Last Friday, April 26, ten San Marcos Entrepreneurship Academy teams competed in the 14th Annual SBCC Scheinfeld New Venture Challenge. This event allowed groups of students to present their business ideas to real-life entrepreneurs in the hope of winning a cash prize to start their companies. SBCC extended this event to all high school students in Santa Barbara, yet the top 10 finalists were from San Marcos. These teams included:
ClipMe (Seamus Russel, Aaron Foster, Samuel Rich, Alden Klei)
Ready, Set, Bake (Shae Cogswell, Ilan Abramov, Sophia Llewellyn)
Roam (Talia Cummings, Tatiana Layva, Campbell Thayer, Clara Stump)
HydroHound (Owen Hennessee, Gerard Marceda, Andrese Villa)
CoachLink SB (Ethan Ball, Gage Minne, Darrell Whitehouse, Irvin Ortiz Contreras)
Circle (Makenna Stretz, Mathew Chung, Kanoa Lee)
ShotBuddy (Alana Thomas, Dylan Foster)
Uniteer (Bell Pena, Leah Heffner, Sofia Ramierz-Vazquez )
Golden Tech Assist (Henry Challan, Logan Kaufman, Christian Castio)
PickLimit (Owen Kivitis, Alexi Stenger, Preston Fehr)
Entrepreneurs, Jose Huitron and Dr. Heike Schirmer were invited this year to judge the pitches for all the groups. Huitorn founded Santa Maria Valley Tech, which is a community platform inspiring an entrepreneurial ecosystem, and he is currently the Entrepreneurship teacher at the Cal Poly Orfalea College of Business. While Dr. Schirmer is the Chief Product Officer at Yogi. Prior to Yogi, Schirmer was Director for Alexa’s Knowledge Graph at Amazon, where she was at the forefront of revolutionizing human-computer interactions through the power of Alexa.
Friends, family, and mentors gathered in the Fé Bland Forum on SBCC’s West Campus to listen to these students pitch each of their companies for eight minutes followed by two minutes of questions from the judges. Each group went into depth about their own company, such as introducing the “headache” problem and their company’s solution to it, including marketing and distribution channels, revenue models, and financial projections.
“Hearing every group’s presentation helped me learn all types of business and helped broaden my horizons,” said junior, and New Venture Challenge winner, Aaron Foster. “I think the New Venture Challenge helped show off how amazing the SMEA program is at San Marcos.”
First place (which won $1,000) went to Clip.Me, a company created for student athletes to have a way to earn money and also get coverage of their athleticism. Second place (winners receive $600) went to Ready, Set, Bake!, a baking company that makes ready-made baking boxes for people with food restrictions. And third place ($400) went to Circle, a platform designed for improving the mental health of teenagers.
SMEA is planning a field trip later this week to visit Minimus and Cal Lutherns School of Management to learn even more about the profession of Entrepreneurship.
