The Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship is hosting the 17th annual Gillespie Business Plan Competition virtually on April 9, and the competition’s application opened yesterday.
The Gillespie Business Plan Competition is organized by the School of Business Administration, in honor of Edwin C. Gillespie in 2006, a business administration graduate from 1943. The competition gives young entrepreneurs the opportunity to develop business ideas and potentially establish their own small businesses.
First-place winners of the competition receive $10,000 and an office space at Insight Park, the university’s Innovation Hub. Second-place winners receive $5,000, and the four runners up each receive $1,000 in their bursar accounts.
Since 2019, the competition has awarded additional prizes to three competitors who did not place. The Thomas W. Colbert-Community Bank Innovation Award was established to recognize the team that is driven by innovation in their product, process, service or technological change. The Lynn and Ron Samuels Student Entrepreneurship Award awards a team that embodies entrepreneurial spirit through their innovation. The Stephen E. Rowell Entrepreneur Award is a $5,000 award for a team or individual who symbolizes the entrepreneurial spirit through their innovation.
According to startup statistics from Small Business Trends, only 4% of small business owners are between 18 and 29 years old.
Nicholas Neilson-Slabach and Kyle Herbert –– Ole Miss alums and the 2020 Gillespie Business Plan Competition winners –– launched their app DaisNotes this semester. DaisNotes, which they have compared to GroupMe, is meant to help students get to know their classmates, share notes and bond over common interests.
Neilson-Slabach said he and Herbert thought the app would be a great way to let students interact with each other on campus, especially through the pandemic. Since presenting their business plan in competition, they decided to add a new feature to the app: categories of interests including cooking, nightlife, Greek life and shopping.
“It’s basically just these big chats that anyone can sort of talk about things with people, because a lot of people right now are feeling really isolated,” Neilson-Slabach said.
While they consider their app launch to be a success, Neilson-Slabach and Herbert admit that they’ve had some difficulties due to COVID-19.
“I’d say the thing that’s made this most difficult is going out and talking to people who’ve actually downloaded our app. We can go to the Union, and try to talk to people. But it’s not really socially responsible to do that, so we’ve tried being creative,” Herbert said.
Applications can be found on the CIE website.
