Club propels entrepreneur ambitions

By Nicholas Ketchum
Deputy Editor

Entrepreneurship is a buzzword at Washtenaw Community College, at least in the eyes of some students on campus.

Among WCC’s campus groups is the “A2 Entrepreneurs” club, led by student Olivia Habart, 19. She rejuvenated the club last autumn after falling dormant from low membership.

“I started A2E after taking a few entrepreneurship classes at WCC, meeting entrepreneurs in the Ann Arbor community, and visiting the Entrepreneurship Center here on campus. I wanted to help facilitate a connection between these communities and students,” she said. “I believe WCC should be a testing ground for new ideas, personal growth and risk-taking before students transfer and/or receive a degree.”

Inspiring stories and practical advice

Wednesday’s club meeting was a busy one. Habart planned an agenda which included a presentation by a local business owner, bank representatives, and a business pitch by three students.

Habart opened the night by introducing April Christian-Davis, founder of Breakout Marketing Group and a previous club member, to share her story of entrepreneurship.

In her presentation, Christian-Davis emphasized marketing methods where businesses must target precise demographics. As mass media market fragments, mass audiences have scattered.

She also asked each person to identify a “superpower” and position themselves in the market using it.

After Christian-Davis spoke, representatives from Key Bank talked about the importance of maintaining good personal credit for business owners. Amy Brown, a relationship manager at the bank, said personal credit of owners also can affect the business’s credit, too.

Brown also said new entrepreneurs should meet with a tax consultant to avoid common traps, such as hiding income in an effort to lower taxes, which may lower a business’s creditworthiness and prohibit expansion lending, later on.

Pitching under pressure

The meeting concluded with a practice presentation by three students in preparation for a live pitch event in downtown Ann Arbor the following evening.

The event, called “Pitch Pit,” is similar to the TV show “Shark Tank,” where prospective entrepreneurs pitch ideas to a panel of investors to win funding. Each pitch was time-limited to four minutes.

The event was co-sponsored by Ann Arbor Spark and the New Enterprise Foundation.

According to the Foundation, pitch participants “receive constructive feedback for moving your business idea forward and will meet like-minded people who will give you tips on how to succeed.” The winning pitch also receives a cash prize raised from the audience.

Lawrence Smith, 18, a secondary education major, Ariana Palacio, 18, a business administration major, and Kaia Wright, 19, a criminal justice major, pitched a mobile/social app concept called “Twist” which would connect people with mental health professionals based on specific conditions such as anxiety, depression among other criteria.

Smith said the trio met at their local high school where they became friends.

He also said he only met Christian-Davis via the WCC Entrepreneurship Center a week or two ago, where he shared the app idea. Christian-Davis recommended the three students to “Pitch Pit” organizers.

“I really believe in what you’re doing,” she told the students, before offering some practical pitch advice.

“How are you going to get it to market? What are you going to do? And you only have four minutes so you’ve got to have those facts down solid,” she said to the group.

She also told the students to increase their ask for investment, as they’d be pitching among “heavy hitters.”

In the pit

The next evening, the three students pitched in downtown Ann Arbor to a room packed with panelists, investors and area business owners. They described the motivation for the app, its core features, and upped the investment ask to $100,000.

In addition to the students’ pitch were three others: one to improve “value-added” revenues for health care providers, a pitch for an artificially intelligent knowledge base content creation system, and an “interactively engaging” music platform.

Smith, Palacio, and Davis gave the last presentation before the three judges secluded themselves to decide a winner.

The WCC students didn’t win—the music platform pitch did. The audience was able to raise more than $300 as an award.

Charlie Penner, regional director at the Michigan Small Business Development Center, located in the Morris Lawrence Building on the WCC campus, was one of the three judges at “Pitch Pit.”

Penner said the WCC pitch for was “a great concept” and identified the “right need.”

He said although the group drafted an innovative solution, judges were concerned about the group’s ability to build an adequate team, roll out new technology, and scaling nationwide.

However, one large investor, Chris Theisen of Adapt Technologies in Auburn Hills, at the event took interest in the concept and invited the student trio to meet the next day to discuss their pitch, according to Christian-Davis, who invited Theisen to the event.

Smith said the group also plans to pitch at the Entrepreneurship Center’s annual Pitch@WCC event this May.

Other ambitions

Meanwhile, other club members have other business ideas.

Natalie Meyers, who’s studying business administration at WCC, is a club member who’s currently completing an introductory entrepreneurship course at the college. She said the course “helped with presenting my business idea… I think this class has given me a lot of structure on how to write a business plan and how to get started with the actual business,” she said.

The A2 Entrepreneurship Club meets every Wednesday at 5-7 p.m. in BE 174. The group is open to all current WCC students.

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