After two years of virtual competitions, the Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship team is excited to bring back Pitch Dingman Competition in a live format.

Two years ago the Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship piloted a new program — Terp Startup Fellows, made possible by a generous donation from Bill Boyle ’81, chairman of the center’s board of advisors. Building on the success of the Dingman Center’s Terp Startup Accelerator eight-week summer program, the Terp Startup Fellows program is an effort to further accelerate the most promising student startups. These student founders have demonstrated a strong commitment to their ventures and the ability to innovate as they push towards commercialization. After positive results from the two-year pilot, the Dingman Center has named five Terp Startup Fellows for the 2021-22 academic year, an increase from 3 last year.

In fall 2019, the Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship at Maryland Smith decided to test a hypothesis: If exceptional student founders in our Terp Startup Accelerator continued to receive resources for the following academic year, could we help them bridge the gap and achieve necessary milestones toward commercialization?

With DingmanTV, Student Entrepreneurs Follow in the Steps of Billy Mays, Shamwow Guy Cut off from customers, unable to access production facilities or seek out goods and materials for their budding businesses because of the pandemic lockdown, some Terp undergraduate entrepreneurs are turning to that ultimate time-killer: infomercials.