Senior who served in Navy competes in business challenge

By Emma Anderson

Collegian Reporter

Senior Dustin Link has served in the U.S. Navy and has been deployed four times as a search and rescue swimmer on-board the USS Harry S. Truman. He has been all over the world, but he spent this past summer in a library researching one of his passions: business.

Link was one of the 16 chosen out of about 200 applicants to participate in the Roanoke College Innovation Challenge this summer. The participants were divided into three teams and given a product from a local entrepreneur and told to make a business plan for it.

The plans were presented in front of 50 local executives, entrepreneurs and professors from the Roanoke area. Link and his team won both the Whitehurst Award, given for the best clarity of presentation, and the Cameron Johnson award for the most entrepreneurial idea. Link said he had been surprised to win both.

"It felt really good because we put in so much hard work and my team wanted it so bad," Link said. "From day one we had victory in sight. To win both of them was the icing on the cake."

Link's team was given the idea of connecting patients and their doctors through a Web site called mydoctorsdirect.com.

The Web site provides services such as an e-mail chat between doctors and patients and online health records.

"It's kind of like the insurance company, the doctors and the patient," Link said. "We had to kind of find a way to satisfy all three of those variables."

Link and his team had eight weeks to come up with a plan. The team developed a schedule to go to the library everyday until 5 p.m. and then brainstorm ideas until 7 p.m.

"We kind of turned it into a job where we got into a routine," Link said. "But it was very demanding."

Chris Copenhaver, one of the local entrepreneurs who came up with mydoctorsdirect.com, said Link's team was the best because of the way it presented its idea.

Brittany Humphries, one of the team members, said Link's business and real world experience had really contributed to the team. She said he had been good at settling conflicts in the group.

"He knew how to keep things cool," Humphries said. "If there was a conflict within the group, he would stop it from getting anywhere to affect our team."

Link, a business major with concentrations in management and entrepreneurship, said that his business plan development class at Richmond had helped him in his victory.

Richmond also has a business plan competition that Link became a finalist in last spring.

Doug Bosse, assistant professor of management for the E. Claiborne Robins School of Business, said that all Richmond undergraduates were welcome to submit a business plan about any new idea they came up with.

"It's totally up to them," Bosse said. "It can be a product or a service, but it's a new service. They are proposing forming a new company in order to do something innovative."

The competition takes place during the spring semester. Bosse said the department's faculty members encouraged students with any majors to participate.

"You don't necessarily need to know the fundamentals of accounting to start a business," Link said. "You just have to have the passion, the drive, the creativity, and the leadership ability, as well."

After graduation, Link plans on using his entrepreneurial skills to start his own business.

"I have a whole bunch of ideas right now that I'm working on," Link said.

Contact reporter Emma Anderson at emma.anderson@richmond.edu