- November 23, 2024
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The Center for Business Excellence offers entrepreneurs a chance to develop business plans with mentors.
BY WAYNE GRANT | STAFF WRITER
Cathy Caverly, of Ormond Beach, had worked for startup businesses, but felt like she had only seen pieces of how a business really gets started.
“I wanted to see all the pieces,” she said.
So even though she got a job at Palm Coast’s Coastal Cloud a month ago, she continued in the Center for Business Excellence’s Startup Quest competition, that began in June. The program offered entreprenuers a chance to work with a mentor and learn all the facets of starting their own business.
Caverly, who has a degree in mathematics, said the knowledge gained will be valuable in the future.
“I’ve always wanted to start up my own business,” she said.
About 40 participants were divided into nine teams that worked to develop a business plan for a new product. Patents held by various universities in Florida were used as products in the exercise.
The teams presented their business plans Aug. 13 to a group of well-known businesspeople who served as judges, at SW Grill at Sunset Harbor Yacht Club and Conference Center.
Caverly’s team presented a plan for Bike Safe Barriers, which they said would do a better job preventing accidents than current highway barriers. After a vehicle breaks the plastic coating of the Bike Save Barrier, a net inside traps the vehicle. It can stop a vehicle going 80 mph in eight feet.
Kevin Lorden, of Ormond Beach, who has a degree in communications and previously worked in advertising, said the program was like a college course.
“It was more intense than I thought it would be,” he said. “It was very beneficial. For one thing, you have to get up in front of people and speak.”
He said he learned about all parts of a business including marketing, manufacturing, finance and sales.
“It made us think about and research these things,” he said.
Refered to as a hands-on simulation, the exercises were about learning, not actually launching products. But it would be possible to take one of the ideas and start a business, according to Jim Borth, of Ormond Beach.
“It would be doable,” he said. “We’re considering it.”
Borth, who has an masters of business administration degree and formerly worked at Palm Coast Data, worked on the Solar Flair, a new solar panel design that efficiently collects and stores energy.
The first prize winner was Syntech Diagnostics, a device that diagnoses cancer using a laser, avoiding the long wait for test results. Second prize went to Cath Tech Solutions, which provides a non-protruding irradiation catheter for breast cancer patients. Winning third prize was the DynA team for a computerized phonics learning program that is personalized to a child’s voice.
Rick Fraser, CBE president, said he was very pleased with the size of the audience and participants who packed the event.
Two more Startup Quests are planned, the next beginning in January and another held next fall.
