On Thursday, February 28th, DifferenceMaker held its final workshop series session! This was a four-part series designed to help student teams gain knowledge to help them move their project forward for the Rist $50,000 Idea Challenge. The theme of this evening was developing your rocket pitch.

The evening started off with dinner, refreshments, and networking. Shortly after, Ha Pho, Entrepreneurial Initiatives Project Manager, opened the session with reminders of deadlines coming up and recaps of all the previous sessions. She then introduced our guest speaker for the evening: Professor ‪Mike Ciuchta, Manning School of Business.

After the introductions, Professor Ciuchta presented about how to develop a rocket pitch that will engage the audience and judges. He showed examples of previous team pitches’ along with the power point presentations that teams used in the past.

He then opened a discussion to the attendees. What were the teams’ strongest aspects of their pitches? Is there anything that they could’ve improved on? Everything that he presented helped teams think deeply about the way they plan to pitch: how will they pitch in a way that will help people understand the problems they are trying to solve, while keeping in mind that they will have five minutes on the stage to do so? Every second counts!

Students then broke off into their teams and worked on their rocket pitches. Faculty fellows and guest speakers David Vatalaro, Ha Pho, and Mike Ciuchta walked around and gave each team feedback about how they could improve their pitches even further.

Then, students pitched their projects and got live feedback about the parts that were well done and what parts needs improvement. This was a useful practice test before pitching in front of the judges at the Preliminary Pitch-off and $50,000 Idea Challenge!

We would like to thank everyone that attended the third workshop series session! Another huge thank you to guest speaker Mike Ciuchta for leading this session!

Don’t forget to also keep working hard to prepare for the $50,000 Idea Challenge! Some important dates coming up:

• March 2, Idea Plan Due by 5 p.m.
• March 16, Semi-finalists announced by email and social media
• March 27, Revised Idea Plan, Rocket Pitch Presentation, and Poster Due by 5 p.m.
• April 7, Preliminary Pitch-off
• April 15, 2020 DifferenceMaker Idea Challenge Finals!

On Monday, February 24th, DifferenceMaker held its third workshop series session! This is a four-part series designed to help student teams gain knowledge to help them move their project forward for the Rist $50,000 Idea Challenge. The theme of this evening was developing business models.

The evening started off with dinner, refreshments, and networking. Shortly after, Holly Butler, Entrepreneurial Initiatives Project Director, gave an introduction and reminders for important deadlines. She then introduced our two guest speakers for the evening: Professor Tom O’Donnell, UMass Lowell Innovation Hub, and Professor Hunter Mack, Francis College of Engineering.

After the introductions, Professor Tom O’Donnell presented about the importance of a structured business model. A business model contains many factors – factors such as customer relationships, value propositions, revenue streams, and more. All these factors combined will equal a structured business model, which organizes all these factors in one and helps teams illustrate their potential trade-offs.

Students broke into their teams to further develop their project and business models. Faculty fellows and guest speakers David Vatalaro, Hunter Mack, and Tom O’Donnell walked around and gave each team feedback and advice to make their business model well rounded.

We would like to thank everyone that attended the third workshop series session! Another huge thank you to our guest speakers who led the session! We look forward to seeing you at our last session:

Workshop Series 4: Delivering Your Rocket Pitch, February 27

Dinner is served at each workshop, so please come hungry! Don’t forget to also keep working hard to prepare for the $50,000 Idea Challenge!

On Thursday, February 21st, DifferenceMaker held its second workshop series session! This is a four-part series designed to help student teams gain knowledge to help them move their project forward for the Rist $50,000 Idea Challenge. The theme of this evening was assessing opportunities and value propositions.

The evening started off with dinner, refreshments, and networking. Shortly after, Ha Pho, Entrepreneurial Initiatives Project Manager, gave an introduction and recap about the previous session, which was about identifying problems. She then introduced our two guest speakers for the evening: Faculty Fellows, Professor Brent Shell, Zuckerberg College of Health Sciences, and Professor Neil Shortland, College of Fine Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences.

After the introductions, Professor Brent Shell presented about assessing opportunities. This allowed teams to think about their problems even further and think about whether their solutions may have a potential market segment. Then, student teams worked with each other to discuss what they learned with their own projects and presented to all attendees.

After the presentations, Professor Neil Shortland taught the teams about value propositions. This allowed teams to think about the value their projects will provide for consumers: will it provide the consumers enough value to make them want to buy it? He taught about the psychology of human nature, which is important. Although each project may seem amazing to the team who created it, it may not be the case for future potential customers. Therefore, it is important to talk to potential customers.

We would like to thank everyone that attended the second workshop series session! Another huge thank you to our guest speakers who led the session! We look forward to seeing you at our next sessions: \

Workshop Series 3: Developing Business Models, February 24

Workshop Series 4: Delivering Your Rocket Pitch, February 27

Dinner is served at each workshop, so please come hungry! Don’t forget to also keep working hard to prepare for the $50,000 Idea Challenge!

On Tuesday, February 19th, DifferenceMaker held its first workshop series session! This is a four-part series designed to help student teams gain knowledge to help them move their project forward for the Rist $50,000 Idea Challenge. The theme of this evening was identifying problems.

The night started off with dinner, refreshments, and networking. Shortly after, Ha Pho, Entrepreneurial Initiatives Project Manager, gave an introduction and explained the plan for the evening. She then introduced our two guest speakers for the evening: Faculty Fellows, Professor Mazen El Gaziri, Zuckerburg College of Health Sciences, and Professor Tom Wilkes, Kennedy College of Sciences, who led the session.

Professor El Ghaziri started off the session by showing videos of examples of teams that had well defined problems. This allowed attendees to see how students pitch, and to see how they related their problem to the audience. Then, Professor Wilkes spoke even further about the importance of having a strong problem. A solution cannot be developed with a well defined problem.

Students then broke off into their teams to solidify their problems. After their problems were more defined, they wrote it on easel paper and presented it to the other teams. This allowed teams to give and receive helpful feedback.

We would like to thank everyone that attended the first workshop series session! Another huge thank you to our guest speakers who led the session! We look forward to seeing you at our next sessions:

Workshop Series 2: Assessing Opportunities and Value Proposition, February 20

Workshop Series 3: Developing Business Models, February 24

Workshop Series 4: Delivering Your Rocket Pitch, February 27

All workshops will be held in Lydon Library, Room 110, North Campus from 5:30 – 7:30PM!

Dinner is served at each workshop, so please come hungry! Don’t forget to also keep working hard to prepare for the $50,000 Idea Challenge!

On Tuesday, February 12, from 6-8:30 p.m. at the Saab Center, Perry Atrium, DifferenceMaker held its 7th annual Digital Federal Credit Union/Manning School of Business Innovation Contest Finals.

The event started off with dinner and networking. Sandra Richtermeyer, Dean of the Manning School of Business, opened up the evening with welcoming remarks and judge introductions.

Our judges for the evening were:

Nancy D’Amico – Senior vice president of Technology and Innovation, DCU

Steve Schultz – ’89, ’04, Kennedy College of Sciences and Manning School of Business

Vasilios Roussos – Director of Innovation, DCU

Alana Tobin – ’89, Manning School of Business – Senior Director, Shared Services, Hologic, Inc.

After the judge introductions, each student finalist team pitched their startup ideas. The theme of the event was to come up with innovative solutions to help solve problems related to banking and finance. After each team’s pitch, there was a Q&A by the judges. The teams that pitched were:

Big Flexers / Aiman Baig, Danny Nguyen, Haris Waqar, Abhinav Kiran, and Fazil Soharwardi

Financial Action Manager / Louis Cirignano, David Seybert

SwiftCheck / Valeria Montoya, Jennifer Phan, Veyana Thor

Cash Forward / Jack Disilvio, Oliver Jennings, Pedro Piau

CJZ Statement Analysis / Justin Yee, Christopher Novo, Elijah Li

Each of these teams were awarded $100 per team member for becoming a semi-finalist.

After each team pitched their creative ideas and answered the judges’ questions, the judges stepped out to deliberate the winning team of the evening. While doing so, team members, faculty, students, and family grabbed more food and networked with each other.

At 8 p.m., our judges finished deliberating and announced the winning team for the night: team Cash Forward! Congratulations to team Cash Forward and all teams that made it to the finals and pitched this evening! Cash Forward received $100 per team member for becoming a semi-finalist and $500 per team member for winning 1st place! Their total winning funds equaled $1,800!

Digital Federal Credit Union gave away $3,100 in total funds to the five pitching teams.

Thank you to everyone that attended! Huge thank you for the Digital Federal Credit Union, the Manning School of Business, and the Rist DifferenceMaker Institute for sponsoring this event.