Business plan contest’s pool of finalists whittled to five

Ten have become five as the last leg of the Dominic Anthony Marrocco Southern Nevada Business Plan Competition gets underway.

The annual contest pits would-be and active local entrepreneurs against one another in a battle to have their business plans selected as the top idea by a panel that includes angel investors, business educators and local experts.

The final five finalists will make presentations to the judges April 4. The judges will make their final selections before the awards ceremony, running 5:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. that evening at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas’ Foundation Building, Blasco Event Wing. Hors d’oeuvres and drinks will be available at this free event.

This year’s winner will receive $30,000 cash and $40,000 in-kind prizes. The business plan competition is co-sponsored by the Las Vegas Business Press and the Center for Entrepreneurship in the Lee Business School at UNLV.

Your five finalists are:

■ Jason Alt and Lukas Johnson co-founded GovernSocial.com, a social network connecting citizens with government to enable conversations.

“It seemed to us there was an increasing distrust in government,” Alt said.

Once the website is live, users key in their home address, and the site populates the user’s network with relevant politicians, allowing them to track news and issues that happen at every level in their network. Contact information and links will be listed for each politician, and eventually Alt said the site should have a communication platform to enable conversations between users and elected officials.

“We bring everything together and make it a one-stop access point for citizens,” Alt said.

■ Smart Start aims to help Chinese students ages 16 to 22 acclimate to learn in the U.S. Layna Chui conceptualized the business, which focuses on college students, from personal experiences.

“I used to be in the same exact situation as these students were,” Chui said.

Shui, who is originally from Hong Kong, came to America at age 8 and found that it was hard to get used to American customs at school.

“To me, it was a totally different planet,” she said.

While attending Loyola University New Orleans as an undergraduate, Chui helped Chinese students, who were experiencing what she had, to acclimate.

Chui and Smart Start teammates Alden Wonnell, Peggy Yuen and Xiaosheng Huang, aims to help Chinese students get used to American culture academically, socially and professionally.

For $18,000 for two years of service, students and families who become Smart Start clients will get a private American host who helps guide them every day for the first year and as needed during the second. Later this year, Chui plans to travel to China to begin advertising the business and, she hopes, net her first client.

■ Patrik Balint, Mragendra Singh, Caitlyn Kelly and Micah Lapping-Carr make up the team behind Webraind Corp., a social quiz website.

Webraind targets groups of people. It lets users connect to websites to test their knowledge of what they learned on the site. Tests are scored, and can be compared with those of other users.

Initially, the site will be targeted to small communities with interests in particular areas: think “Star Wars” or “Star Trek” fans. Eventually, Balint said he’d like to see it grow into sports questions and into all types of trivia and education.

“We see the potential of building something very significant,” he said.

■ ProStem Solutions Inc.’s concept is to collect and store clients’ dental stem cells. The team is composed of Dannette Swift, Joshua Langdon, Scott Boleyn and Antonina Capurro.

■ Skyworks Aerial Systems designs, manufactures and sells unmanned aerial vehicles, aka drones, for civil and commercial applications. Greg Friesmuth and Jinger Zeng founded the team.

Aside from competing in the business plan contest, the team has a working prototype, and has been talking to investors in town.

“It’s kind of all a work in progress,” Zeng said.

The team’s vehicle differs from others in that its base design is able to be geared to customer specifications, making it marketable for multiple applications. It uses carbon fiber, so it’s stronger than others that typically use plastic.

“Technology development is one thing,” Zeng said. “But to create a business, the competition is a really good exercise.”

Contact reporter Laura Carroll at lcarroll@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-4588. Follow @lscvegas on Twitter.