Spring Break
Business competition held for start-ups
Joshua Kurtz
Issue date: 7/3/09 Section: News
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Stabiliz is made up of Doug Cerynik, CEO; Michael Adelizzi, CTO; Brad Grossman, COO; and Mark Seltzer, CFO. All four members are MBA candidates studying business administration in the LeBow College of Business.
The company received $12,000 in start-up funds and more than $35,000 in in-kind support for finishing in first place.
"The Stabiliz team was very strong, very experienced," Mark Loschiavo, executive director of the Baiada Center, said.
The competition provides students with relevant experience in entrepreneurship.
"It is important to us that the students get the opportunity to really understand the process [of entrepreneurship]," Loschiavo said.
Stabiliz's product was innovative, and it clearly met an unmet need, Loschiavo added.
Susan Harding, an employee at Hahnemann Hospital, originally thought of the idea that became Stabiliz. She then worked with Cerynik, who also works at the hospital, to refine the concept.
Cerynik said the Stabiliz business team then picked up on the idea, and just started to run from that point. Stabiliz is currently continuing to organize their business and have had discussions with outside consultants in order to procure additional funding. Cerynik said the product should be released on the market approximately two years after the business achieves full funding.
"[Stabiliz] is definitely going to continue to be intertwined with Drexel," Cerynik said.
He said the business plans to work with Drexel professors and others in the Baiada Center and medical school.
Ranter, a simplified social networking Web site, won second place in the Incubator competition. Second place includes $8,000 in seed funding and $14,000 in in-kind support. ''
Loschiavo said one aspect of Ranter that stood out was the fact that the concept should allow the team to develop the product and get it to market with very little capital required.
Konnect.me, a new kind of business-to-business Web portal, won third place, which includes $4,000 in seed money and over $6,500 in in-kind support. Konnect.me plans to make a portal for green business, an industry in need of better organized information, Loschiavo said.
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