By JULIE CARLE
BG Independent News
Quan Le’s idea for a website to help international students find a good match for college would have eased some of her anxiety when deciding what U.S. university to attend more than five years ago.
Jacob Litsey’s food allergies spurred him to develop a protein bar that is made without any of the top allergy-inducing ingredients.
Ryan Lothamer developed the concept of The Spark Foundation to ignite a passion in the sciences for middle school and high school students, just as his high school science teacher did for him.
David Timm and his longtime friend Cody Karamol felt the multiverse format of traditional comics didn’t meet the interests of younger readers, so they created a graphic novel series that focuses on “one timeline, one universe, one path,” Timm said.
Le, Litsey, Lothamer and Timm were four of the seven Bowling Green State University students who presented their business plans for products and ideas during the live-stream portion of The Hatch Thursday evening. Ten other students shared their plans in front of a live audience only prior to the livestream event. All 17 of the “hatchlings” spent the past 10 weeks refining their ideas and preparing their entrepreneurial pitches.
Five BGSU alumni judges listened to the hatchlings’ ideas during the Shark Tank-like livestream event before voting on awards that would earn the young entrepreneurs a share of a $30,000 pot of start-up money.
Le, a Master of Business Administration student from Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam, earned the Best Overall Pitch award for her web-based platform called Where World U. She also earned one of two people’s choice awards, the prestigious award best known as the Eggy.
Mackenzie Hennagin, who was one of nine students who presented to the live audience prior to the livestream event, also won an Eggy Award. Her product is called Heat Safe, which is a device to make cooking easier by detecting pre-set maximum temperatures on a pot or pan.
“Five years ago, the first thing I did when I got to BGSU (as an undergraduate chemistry major) was to Facetime my grandfather to show him that I got into a real U.S. college and that I did not get scammed,” Le said in her pitch introduction. “We were terrified of not choosing a legitimate, suitable college and wasting hundreds of thousands of dollars.”
For her and many international students hoping to earn a U.S. college degree, the biggest obstacle is not being able to tour and see the campuses for themselves, she said.
Le’s product, Where World U, is an all-in-one platform for the burgeoning study abroad market for international students. An online quiz for prospective students can match users directly with universities that best fit their preferences at no cost, she explained.
For a small subscription fee, users can have access to more advanced features and tools such as a living-cost calculator and an alumni network that would be “beneficial to their long-term success,” Le said.
“You have great poise. That was a wonderful presentation,” said Hatch judge Bruce Fisher ‘68, retired vice president of Hayward Pool Products. He asked Le about the scalability of the product “relative to what’s happening in the geo-political world today.”
Where World U can be scaled up geographically to include other countries or broadened to increase the amount and variety of services provided, she said.
“U.S. News and World Report” is the main competitor in the industry; however, the ratings are based more on academic ranking.
“It’s not just what we study in the classroom,” Le said. “I think the community is an important part, because it’s the community that helps you become the best version of yourself,” Le said. The web platform would emphasize the value of university communities.
Market Potential Award
Long-time friends Timm and Karamol from Waterville, Ohio, are the founders and authors of IronClad Comics. Their idea for a new generation of graphic novel publishers earned the Hatch’s Market Potential Award. The concept for the next generation of comic books is designed to appeal to younger readers “who have been left behind by the industry,” Timm said.
They created a method to solve the challenges of the current industry: too many choices of books, timelines and universes; poor content format that is too short for most readers; and community abandonment by the traditional industry.
Timm and Karamol believe their graphic novels will appeal to an audience of 15.8 million readers who spend an average of $1,200 a year on entertainment. IronClad’s pillars of forging new icons, modern epics, and streamlined storytelling would give “consumers the product they want through the vehicle they want,” Timm said.
“The Warden,” their first product under the IronClad name has received 123% on their Kickstarter campaign.
Innovative Technology Award
Owen Thompson had the idea for TopWater Tools, a family of products that include simple, handheld tools that float in water for easy retrieval when dropped. He won the Innovative Technology Award.
“The end users (for the floatable tools) will save time and money, and have peace of mind knowing a tool dropped is no longer a tool lost,” said the junior systems engineering major from Oregon, Ohio.
“You’ve seen how the tools will stay afloat, now let’s see how the business will stay afloat,” Thompson said.
His company will create, design and develop functional, affordable and patentable tools, that can be produced by companies that already have manufacturing capabilities.
Judges Marilee MacAskill ’86, area director at the Dale Carnegie Training Center of NE Ohio, and Mike McDaniel ’01, vice president and general manager of Global Workplace and Mobility, who both admitted to being avid boaters, were keen on the idea.
“My husband and I have been boaters for 25 years, and we have lost so many tools in the water under our boat. I can’t believe no one’s thought of this before. Is there competition?” McAskill asked.
To date, Thompson has not found any current competitors in the buoyancy category. He identified a company that was in the market many years ago but went under, possibly because they tried to produce the tools themselves.
“There was just too much overhead and not a big enough market that they couldn’t get above the initial costs,” he surmised. “That’s why we talk about building a patent portfolio and licensing those patents out.”
PNC Community Impact Award
Science education major Ryan Lothamer, of Defiance, Ohio, won the PNC Community Impact Award for his proposed educational nonprofit that provides access to hands-on, experiential learning opportunities for children in underserved and underrepresented communities.
Honorable mention awards were presented for Litsey’s allergy-friendly Everyone Bar, Everett Weaver’s idea for the Fold-N-Stroll Stroller, and Cortney Smalley’s plan for the Unity Community Barbershop to provide inclusive hair designs and styles for transgender and LGBTQIA+ communities in Detroit.
