and three teammates won the $2,000 runner-up prize in the undergraduate category. Orlicki is a finance and electrical and computer engineering student and a Hinman CEO. His teams company, ORBSolution.com (Online Realty Business Solutions), aims to be the first nationwide listing database for real estate agents, offering easy-to-use agent web hosting, a Real Estate in a box package for companies, and a national property database.

Smith alum Anik Singal (05), a finance grad and Hinman CEO, won the first-place $15,000 award in the Young Alumni Category. His up-and-running company, Affiliate Classroom, provides online training for Web-based affiliate marketing, a form of advertising through which an online merchant rewards an affiliate site for every visitor, subscriber, and/or customer referred to the merchant much like a finders fee.

For more information about the competition visit: http://www.bpc.umd.edu.

▓ Smith Media Group, Priscilla Mwangi, MBA Candidate 2006