UA Entrepreneurial Week activities begin Wednesday at 5 p.m. in the Hotel Capstone Ballroom, with different activities held throughout the week. Entrepreneurial Week will finish with an all-day event known as the University’s Alabama Innovation and Mentoring of Entrepreneurs Day from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Friday in Room 110 of the Alabama Institute of Manufacturing Excellence Facility.
Greg Sheek, director of Alabama Launchpad programs, David Snyder of Urban Cookhouse and Sam Brewer and Nick Wright of Game Day Tents are all to be featured at the week’s beginning forum in the ballroom.
AIME Day, the final day of the week, includes presentations made by faculty and students along with University representatives participating in the Alabama Launchpad business plan at The Edge in downtown Tuscaloosa. Judges will select winners from 16 competing entrepreneurial teams that will be given funding and help from the University, Lou Marino, director of the entrepreneurial program in the College of Business, said.
“The teams will have these elevator pitches, and the concept behind the elevator pitch is that you imagine you’re stuck in an elevator, and you have 90 seconds to 2 minutes to pitch your idea to the executive in the elevator with you,” Marino said. “So the teams have 2 minutes to pitch their idea and the best 5 will be selected to go again, and winners will receive cash prizes and will hopefully be able to talk to the judges about maybe even investing in their ideas.”
The Office for Technology Transfer, the office responsible for managing the intellectual property and assets of the University, introduces University technologies that have been created to students during Entrepreneurial Week. Director of OTT, Richard Swatloski explained OTT’s presence within the Entrepreneurial Week activities.
“We try to use some of the UA technologies that faculty or staff have invented and try and put student teams around some of those,” Swatloski said. “Then we let the students try and come up with some ideas to create business models, or try to contact people to move that technology from the lab to the marketplace to benefit society.”
OTT will have teams involved with the student-pitched competition on Thursday along with the AIME teams. The Office of Technology Transfer co-hosts AIME Day with the AIME department, Swatloski said.
Stephanie Morris, a sophomore majoring in electrical engineering, is a Venture Development Intern with OTT and is looking forward to participating in the week, especially AIME Day, when she will pitch her ideas. Morris and her partner will be pitching to a panel of 10 judges that include angel investors and patent lawyers.
“My co-worker Bill Heuer and I have been working to build a plan to commercialization for a Passive Noise Attenuation device, which we call Silent Flow. Dr. Ajay Agrawal, endowed chair of mechanical engineering here at UA, developed the technology, and basically it’s a ring of pressure and temperature-resistant material placed at the source of combustion in a system and it reduces the noise created by the combustion process,” Moore said. “With my technical background and my co-worker’s marketing background, we were able to research and design a business plan to bring this great product to market.”
In an attempt to make Entrepreneurial Week a campus-wide event, other activities are scheduled through the week as well. Sue Parker, an assistant professor emeritus with Human Environmental Sciences, is hosting a guest speaker panel of alumni who have become successful entrepreneurs.
“I think a lot of the students around campus here have some really cool ideas, some neat products, services, and so forth,” Swatloski said. “Just being able to let them see other deals or projects and other businesses helps them network so they know who to talk to try and further their ideas, so I think it just increases the entrepreneurial spirit of most of the students.”
