Gigot Center selects business plan winners

An online same-day retail shopping/courier company, a youth peace education organization, and a heavy contracting company finished first last week (April 29) in the three business plan competitions sponsored by the Gigot Center for Entrepreneurial Studies at the University of Notre Dame.

LicketyShip won the fifth annual McCloskey Notre Dame Business Plan Competition and its $15,000 prize, as well as the $3,000 Pace Global People's Choice Best Presentation Award, as determined by audience vote. The company connects online shoppers with localized retailers through a searchable Web site that allows for same-day courier service. Team members include Notre Dame MBA students Justin Carter, Sarah Coffman and Radu Olievschi, senior business major Christopher Kelly, senior engineering major Aaron Wenger, and 2002 alumnus Robert Pazornik.

LicketyShip finished second a week earlier in the fifth annual Jungle Business Plan Challenge, sponsored by Jungle Media Group and the law firm Fenwick & West. The Notre Dame group won $10,000 in legal services from Fenwick & West.

In the Gigot Center’s fourth annual Notre Dame Social Venture Plan Competition, Youth Training in Peace Education (YPE) won the $3,000 top prize. The international, interreligious and intergenerational organization seeks to empower youths and young adults to take leadership in their own peace education. Notre Dame team members are Patrice Brodeur, a visiting fellow in the University’s Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies; Matthew Warren, a master of science in administration student; Leah McKelvey, a senior business major; Jonathan Smith, a master’s degree candidate in the Kroc Institute; and sophomore George Dzuricsko. Other members of the team were Sarah Bier from the University of Chicago and Shaheen Mohamed and Amin Siddi from CyberSwirl, Inc.

The $7,000 first-place prize in the Dorothy Dolphin Notre Dame Family Business Plan Competition was awarded to the Max J. Kuney Co., a heavy/highway contractor established in 1930 and located in Spokane, Wash. Team members are MBA student Daniel Kuney and Max and Jeff Kuney.

The three Gigot business plan competitions, which drew 100 entries, required participation by at least one Notre Dame student or graduate.A complete list of award winners and summaries of finalists’ entries for all events can be found on the Gigot Web site at www.nd.edu/~entrep or by contacting the center at entrep@nd.edu.

Contact: Theresa Sedlack, GigotCenter program manager, 574-631-3809 or tsedlack@nd.edu

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