Start Up with Booth’s New Venture Challenge
Do you have entrepreneurial aspirations? Does the idea of a start-up rev your mind’s creative and business engines? If that’s so, The New Venture Challenge program at The Booth School of Business is perfect for you.
The New Venture Challenge is the premier start-up program at Booth. Since it began in 1996, NVC has helped students turn entrepreneurial ideas into actual businesses—it has launched more than 90 companies, which have gone on to raise over $300 million in funding and created thousands of jobs.
Stella Fayman, Rishi Kumar, Prem Panchal, Itamar Bar-Zakay, Elan Mosbacher, and Tim Jahn, made up Team Matchist, NVC’s 2013 winner. The company matches top web and mobile developers to businesses looking for specific technical skill sets.
“We kept getting requests from people: ‘How do you find developers?’” said Fayman, the company’s CEO. “We saw this disconnect between great entrepreneurs and great developers.”
“Developers have trouble finding good clients, and that good means clients with exciting work who will actually pay you,” said Jahn, Matchist’s Chief technical officer. “One side helps the other.”
The challenge included writing a business plan and working with faculty from the Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation. While working through the steps, the judges noted that Team Matchist exuded a willingness to adapt and change on the fly. Not to mention their idea was just flat out great too.
“They were receptive to suggestions,” said J.P. Fairbank, managing director, Orchard Venture Partners, Chicago, and an NVC judge. “I read the business plan and it jumped out at me,” Fairbank said. “This is a service that several of our companies would use.”
Matchist has already has created more than $40,000 in work for developers. For winning first prize for the New Venture Challenge, the team received a cash prize of $30,000. Matchist will use their earning to forge more relationships with software firms. It also will receive a range of in-kind business services.
“We grow through partnering with software companies, and to do that, we need a lot of people out there developing relationships,” Fayman said. “We’re a small team with big ideas,” Fayman said. “Winning the NVC will help us grow more. We have a lot of ideas in our pipeline.”
