‘Shark Tank’ Event Offers Dress Rehearsal for April 10 Draper Competition

Katie Hitchcock ’17 stood at the front of the Campus Center Carroll Room, microphone in hand and an exasperated look on her face.

“In the course of a year, I paid $837 for books,” she said to an audience of business experts and fellow students. “When I tried to sell them back, I got an offer of only $200.”

Hitchcock was in the middle of a 90-second presentation for “The Book Next Door,” a mobile app she designed to improve collegiate book sharing. At a table in front of her, fellow Smithies were preparing to pitch their own ideas for products, including a better Internet search engine, an app for sharing personal moods through through music, GPS-enhanced jewelry for people with Alzheimer’s disease—and more.

This was Smith’s annual “Shark Tank” event, hosted by the Center for Women and Financial Independence (WFI). At the March 9 event, participants had 90 seconds to pitch a business, product or service idea to a panel of fellow Smith students, local entrepreneurs and faculty and staff mentors.

Students received one-on-one feedback on both the viability of their ventures and the quality of their presentations. This year, 11 student teams pitched ideas formulated through hours of teamwork, brainstorming and mentorship. The winning presenter, Connor Smith ’16 and her “Color Picks” team, received $250.

The Draper Competition aims to give undergraduate entrepreneurs real-world experience in transforming a passion into a viable business.

More than just a fun evening with a cash prize, Shark Tank is a crucial dress rehearsal for an even bigger contest: the annual Draper Undergraduate Women Entrepreneurs’ Competition to be held Friday, April 10, from 3 to 7:30 p.m. at Smith’s Indoor Track and Tennis Facility (ITT).

Smith alumna Melissa Parker Draper ’77 and her husband, venture capitalist Tim Draper, founded the contest in 2012. The couple teamed up with the Center for Women and Financial Independence to host a competition aimed at encouraging students from all disciplines to leverage their creativity, generate ideas and build sustainable business models.

At stake: $25,000 in prize money and coveted scholarships to Draper University’s seven-week business start-up boot camp in San Mateo, Calif.

The Draper Competition aims to give undergraduate entrepreneurs real-world experience in transforming a passion into a viable business. And those students work hard to prepare—taking rigorous J-term entrepreneurship courses, attending weekly innovation workshops with alumnae and other experts, and meeting regularly with Smith instructors and local start-up consultants Rick Feldman and Rick Plaut (affectionately known as “R Squared”).

Last year’s Draper Competition drew 50 students from Smith, Barnard, Bay Path and Mount Holyoke colleges. This year, student teams from 30 colleges will participate in three selection rounds and a trade show leading up to the final judging by an expert panel.

Shark Tank provides an opportunity for Smith competitors to assess just what they need to improve before taking on the Draper Competition. The 11 student teams that presented on March 9 came prepared with innovative ideas—the details of which are being kept under wraps until the larger event next month.

Mentors and audience members supplied useful feedback. For example, Merrilyn Lewis, associate director of events management at Smith, suggested an idea to Susan Brunelle AC for how to distinguish Brunelle’s proposed women’s networking business from existing groups. Physics instructor Joyce Palmer-Fortune offered Cecilia Lee ’15 suggestions for how to attract high school students to Lee’s proposed hands-on technology summer camp.

Perhaps the best insight of the evening came from Plaut, who offered this tidbit about entrepreneurship: “Most businesses start when you say, ‘I have a problem. I wonder if other people have this problem as well.’”

To find out more about the “Color Picks” idea that Connor Smith and her team pitched to win Shark Tank, head to the ITT on April 10 to watch the competition for the big Draper prize.