Photo courtesy to Jake Friedberg, Q30 Television
An enticed crowd of students, faculty, and local businesses surrounded various booths in the piazza.Quinnipiac’s entrepreneurs manned their booths at the second annual Qstart. The entrepreneur club organized this year’s Qstart to showcase business plans they have been working on. The event lasted four hours and was catered by Zara’s Café down the road. A big incentive for participating in Qstart was the cash rewards. People attending the event were able to vote for their favorite company or product. The top prize was $3,500.
Some of the booths that participated included a snack booth called Zac’s Snacks which sold chips. Zac was trying to promote healthy eating by making his chips more nutritious.
Qstart accepted all participants despite what grade they were in. Some underclassmen that were taking the scene by storm were Freshmen Mitch Towney, Zach Sobel, and Mitchell Trulli. The three of them were behind Marketmi.org, which is a business to person social media advertising platform. Businesses can contact users who make an account and pay them to make posts about their company. Trulli said, “Qstart is great because we get to see what people like and dislike so we can improve out product.”
On the last hour of Qstart, entrepreneurs anxiously gathered to hear the winners announced. A company called Baba came in third place winning $1,900. Baba is an app that helps people heat up baby food saving time in the process.
Senior Benjamin Edmund came in second place with Cronk Clothing. His project has become the poster company for Quinnipiac’s entrepreneurs. It has won multiple awards and has received funding through events like this one. Second place rewarded him with $3,000.
Edmund said, “Qstart is a good chance for the community to see what we’ve been working on because most of the time we are busy with behind the scenes stuff.”
Taking home $3,500 was Unify. This was an app that connected tenants to their landlords for any problems with living situations.
Although not everybody won money, all entrepreneurs were rewarded with public opinion on how to make their products better for next time.
