Governor’s Cup features competing business plans from students

A while back, Lora Hendrickson's 50-something mom was doing the online dating thing.

Around that same time, Hendrickson heard a story on National Public Radio that noted the over-55 set was quickly adopting online dating sites.

Hmm, she began to think. That's a market that needs attention.

Hendrickson is an MBA student at UNLV. She works in marketing and accounting. This is how she tends to think.

All of which inevitably led her to create a goofy cartoon series in which the grandma character is using an online dating service.

It's called "Dating Brouhaha," and the cartoon, with the plan to market it as a real-life business, are among four finalists from UNLV in this year's Governor's Cup business plan competition.

"Lots of people want to be entrepreneurs, but very few are," said Andrew Hardin, director of the Center for Entrepreneurship at UNLV's Lee Business School.

Hardin teaches courses in entrepreneurship. He said it's his goal to help students create real businesses out of their ideas and to make sure those businesses have a real chance of success.

The Governor's Cup, sponsored by the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation, is a step toward that. It offers more than $150,000 in total prize money, including $25,000 to the winners in each of several categories.

A team from UNLV won last year and is now knee-deep in getting its business off the ground.

Which is what all the teams in this year's competition hope to do, too.

"It's going to be a thriving business," said Peter Maksymec, a former gaming executive who has invented an add-on for sprinklers that saves water.

Maksymec already has a patent on the device, and he has incorporated Geyser Flow Control. He just needs to get the marketing and manufacturing worked out.

Which is one reason he went to UNLV for help.

Maksymec said he had read about how the university's engineering and business colleges were working more closely together now than they ever had before.

Indeed, many of the UNLV teams in business plan competitions come from such partnerships.

So, he went to UNLV for help. They suggested he partner with a team from the entrepreneurship program, and so he did.

The team recently won a Southern Nevada competition sponsored, in part, by the Las Vegas Business Press, which is owned by the Review-Journal's parent company, Stephens Media.

"This is what I intended to promote when I came on as director" of the entrepreneurship center at UNLV, Hardin said.

"We're doing our part toward the economic diversification everybody's talking about," he said.

That's the goal, he said: To diversify Nevada's economy by spurring creativity.

Ideally, the prize money from competitions will act as seed money for the really good teams. Those teams will go on to start businesses, and those businesses will go on to hire people.

Hendrickson, the cartoon guru, said her team would use the money to hire a full-time animator, for example.

The team's cartoon series already has a three-minute intro episode up on YouTube, and they already have 10 episodes written, she said.

They focus on everything from sexually transmitted diseases -- turns out, studies say the older folks don't wear condoms as often as they should -- to typical "stranger danger" stuff.

Other UNLV teams competing this year include Mash Tool USA, which has come up with a landscaping tool that is sort-of like a hand-held jackhammer.

The pogo-sticklike tool, which weighs about 25 pounds, is designed to easily break up pavement and concrete without the need for complicated machinery.

The fourth team, Wire Ideas, has come up with a mobile phone app that can teach people how to build things. Robots, for example. Or a remote-control car.

It's designed for teenagers who are interested in technology and related fields.

Also among the finalists are teams from the University of Nevada, Reno and Truckee Meadows Community College. The winners will be announced April 18 in Reno.

Top finishers will go on to compete in a regional competition.

Contact reporter Richard Lake at rlake@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0307.