On Friday, April 7, Skidmore hosted the final round of the Seventh Annual Kenneth A. Freirich Business Plan Competition. Seven businesses advanced from a preliminary round of competition that took place at Skidmore on February 24. This year’s first place winner, Weston Stewart-Tennes ’17, was awarded $20,000 to launch his business. Stewart-Tennes pitched the idea for Fries First, a fast-casual French fry chain in the making. Yuelin He ’19 placed second ($10,000 prize) with her Asian dessert business Halo Venus, while Nick Hening ’19 and Ian Carter ’19 of Music Match finished third and won $5,000. Fourth place, and a $2,500 prize, was awarded to Hadley Haselmann ’17 and The Global Exchange Project.
Students’ presentations included their concepts, prototypes, and detailed financial estimates and projections. After their presentations, contestants took questions from the panel. The judges from the first competition became mentors to the competitors, working with and advising students on how to improve their projects for final pitches to a new set of judges, which included Kenneth A. Freirich ’90 himself.
Editor's Note:
This article has been corrected. The original article cited the worth of the first place prize as $21,000, instead of $20,000. The revised article notes that Hadley Haselmann ’17 entered the second phase of the competition alone, and that she changed the name of her business from Trovi International to The Great Exchange Project. Yuelin He ’19 (of Halo Venus) also entered the second competition alone, and focused the business on Asian desserts (previously, Halo Venus was an Asian dessert and cosmetics business). Although the author of the article had attended a portion of the event, the Skidmore webpage for the competition had not reflected the business name or team participant changes. We apologize for the errors.