Review: BYU Web Idea Competition

• Posted by Steve Spencer

Article posted on Nov 26

Welcome to the second guest post here on the Tech Spotlight.  Our good friend Nick, from Argon Gear did a writeup on the BYU Web Idea Competition.  As a reminder, if you attend an event we haven’t and want to make sure people hear about it, please let us know.

Without further noise from me… here’s the review from Nick:

Last Friday BYU hosted a web idea competition that awarded a student with $3,000 simply for having the “best” idea for an e-business. The winner ended up being an MBA Student with an idea named “E-take.”

He invisions a future where individuals traveling to various locations will become package/goods deliverers as a part of their everyday life. People will create an online account, stating where they regularly travel to, and others will post requests for package delivery. This supposedly will be an answer to the pain of paying expensive shipping costs and out-of-the-way drop-off/pickup locations.

Well, why not? People are already traveling in their cars, motor homes, etc. Why not earn a few bucks on the side for simply adding a few things to your cargo? I must say that not everyone was convinced that this idea will ever fly, but that was not the purpose of the competition anyway. The purpose was to get students thinking up ideas for online businesses.

Although there were various questions regarding the feasibility of some of the ideas, Etak won out of four finalists. The other ideas included an online virtual team building application, a privately funded online student loan transaction interface, and a streaming music application for application in various usage situations. These other finalists brought home $5,000 in combined winnings.

The judges for the competition were none other than: Nick Efstratis (Wasatch Venture Fund); Morgan Lynch (founder of LogoWorks); and Ben Peterson (founder of MingleMatch). As for their decision, we can rest assured that the judges know what’s going on in the e-business world.

This was the first year that this competition has been held at BYU. The competition started because of a push by the BYU e-business center founder, Kevin Rollins (former CEO of DELL Computers Inc.), to increase the number of e-businesses coming out of BYU. He was reported as saying, “Why can’t the next YouTube, or EBay come out of BYU?” Well, these competitions will certainly help the chances of that happening and I look forward to other universities and organizations in the state to follow!

• Posted in Local Review