Elevator Pitch Contest Names 20 Finalists

115 entrepreneurs competed in the preliminary competitions around South Florida, and 20 of them will vie for prizes during Global Entrepreneurship Week.

“They need to have a passion for their business. It just shines through,” said Richard Ginsburg, managing partner of G3 Capital Partners investment firm and one of the judges in this year’s Elevator Pitch Contest.

What else? “A well-thought-out strategy and someone who took the time to rehearse,” added Ralph MacNamara, director of client services at accounting firm Kaufman Rossin and a returning judge.

An elevator pitch is a well-practiced spiel designed to catch the interest of a potential investor – or customer or partner – in about the time of an elevator ride. It’s an essential tool of an entrepreneur.

“You never know when you are going to meet someone that will impact your business – it may be in a restaurant, on an airplane,” Ginsburg said. “When you have that opportunity, you are ready to rock and roll.”

Last week, 115 entrepreneurs with existing businesses gave it their best shot in 90 seconds in the preliminary competitions of the 4th annual Elevator Pitch Contest, presented by the University of Miami’s Launch Pad, an entrepreneurial resource center. The preliminary contests were open to the community and held at Florida International University, Miami Dade College and Terremark as well as UM.

After each contestant gave a pitch, panels of judges rated the entrant on criteria that included the quality of the presentation, the market opportunity of the business, general operations and milestones reached, the value to the customer and the call to action. Even if they didn’t advance to the finals, seeing the other pitches was a learning experience, Ginsburg said.

The 20 finalists who emerged from the preliminaries will be competing in the finals Nov. 15 during Global Entrepreneurship Week.

“What I find the most exciting is to see entrepreneurship alive and well in South Florida. It is almost infectious,” MacNamara said.

Finalists in the student category are:

• Mark Slaughter, Collaborative Bioscience
• Quinn Worden, PT United Inc.
• Raul Pla, SimpleWiFi.com
• Anthony Blackman, Squeaky Cleaning Services LLC
• Jon Kowalsky, Studio120
• Amanda M. Crum, The Vak Shack, LLC
• George Bahadue, TheInterner.com

Finalists in the community category are:

• Barbara A. Wooden, Agape Marine Ventures
• Nicole Garcia, Blue Planet Petroleum LLC
• Tommy Green, CooLHeadS LLC.
• Colin Foord, Coral Morphologic LLC
• Davide Di Cillo, Fifth Layer, Inc.
• Chris Malek, JOTS
• Lascelle A. Sweetland, Laspainc
• Terry Lee Jacobs, Le Tropique, Inc.
• Chris Chrebet, Leggo.fm
• Eric Schwartz, LittleWunz
• Melinda Dixon, Merlin AI Soft, LLC
• Mary Foden, Splitable, Inc.
• Alex Suarez-Mondshein, Words to Live By.

Before the finals, each finalist will receive additional coaching from the Launch Pad. The winners in the final round will split a prize package worth $116,000, said Susan Amat, executive director of the Launch Pad.

The prizes are designed to help the entrepreneurs take their companies to the next level, Amat said. This year, they include a brand strategy and positioning package from Republica; Web marketing services from BGT Partners; intellectual property legal work from Christopher & Weisberg; public relations strategy from Carma PR; and accounting support from Kaufman Rossin

For more information about the Pitch Contest and the Launch Pad’s other Global Entrepreneurship activities, go tohttp://thelaunchpad.org/.