Students Share Entrepreneurial Ideas in Video Pitch Competition Students polished their pitching skills at a video pitch competition on Dec. 6 in the Harte Center for Teaching and Learning.

By Kelsey Goodwin
December 18, 2024

This fall, students interested in showcasing their crowd-funded business ideas had the chance to polish their pitching skills at a video pitch competition on Dec. 6 in the Harte Center for Teaching and Learning. The showcase was open to all students in entrepreneurship classes.

Participating student teams represented varying levels of experience and interest in entrepreneurship, ranging from students taking their first entrepreneurship class to those deeply immersed in the entrepreneurship program through the Connolly Entrepreneurship Society and minor. Prices included a first-place cash prize of $1,500, a second-place prize of $1,000, and a third-place prize of $500, with the option to win an audience choice award of $250. First place went to Jackson Smith ’28, Zak Silnutzer ’28 and Christopher Porter ’28 for CTS, a social media app that connects users who want to play pickup sports.

“The best part of this process was seeing the creativity of my peers,” said Silnutzer. “Every video pitch was done very differently and well, and it was interesting to see the different routes everyone took to tell their stories.”

Second place went to a video game designed by Lucas Kim ’27, and Greg Bafalis ’26, Callie Hutton ’27 and William Van Arsdall ’25 claimed third place for an athletic gear company called Snap Strap. Tenra Adams ’28, Bryn Gonzales ’28 and Turi Trainor ’27 won the audience choice award for an app allowing students to reserve fitness center cardio machines.

Jayson Margalus, Johnson Professor of Entrepreneurship and Leadership and director of the Connolly Center for Entrepreneurship, Anushka Daunt, assistant professor of business administration, and Emily Landry, assistant professor of business administration, came up with the idea to invite students from across multiple courses to compete and see what other groups had been working on throughout the Fall Term. Landry said the competition was an opportunity for students to gain experience with collaborating, creating pitches and doing a public-facing presentation on their ideas prior the Entrepreneurship Summit in April.

“This is an opportunity to provide our students with solid experience in pitching and, if they want to, they’ll have done all the prep work necessary to be able to submit something to the summit,” said Landry. Students in Landry’s Social Entrepreneurship course this fall said having the chance to share projects was inspiring.

“Hearing about the social venture projects that my peers were working on and seeing their pitches demonstrated that we all care about different communities and can make a change in our small corners of the world,” said Erin Brennan ’25, a double major in economics and accounting.

Margalus said video pitch assignments expose students to crowdfunding and other fundraising avenues beyond traditional venture capital.

“Pitching to an in-person audience is different from pitching to an online, asynchronous audience,” Margalus said, adding that creating a polished video pitch can help build students’ confidence in their ability to communicate their business ideas effectively. “The video-pitch format allows students to practice crafting a compelling narrative and delivering their pitch in a way that resonates with remote viewers, which is an important skill for real-world crowdfunding and other online fundraising efforts.”

Daunt said the value of the event for students is also in recognizing their hard work and the knowledge they have acquired throughout the term.

“It’s also about helping them realize that they know far more about their businesses than they think, especially when they present or pitch to others,” Daunt said. “This is something my students have consistently shared with me after going through the pitching process. Additionally, events like this create a valuable opportunity for faculty collaboration to help students continue building on their ideas and bridge the concepts they’re learning across disciplines and classes.”

Learn more about W&L’s annual Entrepreneurship Summit.