The circus was in Beantown and so was the GSEA on Monday for the 2007 GSEA New England Regional Competition. Five of New England’s finest undergraduate student entrepreneurs, all from different campuses around the region, came together for what was one of GSEA’s toughest regional fields to date.
The competitors arrived bright and early to the Sawyer Business School of Suffolk University, the host of the competition, to begin preparations. In short order the judges arrived and we were ready to begin the competition.
(L to R: Alan Hollander - Managing Partner of Equation Partners, Henry Shterenberg - Owner of New England Sports Academy, Tom Rosedale - Managing Member of BRL Law Group, Fred Marckini - CEO of iProspect, and Kevin Krauss - Director of Suffolk’s Center for Entrepreneurial Studies)
Chris Ronzio of Firewire Films was the first competitor up to present. Chris presented on his film production and DVD sales aspect of his business - noting that his key differentiator from other fiming and video documentary businesses was his innovative way to sell his material.
“We’ll go to places like a cheerleading competition, where we’ll sell DVD copies of the competition and previous competitions and advertise in the front cover of the DVDs” he explained, “which helps drive new customers and new avenues of sale.”
Michael Kopko, Harvard student and CEO of media darling DormAid was next to present. DormAid, a business that revolves around doing the dirty work for college and university students such as laundry, cleaning, etc. is definitely one of Mike’s biggest passions.
“It’s an amazing business, one day we’ll be doing a student’s laundry and the next weekend he’s calling us at 3 in the morning on Sunday to clean up the messy results of a party. It’s very fun.”
Next up was Brendan Ciecko of Ten Minute Media. Brendan completely stunned the judges with his business, which is that of producing high-end web content for music stars, such as Bob Seger, Monica, and Natalie Cole, as well as managing music artists. His media-heavy presentation was very attractive - but of course this is the GSEA, and he needed to prove that his entrepreneurial abilities were the same caliber of his creative ones.
Brendan shared that with Ten Minute Media he was following his #1 passion, and that putting people over profits was his secret to success. He faced 12 minutes of heavy questioning from the judges, trying to find out the scalability of his business, Brendan’s plans for the future, and more. He fielded them well and the judges took a mid-morning break to collect their thoughts.
After the break, Mike Matros presented on his business, Garage Galore. Garage Galore produces custom, organized garages - promising to rid the garage of the standard cluttered, junky appearance into a clean, organized masterpiece.
Mike originally started his business from his passion for hotrods, which led him to spending a lot of time in the garage. From here it was easy for Mike to see a clear business opportunity and capitalize on it. Mike has been able to close exclusive New England distributorships for many of the products he installs - proving that he is one of the top in his field.
Last up was Mark DiChristofaro, student of Boston University and owner of Perspective Productions. Like the first presenter, Mark has a great multimedia presentation of his filming business, which has done a lot of work with local colleges and universities to produce film footage.
The judges had a difficult time with the scoring process, and once again in typical GSEA fashion we had a close race with *1* point separating second and third place. Here’s how it turned out:
First Place: Michael Kopko - DormAid - Harvard University
Second Place: Brendan Ciecko - Ten Minute Media - Hampshire College
Third Place: Chris Ronzio - Firewire Films - Bentley College
(L to R: Brendan Ciecko, Chris Ronzio, Michael Kopko)
Thanks again to Suffolk University, EO Boston and all of our nominees and competitors in the GSEA New England Regional Competition! Next up are the New York, Philadelphia and Arizona regionals… stay tuned!
