TUCSON (KGUN9-TV) - If you want to be your own boss, you need bright ideas and the skills to turn them to reality.
UA wrapped up a competition Friday to help students build better businesses.
At UA's Eller College of Management, a lot of students dream of being entrepreneurs who are able to turn a hot idea into a hot company and here is a competition that helps them learn how to make that happen.
Through the McGuire New Venture competition, teams compete for a share of $40,000 in prizes.
The team behind FoodChange sees business opportunity in helping charities use less than perfect produce that would have been wasted.
Somali George says, "We want to create a software that streamlines the whole process. So you can see in Tucson itself there are organizations that rescue food, that give free meals but there's nothing that integrates the food aggregate. It's kind of fragmented."
The team from Fasten thinks smaller versions of their magnetic fastener could replace buttons, zippers and shoelaces for people with dexterity problems.
Clark Abourizk says, "I worked with kids who had autism and kids who had special needs back home in California and so we reached out to parents and really asked them and that's kinda the story we told in the pitch today was, how can we help your son, how can we help your daughter with their daily lives.”
The Conspiracy Cosmetics team knows there are plenty of cosmetics companies so they need to stand out.
Jessica Lazzeroni says, “Where we differentiate ourselves really is on the ability to customize our products so you can choose a color, you can choose different finishes you like. You can choose different shimmer levels so our customers can really make something that they like as a very unique product."
You can see proposals from all nineteen teams here. Each one gets three minutes to convince judges, their bright idea is bright enough to earn the top prize of $10,000.
