MCPS Business Pitch Challenge

[Music] good morning and welcome to the 2021 mcps business challenge i am genevieve floyd supervisor of career and post-secondary partnerships within montgomery county public schools and i am delighted that you decided to join us for today's challenge this is an annual competition and it's organized with the support of our business management and finance program advisory committee or the pac and this pack is composed of post-secondary and industry representatives from entities in and around montgomery county who are some of the most respectful supportive and dedicated men and women that i have had the pleasure of working with over the last years they assist us in supporting our students and in ensuring that our career pathways are relevant that they are focused on high skill high wage or high in demand careers they truly are dedicated and dynamic and and some of them you will meet and some of them you will hear from during today's challenge for those of you who may not know the business pitch challenge is our form of shark tank these teams from nine of our high schools will present their business proposals to our judges and answers answer questions related to their business concept the judges will then deliberate and the top three winners will be determined and awarded at the end of the event as you might imagine and organizing this event was more challenging this past year as it had to be done completely virtually and it certainly could not have happened without our dedicated teachers from the nine competing high schools who went above and beyond to support their students and it certainly would not have happened without our height without our highly motivated and talented students who had the courage and the tenacity to compete in today's challenge so i applaud them all applaud them all and and finally i do want to acknowledge our sponsors our sponsors of this event are the chick-fil-a's of montgomery county and the educational system's federal credit union both have representatives on our pack and they have been long-standing supporters of our students our programs and of this event we truly truly are just grateful for the kindness of our sponsors each year they provide the trophies and the cash prizes and all of the medallions for each one of our participants no one leaves this challenge empty-handed so many thanks to our sponsors for their generosity i i'm excited i'm excited to see what's in store i know that our teams are standing by and they are ready to go so without further ado i am thrilled to introduce our moderator for today's business challenge ms candice de pass misty pass is the assistant director of the solids craft collegiates program and it's an academic and leadership learning community at howard community college she's also a very proud mcps graduate from paint branch high school where she was a student in one of our programs the academy of finance program in fact in speaking with mr pass she credits her experience in the academy of finances playing an integral role in her earning a full tuition leadership scholarship from the posse foundation to attend bucknell university she is truly a delight she's passionate and about paying it forward for the students within mcps and she has remained committed to us in mcps shortly after she graduated college she returned and joined our pack in 2012 and has been engaged ever since she's wonderful i'm so thrilled that she's with us this morning so without further ado it's my honor to present the moderator of the business pitch challenge miss candice de pass welcome mr pass good morning dr floyd thank you so much for that introduction i am just honored to be here with you our viewers and the students and to be moderating this event for the second time i'm reminded of the 2019 business pitch challenge the last time we held this event in person and i'm just so pleased that we were able to pivot and still make this event possible in a virtual space so thank you again to the other members of the program advisory committee our business partners and our sponsors this event is an excellent opportunity for our students to showcase what they've learned and the skills they have developed in venture creation critical thinking creativity problem solving right these are the kinds of hands-on experiences that prepare students for success no matter what the next step in their academic or career journey is so welcome to our viewing audience to our teachers and to our student participants just a brief note about what you can expect from the flow of today's event a team from each of the nine business management and finance programs has prepared a recording of their business pitch once i introduce a team viewers will be able to see the video recording of that team's pitch following the video the students from that team will have an opportunity to engage in a four minute question and answer session with our judges live on the air again each team will only have four minutes for the q a students we will be keeping time so please keep that in mind once all teams have presented the judges will deliberate and winners will be announced and so with that i'd actually like to introduce our judges first we have dr alan cox dr alan cox directs financial education for the maryland council on economic education located at towson university dr cox is also the chair of the program advisory committee so welcome to dr cox brad sherman brad sherman was born and raised in montgomery county he is the president and founder of sherman wealth management brad is a long-standing proponent of financial education and empowerment is a financial planner and investment manager for young professionals entrepreneurs and employees with equity compensation brad is very passionate about giving back to the local and greater community in addition brad is the host of the sherman wealth podcast launch financial and was named on the 2020 top financial advisors list by watching toning magazine and investopedia welcome brad next is kyle safik kyle is a professional mma fighter and entrepreneur he owns companies such as mma and sport training facility kcf productions among others he is also the founder and organizer of some of the largest events in maryland such as girl power events salvadorian festival oktoberfest sound shape and rock the block kyle is the founder of the knk foundation a non-profit benefiting thousands of families each year kyle graduated from damascus high school and then attended montgomery college before completing his education at the university of maryland college park good morning kyle rolls is a veteran journalist has extensive marketing business planning and sales experience and has been working as the director of events and marketing for the gaithersburg germantown chamber of commerce for the past 13 years her specialties include managing special events social media marketing programs brand management writing customer service project planning public relations advertising and sales laura has also served as a director on the corporate volunteer council of montgomery county board serving as vice president of communication for five of her seven years and last but certainly not least dr josh funk josh was born and raised in montgomery county is a physical therapist and founded rehab to perform in 2014 r2p as it's called currently operates out of four locations across the dc metro region and will be opening its fifth location in annapolis in may of this year most recently rehab to perform was named to the incorporated 5000 for its second straight year as one of the fastest growing private companies in the us welcome dr funk so thank you once again to our judges for taking time out to be a part of this event and finally before we introduce our first team we have a brief video from a few of our pac members and community business partners [Music] hello my name is brian k smith executive director of eduserc and also ceo of e industries we are so excited to see all of our students from ncps and the business pitch challenge present their projects this year especially during this pandemic which has been kind of hard for many people but we understand that we know that all of our mcps students are strong they're great but also we know that you're very creative creative to be able to walk through this entire process virtually talking with mentors or talking with your teachers to be able to come up with some great ideas and then still deliver excellence right on time being creative has been the livelihood of how i've kind of run my business all together i started out doing web development but i didn't go to any classes so i took my lunch breaks and i started look with my lunch breaks clicking view source on a web page just saying how did they do that how did they do that and i just kind of took that and just kept going and going and going and so now that i build web portals for multi-billion dollar clients to this very day so there's different types of ways of being creative you don't really have to um say well i'm born with this and so forth sometimes just asking the question and just realizing that the answers are always all around you this is brian k smith ceo of e industries and executive director and founder of veggie circ looking forward to hearing your awesome and excellent presentations here at the mcps business pitch challenge hey team my name is liz oberman i'm the regional general manager here at orange theory fitness and welcome congrats to you all for partaking in the 2021 business pitch challenge here at mcps you guys are going to rock this it's such an amazing opportunity for you to take this first step in entrepreneurship so word of advice for me is that i want you to wake up every single day with a hunger for knowledge and excited to tackle the day it's what's going to drive you throughout your career and really set you up for success so once again guys congratulations you're going to rock this no matter what the outcome you guys are going to really really learn from this experience and i hope you have a fantastic time good work i'm alex cerrones founder of the moco show and moco snow i've been an mcps teacher for 15 years but i've been thinking about businesses outside of school as long as i can remember entrepreneurialship takes a special type of person and i commend each and every one of you for coming out here to the mcps business pitch challenge i want to congratulate each and every one of you win or lose you've taken the first step towards the path to success in business when i first started the moco show five years ago i was spending countless hours into something that i didn't even know would work we started with one follower myself and now we're over 200 000 across all platforms there's going to be bumps in the road it's not all going to be easy but i want you all to stick with whatever idea you have because i know you can make it work so good luck to everyone i look forward to seeing every idea in the mcps business pitch challenge [Music] thank you to our pac member brian smith and to our community business partners for that beautiful message and i just want to echo the importance of creativity and perseverance and the hunger for knowledge that was mentioned students everything isn't always about what you know right your ability to be successful in everything you do rests on your ability to be creative solve challenges to complex problems and the strength of your character and your determination so again you all should be very proud for continuing to persist in these challenging times and for putting in the work and the effort into your respective ventures now without further ado let the competition begin our first team is from montgomery blair high school team montgomery blair will be sharing their business pitch for tacoma grails hi my name is ben finlay and i'm karen deepsing and our business is called tacoma grails on march 6 2021 there was a shoe called jordan 1 retro high university blue that released at a retail price of 170 the sellout time of this shoe on numerous sites all sold out within seconds almost impossible for any regular consumer because of this the demand of this causes a secondary market of the shoe to have a value of around four hundred thirty dollars that's a 151 percent markup of the retail price of 170 on release day me and ben were able to secure 13 pairs and sold them all for about a 3 500 profit in a single day what the common rails does we look at upcoming hype sneaker releases that we know will have very low stock and high demand and we capitalize on the product scarcity to markup and sell them on secondary markets we use computer software product knowledge and connections to purchase multiple pairs of shoes at retail price on this slide you can see a couple of examples pictures of the software that we use to buy these shoes um where we sell these shoes there are many secondary markets the most commonly known ones are ebay facebook marketplace and offer up but there are also very specific ones stockx goat and alias the pros of having stockx is there is a huge market for buyers of shoes and clothing but they do charge an 11.5 fee of every single sale uh the pros of ebay is they have no fees on shoes but they do have a smaller market so it's harder to find buyers and results in less sales over time you can see on the slide we have screenshots of our sales on on the right side of stockx and then to the left of that is alias and we also have ebay and offer up how tacoma grills conquer scarcity like i mentioned earlier we use automated checkout software also known as boss to purchase multiple pairs of shoes where as a manual user you would not be able to do so we also pay for information groups that provide us with information so we don't waste time scouring websites trying to figure out who's going to get the shoes in the upcoming releases we also pay for privatized proxies which allow us to use these bots more efficiently over the past four years we've been running this business and we've been able to find the perfect balance to maximize our cost efficiency below there's a table with our average variable costs each month so for bots each month we spend about 235 dollars in renewal fees for information groups we spend about six dollars a month and for proxies we pay about 310. this totals at about 605 dollars a month we are hoping for an investment of 15 000 for a 25 stake in our business is it profitable as ben mentioned before we have been doing this for four years these are real results um as you can see here we have a spreadsheet of sales from december of 2020. we had about eleven thousand dollars in total revenue and out of that it was about 3.9 k of total profit that is an roi of 35 percent in a singular month um all these profits are reinvested into software into better proxies more proxies and more groups we are always expanding and growing market analysis so for these shoes there are millions of buyers across the globe so there's constant demand for all these different pairs of shoes there are uh even for used shoes uh so slow weeks and months for sneaker releases are inevitable um and this is how we make money during these dry periods we resell technologies such as computer gpus and playstation fives which kind of act in the same way as sneakers where they have low demand sorry low stock and very high demand and they sell out within seconds we also flip these bots that we use to secure sneakers and we treat them as stocks where we buy them when they're when their market price is low and sell them when the market value goes up um we have real results we have secured hundreds of pairs of past releases you can see here we have checkouts from our automated software um we have been doing this for four years we have amazing experience acknowledging this and we hope you invest in us thank you all right judges and team blair it is now time for the q a judges please take it away with your questions the clock for the four minute q a begins now my team from montgomery blair this is fascinating to me i don't know if i have uh ever encountered another group that uh took on uh selling shoes as a an operation but i'm really impressed with your presentation i do have a question about uh delivery uh so you guys are actually taking delivery of the shoes before you then uh send them to your customers is that correct um i can take this one ben so uh on marketplaces such as stockx um we don't pay any delivery fees or any things at all they send us the label and we send it to them um for marketplaces such as ebay uh we charge shipping which is around eight dollars per pair and we they pay shipping and then we deliver them via ups and usps so you say you deliver them via ups what's the cost to you to do that um on stockx it there's no cost of stockx pays for the shipping on ebay it is around eight dollars per pair all right uh other judges you have any questions you have a question guys i love shoes i mean i'm just gonna be straight up i bought like yesterday a 500 pair of shoes like you know what i'm saying like i know the game i like it a lot i like one of these shows and stuff my question to you guys is how are you guys getting it on the how are you guys going to keep making profit because you have to keep buying it on the low like knowing what's going to come up right and then you have to sell it for a lot more right that's what you're doing so how are you guys i'm looking things about the bots that you were talking about is that the program that's helping you find these shoes on the low before anybody else and then you're reselling it can you tell me how you're getting the shoes on the low before other people like why can't i just do that myself kind of thing what is it that you guys are doing that is getting the shoes at such a low cost and then able to up sale like that yeah um so together we have about like 20 000 worth of bots um and pretty much what they do like to mention the video is they buy the shoes uh way faster than any manual user would be able to do um but we input multiple credit cards and virtual credit cards so we're able to purchase multiple pairs from loads of different websites um and that's pretty much how you get multiple pairs for the low cool and because you guys are so involved in the game you guys have that expertise of knowing where to look at the right time knowing what's going to be coming up coming out right so you can store is that thanks remain mr sherman i was just going to say what would you be using the money for and how can you scale this um so uh our money was we were going to spend 20 of it on bots um as bots can cost up to the most expensive bot we know of is around 20 000 but the average price around two three thousand dollars per bot and the other 20 was going to go to proxies as we spend the majority of our money uh every month towards that and sixty percent was just going to spend to keep inventory and be able to buy multiple pairs and like dozens of pairs per release we got about 50 seconds remaining judges any quick questions yeah i mean i'll chime in real quick i i think the question that i have for you all and you don't even necessarily probably have time to answer this is what what is your moat what is something that you can put up around your company that's going to be unique that's not going to allow other people to potentially replicate what it is that you're doing it's not to say that this can't be tremendously profitable and beneficial to you all but when i think about the ability to scale and acquire market share i think about something that maybe is patented or proprietary or something that's very very very unique granted i don't understand this world nearly as much as maybe somebody like kyle does but you know flipping um is is is at least how i would um you know call this type of operation and i'm just more curious to see what you can do to provide additional layers to make this hard for somebody else to to do the exact same thing thank you dr funk so good good things for the team to consider uh that is all the time that we have for the q a thank you team one at this time i would like to go ahead and introduce team two from sherwood high school who is presenting their pitch for rain blocker the rain blocker is a retractable umbrella that connects directly from your car to your car door when you open your door during a rainstorm it provides an overhang that protects your car door your possessions your fancy leather seats or your absorbent claw seats from getting wet but this umbrella doesn't doesn't just force the rain off the side of your car door it provides a mini shelter for you to get situated and ready to face the rain too the overhang is made out of waterproof nylon giving you time to open your umbrella to run through the rain without having to deal with getting wet at all the problem we are solving is needing to get in or out of a car during the rain when you open your car door in the rain rain floods in and is annoying uncomfortable to sit on and has been an issue for years that affects just about everyone but not anymore here at sherwood we have come up with a viable easy and practical solution the rain blocker because we are a product with no real competitors rainblocker is taking a different approach to marketing our product instead of selling our products as an individual add-on for cars we are going straight to the manufacturers to include our products in their designs this is strictly for convenience for the consumer no other competitor of ours has even taken an approach close to this which is the main reason why they were unsuccessful business-wise instead of selling an extravagant uneated car umbrella including it in the car creates a more luxury feel that is intended to preserve high quality car interior for example weathertech one of the most highly valued weather related car accessory brands has come up with the idea of a rain guard yet it should be virtually useless and is mainly there to protect the windows and not the driver another issue our competitors have failed to reach besides practicality is looks due to our products being 3d printed it can be made using thin material which means it's smaller and it's more precise than anything made by hand this allows it to simply hide from inside the car not being seen by anyone unless it's opened giving a more sleek luxury feel well today the new car industry has seen a very low profit margin of less than five percent dealer add-ons have a very high profit margin of nearly 50 percent on average car buyers are spending between three hundred dollars and one thousand five hundred dollars on dealer add-ons making our price point of thirty dollars attractive to both the dealership and to the consumer our research has shown that there's strong interest in our product with 73.6

preferring dealership installation as a result the dealership distribution and marketing model provides the most profitable and sustainable business model for the rain blocker based on our marketing research at a price point of thirty dollars we estimate that forty four percent of new car buyers in maryland would purchase our product equating to one hundred and sixteen thousand units in the first year the startup and equipment costs equate to three million one hundred and twenty four thousand dollars leading to an average cost per unit of 26.93 and a profit margin of roughly 10.2 percent or 356 000 in profit in year two our profit margins increased to roughly 46.6 percent of a cost per unit dropping to 16 and a projected profit of one million six hundred twenty four thousand dollars today with a prototype already built and a strong management team behind our company our company's valuation is one million dollars and we're asking for 250 000 for a 12.5 percent equity to begin the purchase of necessary equipment and production of our product our business model is unique because we will not be using the traditional injection mold model which requires a million dollar upfront investment in order to begin manufacturing instead our business model involves use manufacturing our product with an in-house 3d printing solution as a new disruptive technology 3d printing allows us to manufacture our product only when we receive an order this on-demand model eliminates the need for large expensive warehouses and other related supply chain costs many car manufacturers such as ford volkswagen and bmw are already using 3d printing in order to produce cost efficient parts once we are established as a business we can mix injection mold manufacturing for large orders and 3d printing manufacturing for small orders our 3d printed proof of concept proves that 3d printing is a viable solution and our final design has a production cost of 16 per unit which allows for considerable profit based on our estimated profit per unit of 14. our goal for the rain blocker company is to become successful and globally recognized working with mid-range u.s car companies giving us royalties

for every car sold with our product inside of it rainblogger can not only be profitable but it can become the first of its kind to use innovative 3d printing technology to create and preserve luxury rain blocker is a monumental step in the car manufacturing industry that hopes to have over a 1 million valuation in just 5 years okay judges and team sherwood it is now time for the q a judges please take it away the clock for the four minute q a begins now turn your mic on brad sorry team sherwood great idea large addressable market really like the concept and the were you thinking about licensing this uh with the patent to the car manufacturers since they're already using the 3d technology or are you going to manually how are you going to get this into the car you said about royalty so i just wanted to understand where you're going to license the technology or how are you thinking that it's going to work well from our plan we are planning on manufacturing it through our 3d printing model and then selling directly to the dealerships through a dealership add-on method which helps us because we can sell it to the dealership for cheap and then the dealership makes a lot of money from it too since on average dealership add-ons have at least a 50 markup at the dealership great thank you um have you um done any research and gone to any dealerships looking at doing any marketing and analysis with that at a 30 price point there um i don't see you know that working for cars like a tulsa um you know i so i was just wondering you know i think that it might cost a little more um at a 30 price point and if you're manufacturing it for the first year at a 26 price point the valuation just doesn't make any sense so did you do any market research with any um dealerships um i can actually comment on that uh our market research uh consisted uh we of uh distributing out forms to people uh where they filled out what price point would work best for them uh for an add-on product uh as for the 26 dollar per unit price point the first year that was actually the manufacturing cost per unit when you take into account all the equipment and startup costs associated with starting this business uh that cost drops to 16 per unit in the second year uh when we no longer have to scale up perfect though i like the product i think it's great so i i get soaked in the rain all the time great idea good job about one minute and 30 seconds remain i mean i have a question maybe i missed it any patents on this or anything like that at all any i i i thought you know a lot of all this information i'm just making sure to miss anything do you are you guys working on any current patterns because it is a great idea let's be honest okay sorry yeah we're currently um pending for a utility patent on our design and we have licensed um we're working on licensing a trademark for our name the rain blocker as well cool and is there anything else that you've seen on the market because you kind of said hey you know there's other people that there's other things that protect the window and this and that is there anything else out there that people are working on that are similar and what's your patent going to make that yes there are definitely similar products but those products are not taking the b2 b2c approach to selling the product as we are and our product is made using 3d printing which is an innovation that will help us become better than our competition which we don't really have any competition besides the weather tech because nobody's taking the same approach under 30 seconds okay if there's if there's nothing else i think we will move on thank you team two at this time i would like to introduce team three from gaithersburg high school who is presenting their pitch for branched out hi i'm eric hello good morning my name is alexander castaneda i am a current ceo and co-founder of the company branched out we are seeking a 2200 investment business men and women my partner eric and i would like to offer 20 equity in our business for the return amount of 22 000 in investment today here at branched out we are devoted to providing a space for minorities because we feel that everyone should have a space where they feel safe and what better way to share stories and experiences you face in your life as a minority with a site where you can share anything anonymously connect and share with multiple other users and bond over the thing that makes you special the site will act as a blog but with multiple authors allowing branched out to be a unique website to other social networking sites and yes there are sites that form communities such as instagram facebook or linkedin but branched out is different because it is solely focused on minority issues and floods out any other content our profit margin comes to be about 65 this is very good compared to linkedin a similar business in our industry which is at 85 this is very good for us because we are a business that is just starting out we are very new to the industry and having such a high percentage compared to linkedin which is an influential already made itself name business it is very good for us don't believe it can get better well you'll be pleased to hear that branched out also sells merchandise our merchandise line includes stickers t-shirts and tote bags all embedded with the branched out logo showing your support for the community there will also be curated merchandise as well you can add a quote or phrase from your post on the site and make your product unique to you our average price for our products comes out to be about 16 our tote bags are about 25 each our t-shirts are 15 each and finally our stickers are 10 for 10 we found these prices because we wanted our customers to be able to afford them but also for us to have a profit out of them as well our variable cost comes out to be 3.98 we came across this price by researching profoundly on the internet on different websites to find the right fits we will create our tote bags and t-shirts out of cotton and wool they will be produced by our manufacturers and distributed by us our stickers will be personally designed and printed by us which we also distribute our fair market value comes out to be twelve thousand dollars we found our fair market value through our assets and revenue our assets came out to be four thousand dollars while our revenue came out to be seven thousand dollars we have a variety of different assets in our company those are including our machinery our permits our rent our salaries for eric and i our other utilities and finally our insurance branched out has a great potential for growth in the future we plan to expand our merchandise line allowing for more creative ideas the company also could expand to new territories such as an app the window of opportunity is large branched out is a great investment as a company because we have a great return on investment at 11 we calculated our roi using our annual profits divided by our startup cost our return on investment indicates that we will recoup our investment in a short amount of time allowing for growth we hope you will consider our ask thank you and we look forward to working with you i hope you all enjoyed our presentation today my partner eric and i were thrilled to have the opportunity to propose our business idea to you all thank you guys for your time and consideration i appreciate you all very much have a great day thank you okay judges your questions for team 3 the clock for the format q a begins now um thank you um eric and alex for your presentation um so your numbers um work but i'm kind of confused a little bit on the value proposition and exactly what your product is i i guess that you um have you know you're putting the logo on t-shirts and bags and stickers but what is your value proposition or your mission our value proposition is we're asking for 22 000 dollars from for 20 equity which we got from our fair market valuation which we recalculated and we actually found our fair market valuation is 113 000 and basically the the product is a service through a website where you can post like um stories or experiences like a blog post and the merchandise is just an add-on that will allow us to make profits too got it thank you you're welcome i don't know if i missed it or not but is there monthly recurring membership are there different price points honestly i feel like i only heard what you were going to do with regards to monetization from a merchandise standpoint so i'm i'm just not sure how you actually make money outside of merch so i i didn't hear anything about ad spend uh and that was kind of what i was expecting to hear given that this was something that you drew a parallel to linkedin so our goal basically would be to start off with merchandise and as we grow bigger we would consider advertising from different like companies as well how about customer acquisition cost uh what's it gonna cost you to get a customer to go to your website uh the website there will there won't be a website fee but i would uh the merchandise would be the only uh price for the customer using the website yeah but how are you going to find your customers what's the cost to you finding a customer how are you going to market this alex you want to answer this our main goal would be through social media trying to get our friends to be involved and then from there we'd branch out with like other adults and everything one minute and 30 seconds i guess my question just to follow up with some of the other judges is what are we what are you gonna ask your the family and friends is it about the merch sales or is it about this other product that you're comparing to linkedin the customers will they can share uh their experiences about racial injustices or opportunities for minorities and the website and the merch is just like to show your support for the community gonna plug in just really quickly um something i would recommend is looking up some kind of an ambassador program uh morning brew is a niche media company and i would view this right you have a certain niche that you're trying to cater to from a community standpoint but your marketing plan could probably use some refinement with regards to outreach so for you at the high school you're at how do you get ambassadors at other high schools who also feel strongly about this not just in the county but around the state first and to get them speaking about some of these these items but look up morning brews ambassador program you could look up other ambassador programs as well you're going to find people who have similar passions that you do but there needs to be a little bit more of i'd say a streamlined plan to make sure that if you're going to do this kind of like grassroots marketing you know approach that there's some kind of plan in place and maybe there's little stickers or things that you're sending to some of your ambassadors and some of your people that are involved but uh i i just think that the friends and family thing it's it's limited in my opinion thank you dr funk all right we are at time thank you team three at this time we have another video message this time from two of our pack members [Music] good afternoon i'm vic samuels i'm the vice president of community relations for educational systems federal credit union i just want to say congratulations to each one of you because you are all winners before we even start today you know before i started thinking about some tips to give you today i spoke to our cpa executive vice president chief financial officer and i asked him i said what message can i bring to the students today and the first thing he told me is he said well please tell them all to be very very conscious of their business plan a lot of times people do not spend the appropriate time with that business plan he said that means everything also you know when you start talking about financial management and learning how to deal with money you need to start that early right now if you don't have an income try to find a job try to have something come in so you can manage what goes out because when you start thinking about your personal finance it is an ongoing check businesses people you may want to borrow from they want to know that you know how to deal with your own money let alone money that you might want to borrow from a financial institution at the end of the day the main thing i want to leave with you is be aware of your credit that credit is so important your credit history tells whether or not you keep your promises if you don't really really believe in your idea or your enterprise and are willing to put money behind it you need to be the first person sold on your business idea otherwise how can you expect anyone else to so congrats once again i wish each of you the best of luck in this year's mcps business pitch challenge and have a great rest of the day and stay safe everyone brad sherman born and raised in montgomery county president and founder of sherman wealth management my mother was a school teacher for 35 years at blair high school so excited that you students are being a part of the business pitch challenge for mcps keep at this entrepreneurial journey it may be a grind but it's totally worth it in the end get your mindset right and keep up and make sure that that intersection of health and wealth is really a focus i'd say the number one tip for an entrepreneur is to keep grinding you're gonna get a bunch of no's but the yeses are well worth it stick at it and keep with it good luck in the business pitch challenge happy to support you any way we can have a great day [Music] thank you to our pac members vic samuels representing one of our sponsors for today's event educational systems federal credit union and brad sherman for their words of inspiration and encouragement students if you notice we're hearing this recurring theme about grit and perseverance right things that are so incredibly important in business and life in general but also too the importance of having a sound business plan practicing financial management and knowing how to handle money and sticking with the entrepreneurial journey one of the things that i often emphasize to students is the importance of having multiple streams of income so these skills and venture creation are key components of that always be thinking about how you can monetize your skills and your gifts at this time i would like to introduce team four from northwood high school who is presenting their pitch for redemption arch hi my name is angel cosby and i'm adrian mohipath we are northwood and we are so happy to show you redemption arc where there's light there can be growth so a few weeks back my friends and i were having lunch at silver spring this homeless guy came up to us and asked if we had any food and money we looked down and avoided his eyes and we said no and then he moved on to another family i don't know what they said but all of a sudden he started shouting the hopeless man i mean he started saying how he hated our country and how he hated our president and then he said that everyone who pledges to the flag is racist and that's how he wanted the president to send him out of this country he got escorted away but not before saying some really mean things this however did start an interesting conversation with my friends and i to from is homelessness was because of the people or what causes homelessness to begin with is it the federal government's or the state government's problem what is being done about homelessness to the realization that there isn't much being done to help people get out of the hole of poverty our target audience will be people who has lost their home for whatever reason our product will be a non-profitable organization to help the homeless most homeless shelters only let people stay there for one night or two and provide a couple of free meals but none of them actually help them to get back on their feet two nights out of the streets is not enough for someone to get back on their life they once had our business will be an organization that lets not 10 not 20 but 50 people to stay at months at a time as well as a rehab center to help those who has lost their lives to drugs alcohol and gambling this workshop teaches people how to write resumes and how to get a job and how to go back to school get the school education to regain the knowledge they once had and showers and donated clean clothes to impress the world around them what makes our business so special and unique well like my primer adrienne said we'll have workshops we'll have computer labs we'll have kitchens to teach basic cooking skills we'll have a health center and rooms for people to stay in the night our staffing will be mostly run by high school or college students so they can get ssl hours and learn more about themselves and the community around them our atmosphere we like the schools to actually help people get back on their feet and ready to face the world clients will sign a contract to participate in all of our services so they don't become just another shelter a non-profit organization like us that help the homeless get back on their feet we provide housing for several months clean clothes food rehab center and life skills workshop now this sounds a lot like a lot so how do we start it up well we'll need the prescription drugs to help the people get off of alcohol other drugs and gambling we will have stationery so people can write or draw and release their artistic abilities we'll have bedroom supplies such as comforters bed sheets pillows toothbrushes and toothpaste we'll have books because who doesn't like to read washers and dryers to clean clothes bed frames desks carpet and because we're helping the people we also wanted to help the environment so we're going to buy solar panels and batteries and generators to help make our world a little bit better computers food and clothing now i know before i said that we are going to have mostly high school students in colleges to help out and that is true but there are some people adults needed to help run this business such as teachers entrepreneurship teachers would be really cool but we let anyone who knows what they're doing pharmacists to give out the drugs because we can't do that as kids lunch ladies and other and other people who are willing to help with our organization now this all seems like a lot and it kind of is the grand total to pay for all of those things is 221 981 and if you are willing to give us that money we will give you 20 of our equity so i know you're wondering how does a non-profitable organization make a profit well it's simple we will have a small side thrift store connected to our main building to our customers all items will be free for them to keep my customers homeless homeless people and to the public the public would pay for the items they want like a regular thrift store the clothing the clothes would be donated from other people we will also sell our own personalized t-shirts stickers and magnets with our company logo and name we can make a profit of sixty three thousand eight hundred and eighty dollars per year from the thrift store and one t-shirt costs thirty dollars and stickers and magnets go for five dollars each thank you so much for listening to our presentation my name is angel cosby and i'm adrian mohipath we are from northwood and we hope you understood your company thank you okay questions for team four from the judges the clock for the four-minute q a begins now i mean first of all i'll say like you know i can tell you guys have awesome hearts so that's awesome thank you for like wanting to do this and have it in your heart straight up because i can tell you guys are sincere about it um as somebody who has a non-profit okay i have a non-profit i've worked with many so i know this stuff very well and every single part that you're describing from t-shirt sales to dealing with homelessness to staffing stuff i have a lot of experience with so i don't really have that many questions actually as you were going i was like how are they going to do with that how they're going to do that that's a problem i've had issues with this you did answer each one it's just i i did tell you straight up it is a lot of work it is a lot of work so you guys did mention that so ideas are awesome i think you guys can make it happen i'm not going to sit here and say you can't i just want to say a few things real fast and more of advice rather than asking a question okay one i have a non-profit i know you can pay people out of your non-profit i will say this like if i have i have events that thousands of people come to and i sell shirts there that go to a non-profit and stuff like that but even that alone doesn't bring as much money as you think and with the non-profit you guys are trying to start you're going to be housing people paying all kinds of stuff from food to prescription drugs to doctors to this and that and there's so much that goes into it so i think the money you're talking about right now it's going to be so much more from what i see and this is just coming from somebody who does have a lot of experience in that so i just need to make sure you guys understand it's going to be more than that and you need to have an on ongoing revenue service so it's not just going to be like the t-shirt sales you need to have partnerships monthly donations people that are giving like ten dollars a month and that adds up you know what i'm saying you have like little things like that so overall idea awesome you guys i'm a big fan of it i'm just saying keep in mind it's going to take a lot more than you think this is and and i'll be more than happy to talk to you guys outside of here about it because this is this is exactly kind of what i do in my daily life you know what i'm saying is working with the type of people you're talking about one more thing real fast before a judge asks a question safety you you're not going to have a bunch of high school kids dealing with these people after being straight up and you did address that you're like we're gonna have to have adults and doctors and teachers yes but you're gonna need full-time staff adults that are familiar with this life that are actually stationed there and stuff like that you can't just have high school kids running around with this kind of situation you know unfortunately these people are in a tough spot but a lot of these people do have some you know unfortunately some issues so we just have to make sure about the safety part as well but other than that thank you guys for sharing and i look forward to hearing more if you guys want to hit me up outside of here i'll be glad to give you some more pointers and help you guys out okay sorry i'll chime in just really really quickly i think something that would be very beneficial um when you're coming up with the expenses for your program um i was curious honestly like how big are the facilities did you include rent are you buying the facilities these people i hate to say it but if you're talking about like mental health professionals i mean they paid to go to graduate school they have student loans you're gonna have to consider paying them their wages so i i just do think that 221 thousand dollars um is is is a lot less than you're going to need this is going to be very uh you know capital intensive just to get off the ground i think there uh some some questions i was having was how are you gonna have events to bring in donors how are you gonna have regular people contributing to the to the operation um what partnerships are you going to potentially put together outside of the the four walls of the facility these are all questions just to make sure that you have the financials in place to support something that is going to be largely very very capital intensive early on and and increasingly as it grows 20 seconds to respond there's all the really good questions and we will have the thrift store to help get in the annual money which will help that i know you guys say that that's not enough and of course we totally understand but we will also have like other fundraisers where we will spread the awareness to get donations and sell the shirts and i know you all say that that's not enough to get the money that we need and we totally understand but that's just how what we right now as we start and as we grow and as we look into more ideas all right details we are at time so i do have to interrupt so so sorry i want to make sure we respect our time here thank you to team four at this time i would like to introduce team five from blake high school who is presenting their pitch for mcps connect hey sharks my name is arthur jean pierre and i'm a co-founder of mcps connect we're here today seeking four thousand dollars for forty percent equity in our business mcps connect now let me tell you about an issue that students across the nation are facing especially right here in montgomery county students as well as their parents just don't have an easy way to find and upload school paperwork and resources for example searching for your school district pre-participation physical form and then actually filling out the form to then submit it online the current methods are such a hassle so me and my other co-founder joey came up with the solution mcps connect without the need to endlessly browse the school website for forms and having to go through dozens of steps to actually submit it students and parents can now easily locate the form fill it out and quickly submit it in no time now all now we all know that time is money and mcps connect saves you a lot of both by digitizing school paperwork at a low cost too our interactive menu system has all the resources that will best fit your needs the menu system integrates an upload search and edit option with the search option the user can quickly locate any form by simply typing it in the search bar once located the user can then edit and submit the form to their school directory this can all be done in just a few tabs now let me tell you a little bit about myself my name is arthur jean pierre and i'm a current junior at james hubert blake high school i was a graphic designer and planner and strategist for this presentation as well as mcps connect i plan to major in legal studies and political science oh now let me pass the mic to my other co-founder joey thank you sharks thanks arthur hey sharks my name is joey sauron i'm the other ceo of mcps connect now the next phase we'll be moving into is marketing montgomery county public schools will actually do most of this for us through their own communication vehicles how will they market mcps connects specifically you may be asking well they'll encourage students to download the app and praise the simplicity and also integrate the app with registration for programs and extracurriculars affiliated with mcps mcps connect will also give the first 500 students who sign up a free yearly subscription since the majority of our advertising will be through word of mouth below me you can see our business's projected timeline for the next few years in early march of 2020 the mcps connect app idea was born we soon started coding and testing the app and came to the conclusion that in about a year or so we've released beta versions to ios and android devices we'd also like to partner with norton security and to ensure that this app is safe for all and also expand to schools across the country in the next two years we'd also like to start developing a computer version in order to start mcps connect both arthur and i each put in three thousand dollars that we earned through a summer job after looking over business projections we found that we need about ten thousand dollars in order to start official development so the four thousand dollars that you will be giving us will allow us to reach that goal now sharks here are some numbers get ready a one-year mcps connect subscription will cost one dollar per student and parent that signs up and after looking over the mcps student population count of 162 000 we calculated that within the first full year of operation we will gross at least 162 000 wow time is money and mcps connect will be sure to save plenty of each now we move on to the exit strategy in the next few years we hope to expand and integrate mcps connect into school districts all across the country eventually we'd also like to sell our app to a company like canvas when you might ask probably in the next three to five years overall we want mcps connect's core values to stay the same we want it to be affordable efficient and most importantly easy to use as we wrap up our presentation you may be asking yourself why such a high equity percent and low cash asking simple we don't just care about the money and profit made we care about the impact we have on those who use the app with the help of your expertise and knowledge mcps connect can grow from a countywide application to a nationwide application used by all school systems all in all we feel that your knowledge is the key and growth to mcps connects overall success let's face it we're living in the 21st century it's time to take all forms and documentation digital with mcps connect judges and team blake it is now time for the q a once again judges take it away the clock for the four minute q a begins now i'll i'll start with this one i i love the idea as somebody who has a lot of challenges filling out internship paperwork uh with the 27 different schools in the county that are all still paper submission uh it's dated compared to other counties around the area so something like this uh i think probably runs parallel with that out of curiosity um what are you doing to ensure that you are maybe following uh you may be a a bigger company or or who else did you look to to put together software uh for this particular endeavor and are you gonna be able to white label it so it's not mcps connect for the other counties um okay i'll let you guys go sorry um yes i'll take this question joey um um so concerning your part of the question about um white labeling yes um for example if we go to pg county it would be pgms on connect pg and connect and um your other part of the question was companies that we looked at um to see like to compare to our business and how we could make our business better we looked at companies like canvas and um um and we decided that we want to maybe even sell it to canvas as you guys heard in the presentation and also um i think mcps has um student view and we want to be able to integrate our app with student view so the students can easily you know um transfer all their information to mcps or even um if they're currently on the mcps app connect app they can easily go to student view and do whatever they need to do fast easy and quick that's what our app wants to provide students with a question why um would you need norton um the antivirus on your app well it's just just security for the app yeah wouldn't it have a security if you were on the apple or an ios it would we would just like to partner with them too yes because we don't want students because in mcps a lot a lot of focus goes into student privacy and we want to ensure that every student's um information is stored and it's safe and it's not accessible to people who they don't want seeing their information yeah no i love your product um and i would totally invest in your company and give you your four thousand dollars so thank you very much that's appreciated in 30 seconds listen i'm just gonna say that i'll leave it i'm not gonna ask a question i like how you came on this show i mean who better to hit than mcps itself you're on this business pet challenge pitch and i just like you know how you guys step up and just if you're people listening is who needs to hear what you're doing in the first place and it's straight up you know there's other people listening in right now that are part of ncps smart move that's just a smart move i like that and then two um you could just like like you said just sell this overall like go to each county if you need to each state whatever and you can just sell it right instead of getting that dollar listen i have a kid in bunker county schools i'm not i'm just sometimes just lazy i don't want to pay a dollar for that right i would just rather the school system pay for it and everybody who gets it is enrolled in it you know like the overall school system pays for every single kid just like they do for the lunches right now they pay for every lunches anybody wants free lunches they get it so overall i don't think the dollar per person is a move because i've done that even with my charities and stuff and hey we want a dollar per month by each people just don't want to do it because it's laziness you know what i'm saying so it's already done like if the county buys it i think that's the move overall i would invest i like this i think the simplicity i always want to go to a one-stop shop something on my kids computer going all over the place but mcps i mean you they they got it here and i like uh i love the school system obviously we're working with them but i think this might be a good idea so thanks for sharing today we appreciate that your knowledge will help us a lot thank you small small suggestion to look up enterprise sales that might be a better idea rather than having somebody sell this on a per student basis as kyle mentioned may be better off to pitch this to entire counties you could even be going to potentially people at the state level so that just might be right an idea to take this further thank you dr funk okay thank you team five at this time i would like to introduce team six from winston churchill high school who was presenting their pitch for amerio 360. this is mark like many people mark has things at home that he needs taken care of for example mowing the lawn house cleaning car washing mark knows that to take care of these chores it would cost him a lot of time or money or both and neither are things that he enjoys dealing with but now there's an alternative by downloading 360 armadillo all it takes is the push of a button by simply selecting your desired service or services 360 armadillo will automatically reach out to individuals or companies who can help you with your request once you have sent out your request 360 armadillo will search in your local area and find the perfect match when someone has accepted your request an estimated wait time will be sent to you so that you can know when to expect them with the help of 360 armadillo mark can have a wonderful day along with his family while his troubles are being taken care of for him [Music] [Music] hi i'm mathias flores representing winston churchill high school and thank you guys for being with us today to start out lawn care services house cleaning and car cleaning are three of the most common services provided in our nation today with 360 armadillo we have developed the plan of a software that will be able to easily connect the worker and the customer giving the worker a benefit of completing more services on a frequent basis and giving the customer the benefits of being able to pay a more standard price and get their services when needed 360 armadillo will take a total of 10 of the total payment for every service done while looking at the statistics of how much these services can complete in the day and how much money they earn in a day we are looking at a 10-year plan looking forward to eventually being able to make an average benefit of more than 23 million dollars per day [Music] 360 armadillo is seeking a twelve thousand dollar investment to begin with at these twelve thousand dollars we will be able to purchase the hardware necessary to actually construct the software and also hire the experts will help us develop it and spread it out i want to thank you guys for being with us today my name is matthias flores i'm the founder of teen tech blue i'm the lead businessman of team tech blue and the co-tech of 360 armadillo thank you okay it's time for the q a judges take it away the clock for the four minute q a begins now hi guys uh great idea uh very creative i think uh here's my question for you all right i'm i'm i'm using your app and i want to get my lawn mowed and it's going to cost me 50 bucks how are you making the payment how is the customer making the payment and how are you getting your 10 percent i'm not hearing anything is our team ready to respond just anybody else on the team want to take the question i know he just uh we can't we can't hear him you know i'm saying so we just want to give him a little time to kind of figure it out right it looks like mr flores is the only one here representing the team perhaps in the meantime uh perhaps in the meantime we do have another video message um that we were going to be sharing following the q a so maybe we'll give it a moment uh to let the audio issue b

2021-03-23 15:54

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