Press ReleaseOn Thursday February 6, 2020, several teams of Marietta College students will participate in Round 2 of the PioBiz Competition. This event will take place in Cooper Auditorium in Thomas Hall, on the corner of 5thand Putnam in Marietta. The competition starts at 4 pm and is expected to finish before 6 pm. The Mid- Ohio Valley Community is invited to attend the competition. In addition to the competition judges, the members of the audience also will have a chance to vote for their favorite projects.
PioBiz is a sequential competition consisting of three rounds, with a final prize of up to $10,000. Round 2 of the competition is entitled “Proof of Concept”. In this round, each team must present its business idea in five minutes or less, and convince the judges that the idea is feasible. The judges will then be given five minutes to have their questions answered by the competitors.
Any full-time Marietta College (MC) student may compete in PioBiz alone or as a member of a two, three, four, or five-person team. The second, third, fourth or fifth team members do not have to be MC students. However, all MC student members of a team must have an ownership stake in the proposed business. Each team may enter each round of the competition with up to three different ideas. Only the MC student members of a team may make presentations and receive the award money. Non-MC members of a team may only participate in the Q&A segments of the competition with judges.
This is the fifth year for PioBiz Competition. Last year, the top prize went to Michael Undersander majoring in geology, and Rebekah Finn majoring in biochemistry for their business entitled “Providing Pawsable”, https://www.providingpawsable.com/. Providing Pawsable trains service dogs to perform tasks to help mitigate disabilities. Service dogs can perform a multitude of tasks such as, but not limited to, medical alert, medical response, mobility, guide and hearing service dogs. Providing Pawsable offers multiple training plan options that can be individualized for each client depending on their financial and medical needs.
The event is FREE and Open to Public!