“Fall Vol Court” finalists named, Facebook voting begins soon
Two aspiring entrepreneurs won phase one of the two-part “Fall Vol Court” pitch competition held Tuesday night at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville (UTK).
The individuals and their companies were Nate Buchanan of Credit Virgin and Mitchell Poythress of Food Find App. Buchanan’s effort to help college students manage their credit ratings has been profiled previously on teknovation.biz at https://www.teknovation.biz/2012/10/08/5183/. Poythress’ concept is to develop an app for mobile devices to minimize the time that individuals spend finding items in the grocery store.
“Vol Court” is an initiative of the Anderson Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation (ACEI) in the UTK College of Business Administration. Tuesday’s finals and the prizes offered were sponsored by the UT Federal Credit Union, UT Research Foundation, and Pershing Yoakley & Associates which is the host for teknovation.biz.
Phase two of the competition to pick the ultimate winner begins later this week when edited versions of the presentations by Buchanan and Poythress are posted on the ACEI Facebook page. Individuals will have until Tuesday night, November 13, to vote for their favorite.
Once ACEI releases the details, they will be posted on teknovation.biz.
A total of eight individuals or teams presented Tuesday night. Besides the two semi-final winners, the others were:
- Café Conversions BMC, a company founded by Keith Britt that plans to convert older model cars to electric vehicles (EVs) that are less costly than new EVs.
- FantasyHub, an enhanced way for fans of fantasy games to pursue their passion. It was presented by Andrew Busa and CJ Tate.
- GeThem, a concept that Kefa Lu developed that is an equivalent of eharmony.com to help those wanting to sell something to connect with those who have a match or vice versa,
- PMP360, a project management software idea developed by Justin Grayman.
- Spirit, a tool that uses algorithms to help individuals purchase tickets at the lowest price likely to be available sometime between their decision to purchase and the actual trip. It was resented by Brandon McKinney.
- The Nightlife Experience, a concept developed by Joshua Brown that helps individuals learn more about opportunities like musical events in the area and also enable venues like restaurants to drive customer activity with specials.
