Impermeable Molding Company, a
company founded by Union College
students and housed in the U-Start Business Incubator, won the “elevator pitch”
contest in last week's Tech Valley Collegiate Business Plan Competition.
Junior Lucas Englehart, chief marketing officer, did the elevator
pitch on behalf of the six-member company.
To qualify for the two-minute
contest, which simulates a brief elevator ride with a venture capitalist, the
teams had to be one of five semi-finalists in the overall business plan competition.
The Union team won $1,000.
Impermeable Molding was founded
this year to produce environmentally friendly tanks for the storage of various
fluids such as oil and gasoline. Union students in the College's Entrepreneurship Club have been
working on this new business idea, using a state-of-the-art plastic resin from
the Cyclics Corporation of Schenectady, founded by Union alumni John Ciovacco and Ted Eveleth.
Other partners in Impermeable Molding are Bobby Syed '03, chief executive
officer, MBA student at the Graduate College of Union
University, and co-founder and former president of the Union College
Entrepreneurship Club; Josh Fiorini '04, chief financial officer, co-founder
and vice president of the Entrepreneurship Club; Brian Lindenberg '05, chief operating officer; Kerem Kacel
'03, chief information officer; and Brett Durie '04, chief technical officer.
“We are extremely proud of our team's work in getting to the
semi-finals and winning the elevator pitch competition,” said Jon Lemelin, executive director of the
U-Start Incubator and an advisor to the team. “This is the first time a team
from Union has entered the competition. To
qualify as a semi-finalist, the Union team outperformed 30 other student
teams.”
The business plan competition was
sponsored by the Severino Center
for Technological Entrepreneurship at Rensselaer's Lally
School of Management and Technology. The annual competition is open to
full-time students at area colleges and universities.
Besides Lemelin and Ciovacco, the club's advisors
are Y.F. King Wang, marketing director of Americas for Cyclics Corporation; Prof. Hal
Fried, economics; Mike O'Hara, director of development; and Mel Chudzik, dean
of the School of Management, GCUU.