Phil Leslie – Founder of ProOnGo tells his story at the Tech Park at IIT from IIT – KEC on Vimeo.

To the question “Have you ever considered starting a business?”, a whopping 90.7% of the respondents replied yes!

66.7% of the respondents said that they were currently in the process of starting a business with 29.7% of all respondents involved in 2 or more start-ups.

Are you currently in the process of starting a business?

How many start-ups have you been directly involved with (including any current ventures)?

When asked about their field of interest, 56.4% of respondents were interested in developing Web 2.0 Applications.

The winner of the drawing for the $50 Starbucks Gift Card was: Roya Ayman, Professor – Institute of Psychology

Interested in entrepreneurship? Get your voice heard. Join us for the Knapp Entrepreneurship Center Elevator Pitch Contest. An elevator pitch is a brief summary of an idea for a product or service delivered in less than a minute. The name “elevator pitch” comes from the idea that the most important and compelling aspects of your idea need to be conveyed in the time span of an elevator ride. In addition to cash prizes for the winner and second and third place holders, the top two pitches will get the opportunity to present their business ideas before the Knapp Center’s Board of Directors.

This is an excellent opportunity to practice your communication skills in a competitive environment and learn from fellow students and professionals. It is also a great opportunity to take your business ideas to the next level with the help of the Knapp Entrepreneurship Center.

Eligibility – All IIT students (or student teams), staff and faculty are eligible to participate in this competition. We also welcome participants from the Tech Park. All ideas must be original to the individual or team.

Application process – Fill out the application form found here. Deadline for submission is 5pm November 22nd, 2009.

Rules – Each pitch must be no longer than 60 seconds. When the allotted time is up the contestant will be asked to stop. No visual aids or props will be allowed. In the case of student teams, only the primary entrant will be allowed to deliver the presentation.

Judging – The judges will be evaluating the presentations on content and delivery. After each pitch the judges may choose to ask follow-up questions. These will be solely to clarify points made for educational purposes and will not affect the judges grading.

Prizes:

1st Place: $50

2nd Place: $30

3rd Place: $20

The top 2 winners will be invited to present their ideas before the Knapp Center’s Board of Directors

Meet Phil Leslie. He’s friendly, he’s smart and he’s very good at keeping track of expense reports. And you can be too with his new software ProOnGo. All you need to do is take a snapshot of your receipts on your smartphone and his software takes care of the rest. Phil happily offered to dedicate a weekend to work with students interested in developing Mobile Apps. He even offered his own Mac stations for the students to work on.

Step 2. Brain-soaring session

A wise man told me once that rather than brainSTORMing, you should brainSOAR to new heights. This is what Phil and I did 2 weeks before the iPhone App Weekend. We discussed logistics, players involved and most importantly, the app we wanted the students to design. It had to be realistic enough for students with zero iPhone programming experience to code within a weekend, yet practical enough for people to use. Thus, the IIT Navigator app idea was born – an application for visitors to IIT to find their way around the Main Campus.

Step 3. Find hungry students.

Hungry to learn. We put up a form on our new website allowing students to register and an essay asking them why they want to be involved in Mobile App Development. With minimal advertising (Facebook and IIT Today) and only the promise of one-on-one coaching with an industry expert we received 25 applications in 5 days. After a relatively simple programming test that was sent out to the applicants, we filtered the students down to 6 candidates and invited them to participate in the Iphone App Challenge Weekend.

Step 4. Create structure

We broke the team down to 3 subteams based on individual preferences – the GPS Team, the UI Team and the Database Team. Phil created technical guides for each team that was sent to them a few days ahead of the event. Val Scarlata, IIT’s Web and Communications Specialist offered her design expertise to create iPhone elements that the students could use.

Step 5. Setting the right tone

Through Phil’s connections we were able to get Alwar Narayanan, the Director of Research and Emerging Technologies to set the tone for the weekend by giving a small talk regarding the future of Mobile App Development worldwide.

Step 6. Code till you drop

Or until 6.00 pm Sunday night when the Weekend App Challenge officially ended. The app should be available for download from the App Store soon (i.e. whenever Apple decides to approve it)

The IIT Knapp Center was very supportive while we were creating MedLight and aiding with the financial, legal, and strategic planning. Furthermore, their involvement brought us numerous meetings and opportunities, and the director, Nik Rokop, was extremely generous in sharing his insight and experience!

- Ryan Witthans, Founder, MedLight

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