'Park & Diamond' Takes Top e-Fest Prize

e-Fest® Information

For 2018 e-Fest® info, click here.

e-Fest® 2017

MINNEAPOLIS, April 9, 2017 – The finals judges returned their decision last night, after an excellent competition. The overall finals champion undergraduate student teams for e-Fest 2017 are:

#1 ($100K) - Team Park & Diamond, Virginia Tech

#2 ($50K) - Team Eat Your Coffee, Northeastern University

#3 ($25K) - Team Yellow Card, Auburn University

Along with these top three, others recognized among the top five finalists included Team Orindi Ventures (Grand Valley State University) and Team PeeWee Packs (Grove City College).  A list of all 25 semi-finalist inventions is below.

The competition awarded more than $200,000 in grants and scholarships for the best undergraduate business ideas. Finalist teams were chosen from a pool of more than 160 teams from 81 schools who submitted seven-minute videos and 12 slides describing their business ideas. A panel of 32 judges selected the finalists, who received travel stipends and hotel accommodations for the final round.

The largest undergraduates-only business plan competition (as measured by the size of the cash awards), e-Fest is co-sponsored by the Schulze School of Entrepreneurship, Opus College of Business at the University of St. Thomas in Minneapolis and EIX.org, an online learning platform for entrepreneurs, students and professors. Featured speakers April 6-8 included Best Buy Co. founder Richard M. Schulze and "Shark Tank" TV show regular Daymond John, founder of FUBU, the urban clothing company that grew into a $6 billion brand.

The top three teams received $100,000, $50,000 and $25,000 in prizes. An additional $10,000, $5,000 and $2,500 in grants went to their universities to support entrepreneurship education. A Friday night Innovation Challenge awarded $20,000, $10,000 and $5,000 in scholarships to the top three student teams that developed the best solution to a business challenge posed that evening.

More information about the competition, including rules and rubrics for judging, can be found here. The competition will take place at the Schulze School, located at 1000 LaSalle Avenue in Minneapolis.

2017 e-Fest Finalists

About the e-Fest Speakers 

Dick Schulze founded Best Buy Co. in 1983, and as CEO for 19 years led it to become the dominant consumer electronics retailer in the U.S. The company’s 2015 revenue was $40 billion. Through the Richard M. Schulze Family Foundation, Schulze has continued to fund initiatives that support education, human & social services, and health & medicine.

Daymond John is a regular of the ABC weekly television show Shark Tank, which received the 2015 and 2014 Emmy Awards for Outstanding Structured Reality Programming. The show features entrepreneurs who present their business concepts to a panel (John, a fashion and branding expert who founded the FUBU clothing company; billionaire Mark Cuban; real estate mogul Barbara Corcoran; Lori Greiner, known as “The Queen of QVC”; tech innovator Robert Herjavec; and venture capitalist Kevin O’Leary). The show is in its eighth season.

About the Schulze School of Entrepreneurship

The Schulze School of Entrepreneurship is based at the Opus College of Business at the University of St. Thomas in Minneapolis. It is the only of its kind within a business school, providing undergraduate and graduate entrepreneurship programs, public entrepreneurial and business education, and opportunities for funding new ventures. Innovators, serial entrepreneurs, small businesses, change makers and future business leaders come together in this hub of entrepreneurial thinking to recognize, explore and exploit opportunities. The Schulze School’s centers and institutes provide consulting, networking and small business incubators to help launch new endeavors and further solidify established ones. It serves 221 undergraduates who are majoring in entrepreneurship and nearly 400 who have taken entrepreneurship courses.

About EIX

Launched in 2014, Entrepreneur & Innovation Exchange (EIX.org) is a free online publication and learning platform that aims to dramatically improve the success rate of new business ventures. Dedicated to entrepreneurship students, professors and practitioners, EIX is funded by the Richard M. Schulze Family Foundation. It is designed to advance and share the best research and practice of entrepreneurship, and make it relevant and accessible to both aspiring and practicing entrepreneurs. Dozens of universities have made it part of their entrepreneurship curricula.

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