Three Ohio University students have attempted to soften the burden of studying with their new, award-wining mobile app.
Richard Rodman, Supradeep Kumar and Chad Stroud entered Startup Weekend in April with three potential product ideas. The trio, which called itself FlashCrop, came out of the three-day event with a well-developed concept and the $2,500 first-place prize.
With their invention, college students would be able to photograph class notes with their smartphones and turn them into digital flash cards.
“It takes out the nonsense of writing notecards,” said Rodman, a junior studying entrepreneurship.
The app also landed FlashCrop first place at the Center for Entrepreneurship’s Pitch Us Your Plan competition last Thursday. With the recent publicity and $2,500 in the bank, Rodman said the group is working toward developing the product further and marketing it to a local crowd in the near future.
“We are moving as fast as we can with this, without going too fast,” he said.
About eight groups competed during last month’s Startup Weekend, an annual event hosted by the Innovation Center, Ohio’s first university-based business incubator. The event integrated both college students and community members into a 48-hour pitch-and-produce affair.
“The judges were impressed with the high level of ingenuity and talent demonstrated by the first cohort,” said Jennifer Simon, director of the Innovation Center, in a press release.
Based on the results of similar events around the globe, about 30 percent of participating teams pursue their business pitches post-competition. This year’s Startup Weekend required its contestants to work with a mobile app theme.
Even second- and third-place winners didn’t go home empty handed. Agribuddy, a five-person mix of students and residents, earned the second-place prize of $1,500, while the Monitor Control Group, consisting of six community members, won $1,000 for third place.
“What I like about being an entrepreneur is the sense of being creative and being able to develop an idea or concept that might flourish into something that will help the community,” said Jesus Pagan, member of the Monitor Control Group and assistant director of OU’s Institute for Sustainable Energy and the Environment.
Both first- and third-place winners are already considering claiming a spot in the upcoming 10-week Engine Accelerator program held by the Innovation Center. The summer boot camp is the final event before OU’s first offering of an entrepreneurship program to accommodate its growing number of student visionaries.
“We have a lot of entrepreneurs inside of OU, especially in digital media where students are practicing with different mobile and computer applications,” said Katrice Williams, program manager at the Innovation Center. “They just needed a forum to display their ideas.”
oy311909@ohiou.edu
