The Office of Economic and Regional Development held a competition that required students to pitch business ideas to a board of judges in 90 seconds or less.

After deliberation, the judges chose Brandon Nolte, a senior from Golden Eagle studying business management, to be the winner.

Greg Bouhl, assistant director of entrepreneurship and business, was a judge at the competition and said the key qualities judges looked for in a winner were personality, concept, weather or not their pitches will solve a problem for a company, and uniqueness.

Advertisement

“The scoring criteria that is used for this competition is very much like a business plan competition or what an investment planner is going to use to evaluate a project,” he said.

Bouhl also said Nolte had specific characteristics, which set him apart from the rest of the competitors.

“Brandon articulated his idea very well,” he said. “He talked about the market opportunity and was very passionate about what he was doing and that really came through in his presentation.”

Bouhl said his job was to work with entrepreneurs to help get investment funding and prepare for competitions.

Nolte said there were different things he had to keep in mind in order to win.

“The judges were a panel of peers and there’s always room for error and that pressure to impress,” he said. “You have one chance to get it right.”

He said he invested a good amount of time and effort into perfecting his pitch and that it was a trail and error process.

Advertisement*

“A year and a half ago I started researching,” he said. “It’s a lot of repetition, going over it [the pitch], hitting all the key points and memorizing expressions and mannerisms.”