The final round of the Booth School of Business’ 2014 New Venture Challenge showcased nine teams who presented their businesses before a panel of judges at the Harper Center on May 29. The competition began earlier this year with a field of 81 with this year’s competition ending with a tie for first place between baking mix company Simple Mills and hotel reservation service RoomVa.
Katlin Smith, founder and CEO of Simple Mills and a first-year MBA student at Chicago Booth, developed the concept for her business after a friend suggested that her joint pain might be related to the food she was eating.
After adjusting her diet and improving her health, Smith was inspired to launch a baking mix company that uses simple ingredients free from gluten, dairy, and soy. Her NVC team includes Booth MBA students Jessie Yu, who is CFO, along with Arin Aghazarian, Hiral Arges, and Angie Dobrofsky.
“The problem came when I went to the grocery store,” Smith said. “Everything at the grocery store had a lot of sugar in it—ingredients I couldn’t pronounce, highly processed flours—so I started Simple Mills.”
The other first place team, RoomVa, was created to help young couples in Latin America finding difficulty with hotel accomdoations when they want privacy overnight. RoomVa CEO Diego Santa Maria, a first-year student and a native of Peru, told the judges that many young adults live with their parents. When they want an evening or weekend away with a partner, they book rooms in small hotels known as telos.
“Last time I went to my usual telo with my boyfriend, it was fully booked,” RoomVa team member Belen Romero said in the presentation. “So, we had to drive around for an hour to find another telo, and when we finally found it, it was too expensive.”
Simple Mills and RoomVa each will receive a $30,000 cash prize, as well as a number of in-kind services to continue to enhance their companies and develop strategic planning.
“They both had very evolved business plans,” said NVC judge John Oxaal, ’81, general partner of Sevin Rosen Funds. “In the case of Simple Mills, they had a business model, which had a very good contribution margin, and they looked like they had a very good expansion strategy. In the case of RoomVa they had already signed up 42 or so hotels and the usage rate in those hotels was going up substantially.”