This year, three graduate students won the Entrepreneur Quest competition. Left to right are Parker Owens, Lauren Compton and Jia Wu who will receive funding for their ventures from a $30,000 prize pool.
A University of Missouri student’s venture that involved repurposing Lego-style blocks for customizable building sets captured the top spot at this year’s Entrepreneur Quest (EQ) final pitch competition.
The 2023 winners were:
- First place: Parker’s Brick Builds founded by Parker Owens, a third-year law student from Noel, Missouri.
- Second place: The Breast Formula founded by Lauren Compton, a nursing doctoral candidate from Kansas City, Missouri.
- Third place: Hi, Period founded Jia Wu, a textile and apparel management doctoral candidate from Qingdao, China.
The top-10 teams accepted into the semester-long program learned firsthand the teamwork, daily grind and persistence required to launch a new business. On Nov. 28, they participated in a final pitch competition, with three promising ventures taking home seed funding from a $30,000 prize pool.
“The purpose of EQ is to provide a launch pad for our student entrepreneurs so they can go off and do bigger and better things,” said Greg Bier, executive director of entrepreneurship programs based at the Griggs Innovators Nexus in the MU Student Center. “When I went through the applications, I was really impressed with the strength and diversity of ideas represented."
Undergraduate and graduate students from seven colleges and schools in EQ’s 2023 cohort attended workshops, conducted market research, networked and received coaching from business and legal experts. They pitched businesses offering a wide range of products, including a smart irrigation device, a cash-based chess skills app, a group travel service and mixed reality hockey training.
The top-three ventures will receive a lump sum investment along with the opportunity to win additional funding (called an earnout) if they achieve jointly agreed upon milestones. Bier said allocating the funding this way more closely mirrors how venture capital firms invest in early-stage companies. Now in its fifth year, EQ has an impressive track record of successful graduates.
Read more on Show Me Mizzou and President Mun Choi's Blog.