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From class project to business venture

Entrepreneurship competition win leads to real-life application

Pictured above: The Fundamentals of Entrepreneurship class is co-taught by Peter Hofherr, left, assistant director of the McQuinn Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership, and Ken Schneeberger, right, professor of agriculture economics at the University of Missouri. Students in the class are, left to right, Whitney Middleton, Andrew Van Engelenhoven and Abby Berndt.

It's one thing to do well in class and another to win a campus-wide competition. It's something else to take your class project and turn it into a real-life entrepreneurial effort to help the community.

A team in the Fundamentals of Entrepreneurship class co-taught by Peter Hofherr, assistant director of the McQuinn Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership and Ken Schneeberger, professor of agriculture economics at the University of Missouri College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources, took the grand prize in the Non-Profit Category of the fourth annual MU College of Business's New Venture Idea Competition. The competition drew 68 teams from across campus.

Team members Abby Berndt, Whitney Middleton and Andrew Van Engelenhoven shared a cash prize funded by the Flegel Academy for Aspiring Entrepreneurs, endowed by Leslie Flegel who is an alum of the MU Trulaske College of Business. Sarah Mayo, a freshman studying horticulture, is also part of the team.

The CAFNR team presented a business plan for a subscription-based produce operation to the judges who played the part of venture capitalists looking to fund a new project. The students' idea, named Tiger Town Community Supported Agriculture, calls for 25-30 subscribers to prepay for vegetables grown by the entrepreneurs. Any food left over would be made available to low-income people who would buy the goods with food stamps. Any produce surplus after this would be donated to a local food bank.

In their presentation, the students provided data to the judges proving the subscription plan is economically viable and that there is a real need for it in the community. The judges asked questions about how the team would market their plan, pay taxes and develop a planting schedule.

The students are not stopping with accolades from the judges, but plan to take their cash award and make their ideas a reality. The team members are working with Dave Trinklein, associate professor of plant sciences, and Tim Reinbott, superintendent of Bradford Research and Extension Center, to use eight hoop-greenhouses to plant produce this spring and see if their business plan can survive in the real world. The first planting will take place in February.

"The significance of this project to me isn't just the idealism, but that eight judges from the business world agreed that we have something of value and that it should be done," said Van Engelenhoven. "That's a lot of validation, even for skeptics. It lends credibility to this project, and shows that students can have real-world solutions to real-world problems."

Posted Jan. 5, 2009.
Story by: Randy Mertens