Student entrepreneurs brought their business plans to the seventh annual Spring Pitch Competition this past week.

Described as a “Shark Tank style” event, students pitched their businesses to five judges after a 10-week-long mentorship program.

The Brinzo Center for Entrepreneurship hosted the competition, which welcomed students of all majors to apply for the chance to win up to $10,000.

“I think what’s exciting about a pitch like this is that there are so many different backgrounds to these students,” said Mary Heidler, a professor in entrepreneurship. “Everybody’s in a different major. Everybody’s working on something very unique to what they are passionate about.”

While Heidler said the Center for Entrepreneurship brings in mentors to help with the process, the faculty in the entrepreneurship departments always helps students along the way, by either hearing students’ pitches or helping practice with them.

All of the student finalists received help in progressing their businesses to a more advanced stage through the program, and the winnings from this annual competition allow students to grow their startups even further.

“These are students that are beyond the idea stage,” Heidler said. “They’ve done the research on it, they’ve done customer serving, they’ve built a prototype and some of them already have revenue, product, that sort of thing.”

The judges this year were comprised of five people involved in the entrepreneurship world, including several company founders.

After the business pitches were given, the judges deliberated on placings.

Bradley Smith, a junior finance major, was chosen by the judges for first place, based on his pitch for Finlit, a company he co-founded with the intent of developing products that provide individuals with financial education.

He began his pitch by talking about their first product, Budget Bust, an interactive board game designed to teach the handling of finances.

“It’s an interactive board game that teaches students how to save, invest and budget their money, and we’re looking forward to making a lot more gamified materials that will interact with the younger aged students as well,” said Smith.

The idea for the company first began when Smith and a group of his classmates were in the Junior Achievement Business Program in high school, where they were able to create ideas for companies and products.

“We decided that one of the problems was that we were not taught anything about money in school, and here we are about to graduate high school and be offered all these credit cards, student loans and all this stuff,” he said. “We wanted to solve this problem in a new way, and that’s how we came up with Budget or Bust.”

Smith encouraged young entrepreneurs at Kent State to not be afraid to try new things, as he did with this process.

“I feel like I can network with anybody and my confidence as a whole has just gone up so much,” he said. “I really think everybody should try and go for it and challenge themselves because the only way to really grow is just to get out of your comfort zone.”

Kayla Gleason is a reporter. Contact her at [email protected].