By Laura Bond (Ruston Daily Leader)

Several local university students recently won a little extra expertise and funding to plan their entrepreneurial presentations for Louisiana Tech’s Top Dawg Business Plan competition.

Ten out of approximately 20 teams who provided pitches were named top teams in the Pick of the Litter Idea Pitch competition Monday morning at the Enterprise Center for delivering the most persuading arguments as to why their entrepreneurial ideas would succeed.

The competition, organized and implemented this fall by Tech’s Association of Business, Engineering and Science Entrepreneurs, is modeled after the television show American Inventor and is designed to give students an extra edge for the February Top Dawg competition, which provides students with resources to help make their entrepreneurial dreams possible.

The 20 teams pitched their ideas to the judges, which included several professors and more than 550 students who watched the presentations live or online.

Idea Pitch winners were awarded $200, assistance from two professor mentors and space in the Enterprise Center to develop their ideas for three months to prepare for the Top Dawg competition. “These people have good ideas, and we just want to facilitate their entrepreneurial spirit,” said Kimberly Johnson, chief executive officer of ABESE, which serves to promote entrepreneurship both on campus and in the community. “The ideal outcome is to produce some fruitful businesses out of this.”

The Idea Pitch was set up partially to encourage students of all majors to pitch their ideas, since Johnson said presenting a short pitch on their idea is likely less intimidating than trying on their own to create the full business plan, complete with estimated costs, required for the Top Dawg competition.

Although most teams are made up of two-three students, some competitors launch one-man ventures.

Tech business graduate student Jeremy Pardue said he is working without student partners to foster an idea involving transforming algae into biofuel.

“A professor at Tech was working on this technology, and I was in class when they presented the technology,” Pardue said. “There are companies in the United States that actually do this now, but we have a different approach. Instead of crushing the algae to release the oil, we have an agent introduced to algae, which releases the oil.”

Another team made up of speech communication major Shasta Phelps and Blake Hosli, who is pursuing a doctorate in microsystems engineering, proposed electronic textbooks.

“Textbooks are expensive and there are a lot of middlemen to get them to students, which is one reason why they are so expensive,” said Hosli, who hopes to obtain a grant to build a device resembling a miniature laptop where textbook pages might be displayed.

Hosli and other top team winners will have the $200 and assistance from professors to help launch their dreams over the next few months.

ABESE hosted Monday’s check ceremony as part of Global Entrepreneurship Week to encourage young people to turn innovative ideas into reality.

Tech’s Top Dawg Business Plan competition was started in 2001 and organized by ABESE.