Three Boston College undergraduates and their business plan for the tech start-up phyre took the top $20,000-prize at the seventh annual Boston College Venture Competition, held April 10 at the Carroll School of Management.
The team of Matt Ricketson, Patrick Allen and Joshua Jackson, all seniors — Jackson in CSOM, Ricketson and Allen in the College of Arts and Sciences — plans to use the prize money to launch phyre, a company that will manufacture and market a portable data device the team designed to deliver sales and conference presentations seamlessly to televisions and display screens.
For two members of the phyre team, this was their third BCVC competition. They drew on their earlier experiences to craft a business plan to market their portable device – about the size of a deck of cards – to sales personnel and others who struggle to connect to incompatible presentation hardware and software. Eventually, phyre plans to incorporate the technology into a line of display screens.
“We think BCVC has been an invaluable experience,” said Ricketson. “It imposes a structure on your work and it gives you a timeline and deadlines to complete these ideas that you have. It is a lot of work and it’s time-consuming, but BCVC really pushes you.”
Now in its seventh year, BCVC has more than doubled its prize money, from $15,000 to $35,000. Winners and finalists from past competitions have gone on to earn places in some of the country’s top start-up incubators, launched tech start-ups locally and in the Silicon Valley, and snared approximately $25 million in seed funding. BCVC faculty advisor and Associate Professor of Information Systems John Gallaugher said this year’s group of finalists represented a broad range of ventures and benefitted from prior experience, be it through BCVC or similar competitions at institutions such as MIT and Yale.
“We just had a great mix this year,” said Gallaugher. “But it was most thrilling to see students who have essentially grown up in BCVC. They are not only making their mark here and making this an elite program for student entrepreneurs, but they are taking part in some of the leading business competitions around.”
The $10,000 second-place prize went to BC undergraduates Tommy Christmas ’13 and Kevin McGovern ’14 and their high school classmates Tyler Kennedy and Wes Schroll, who both study at the University of Wisconsin. All four grew up in Acton and attended Acton-Boxborough Regional High School.
They impressed the judges with Fetch Rewards, a mobile app for grocery shoppers that would offer a range of services and discounts to shoppers in real time, while collecting volumes of cutting-edge data about shoppers, products and service. The team is seeking financing to launch a beta version through a mid-west grocery chain within the next nine to 12 months.
Finishing in third place with an award of $2,500 was KnowledgeArena, a web-based platform for competitive test-takers that would allow users to place bets based on their knowledge and test-taking skills. The team consisted of freshmen Andy Lee and Tommy Tan and their partner Sean Nam.
Other finalists included Campus Calories, a mobile app for health-conscious college diners, led by senior Jimmy Campbell, and Streak Media, an email marketing company run by BC seniors David Casinghino, Andrew Flynn, Chris Marciniack, Michael Nardella and sophomore William Chamberlain.
Learn more about the Boston College Venture Competition at http://bcvc.org. For a video about this year’s finals, see on.bc.edu/ZLEQsT.
—Ed Hayward
