Fourteen University of the Virgin Islands students in eight teams will compete for $60,000 in business startup funding during the final round of the first 13D Student Entrepreneurship Competition scheduled for Friday, May 4, on the St. Thomas campus. The prizes – $30,000 to first place, $20,000 to second place and $10,000 to third place – are designed to help team members launch their own businesses based on plans they devised while participating in the competition.
UVI’s School of Business is inviting the entire Virgin Islands community, especially business owners and government officials, to attend the competition, according to UVI Business Professor Dr. Glenn Metts, Ph. D., who shepherded the competition through its first year.
The competition will include a morning session beginning at 9 a.m. in the first-floor conference room of the UVI Administration and Conference Center on St. Thomas. It will include formal business plan presentations by each team. The presentations are limited to 20 minutes per team. Judges will make their final decisions while the participants are having lunch. The winning teams will be announced and prizes and other awards will be presented beginning at 1:30 p.m.
The would-be entrepreneurs’ business plans range from tourism to agriculture, and personal services to locally-oriented entertainment with a touch of high tech.
“Only three of these teams are going to win money. But every one of these teams, in my opinion, deserves to be funded,” Dr. Metts said. “They’ve worked hard. They have much better business proposals than most business launches have. They are vetted. They’ve gone through four presentations. They got feedback and improved … (got more) feedback and improved (yet again). Their ideas have been tested by fire through the competition at UVI.”
The 13D Student Entrepreneurship Competition was announced to UVI students in September of 2011. The initial competition – which was open to all undergraduate and graduate students at UVI – drew a field of 72 students in 21 teams. It was funded by a $5 million gift to UVI from Kiril Sokoloff, an investment strategist and entrepreneur who founded 13D Research, which is based on St. Croix. Along with annual entrepreneurship competitions for students, the gift is intended to establish and endow the Kiril Sokoloff Distinguished Professorship, the university’s first endowed chair, and to initiate an entrepreneurial speaker series.
“This is an exciting moment in the life of UVI,” said UVI President David Hall. “This competition and the other entrepreneurship programs represent the future of this university and the territory. If we can’t develop more experienced and sophisticated entrepreneurs from the Virgin Islands, then we will not meet the economic challenges of the future.”
The finalists were selected by a team of judges, which included representatives of the local community, the local business community and the University. There was also significant participation in the judging process by employees of 13D. The eight teams who made it to this week’s finale have each received an initial prize of $500.
13D Entrepreneurship Student Competition Finalists
Teams and their student members who qualified for the competition’s final round are:
• The Ultimate Party – Annette Bevans and Francillia Francis
• BMWA Paintball – Benaiah Nicholson and Marvin Didier
• Customer Service Training Center – Aclesia Scotland and Shamir Joseph
• Lab Equipment Rental and Leasing – Heba Abdallah and Ghadeer Taha
• Virgin Island Adventures ATV – Vandel Percival
• Virgin Fresh Egg Farm – Patricia Rogers
• Nannies to the Rescue – Sharona Pickering, Yanique Smith and Kimberlee Smith
• 360 Skate Center – Soshana Pemberton
For more information, visit the Business section of the UVI Web site – www.uvi.edu – or contact Dr. Glenn Metts in the UVI School of Business at 693-1303 or by email to: gmetts@uvi.edu.
