The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania announced that the student team Slidejoy won the $30,000 Perlman Grand Prize in the Venture Finals of the 2014 Wharton Business Plan Competition (BPC).
The Venture Finals attracted over 300 venture capitalists, business leaders, faculty members and students. This year the year-long BPC had a record-setting 181 venture concepts submitted, involving 492 individual participants from across 9 Schools at the University of Pennsylvania.
Developed by Sanghoon Kwak MBA’14, Jaeho Chung, alumnus, Robert Seo MBA’12, Slidejoy is an Android app that pays users between $5-$15 per month to view ads every time they unlock their phones.
Slidejoy has already been very successful, with over 20,000 app downloads and over 26 million ad impressions delivered, from merchants such as Groupon, Best Buy, Adidas, J. Crew and Macy’s, in just three months since the initial launch.
While the Venture Finals judges deliberated the top three prizes, the “Great Eight” Finalist teams competed for the Michelson People’s Choice Award, where the audience could vote for their favorite elevator pitch. PhaseOptics won the vote and a $3,000 prize.
This year also marked the first winner of the Wharton Social Impact Prize, a $10,000 grant to the Semifinalist team with the best example of social impact integrated into their business plan. The award went to Susli Lie MBA’14, team leader of Dana Cita. Dana Cita means “Aspiration Fund” in Indonesian, and this educational lending venture aims to empower Indonesian youth by providing loans to aspiring students, as well as connecting them to future careers.
The Wharton Business Plan Competition, which is open to any University of Pennsylvania student and managed by Wharton Entrepreneurship, has seen numerous student teams go on to become successful businesses. Previous participants in the Competition include ventures such as eyeglass company Warby Parker, Brazilian baby e-commerce site Baby.com.br, and drug R&D company Integral Molecular.
