The 2nd annual StartupWeekend Zanesville was a big success! Thank you to our organizing committee and for every single one of the participants for putting all your energy into these pitches and business ideas! I think we can all agree that many of the teams walked away with amazing potential at these ideas becoming solid businesses.
Congratulations to our 1st prize winner, Pill Vault! This group developed a vault for medication that will keep it safe from theft. The original pitch was to tackle the opioid crisis in our region by decreasing thefts from patients that are in need of these medications. We’re looking forward to seeing what this group does with this winning pitch!
2nd place when to Ten Tokens, a board game that grows in complexity as your child ages. The original pitch was to create a game that parents could purchase that would grow with their child, to limit the amount of games needed throughout childhood and to develop something completely new in the market. Ten Tokens took advantage of The IDEA Lab at Zane State and built a model of the game using the laser cutter at the makerspace. Can’t wait to see it on shelves soon.
And to aid with our aging population, 3rd place went to Elder Care, a search website that makes it easy to find the right fit for your loved ones as they are placed in a nursing facility. The pitch arose from the lack of information that currently exists for all the different kinds of facilities and the different care they can offer. The Elder Care team worked hard throughout the weekend and created an impressive working model to showcase their business.
These are just some of the impressive ideas that came out of our region and give us a glimpse as to what is possible in our entrepreneurial ecosystem.
On behalf of the organizing team (Spark 560, The IDEA Lab, Zane State College and LIGHTS), thank you to our coaches that came throughout the weekend and advised our teams on next steps and finding blind spots in their business models. We couldn’t have done it without you! John Glazer, Cindy Voorhies, Ryan McManus, Jerry Watson, John Voorhies and Michele Migliolo, thank you for expertise and support!
And thank you again to the judges, Faith Knutsen, Jeannie Mok and David Griesmyer for asking the tough questions and finding the three that stood out in a sea of very tough competition!