University of Richmond hosted its eighth-annual Business Pitch Competition in the Ukrop Auditorium Monday, with Lauren "Murph" Grainger winning $3,500 to invest in her entrepreneurial endeavor, "Line Guard."
Grainger prevailed over her fellow competitors with her vision for Line Guard, an accessory built to manage excess fly line for fishermen. She was able to convince a panel of 10 judges unaffiliated with the university that her idea merited the $3,500 top purse, beating out four other finalists from the original pool of 24 teams. She also managed to hook the judges on the potential of her fishing rod accessory despite being unable to produce a prototype because of a lack of funding, though that is no longer a problem.
Grainger said growing up in a dedicated fly-fishing family from Wyoming had instilled in her a serious passion for the activity.
She also knew from an early age that she and her sister wanted to start their own business--they just lacked a viable idea. She said enrolling in professor Jeffrey Pollack's Innovation and Entrepreneurship class had produced the mental spark she needed to begin fulfilling her two ambitions with one successful business pitch.
"[Professor Pollack's] class was what finally gave us the nudge to essentially pick something and run with it," Grainger said. "He was hugely helpful in helping our idea-generation process. He simply said, 'Hey, look at a market that you know a ton about, think of a problem within that market and see if you can fix it.'"
Now that she finally has the money, Grainger's first-place check is going straight toward product development, she said. "We've already talked with an engineer to confirm the feasibility of the project," she said. "Now we just need to build it. We're very excited about the next steps."
Line Guard works by collecting the excess fly line required for an effective cast, holding it in the accessory rather than at the feet of the fisherman. The anglers therefore do not have to worry about their line becoming tangled up or wrapping around their feet. Grainger said this would permit her customers to "focus on the true art that is fly fishing."
Pollack has been involved in the school's Business Pitch Competition since 2009. He said he hoped Line Guard is able to have more post-victory success than 2012's winner, inLieu, a crowd-funding website to help causes raise money from donations all over the Internet, conceived by 2012 Robins School of Business graduates Geoff Weathersby and Kailey Raymond.
"They decided to close up shop about a month ago," Pollack said. "They ran into trouble with their name; there was someone who was using the name 'inLieu,' but it was dormant. They didn't have any trouble with the website, but there was someone with a trademark or something like that, and so they received a cease and desist."
Grainger is confident she will not be repeating history, and said she went with such a simple, intuitive name because she was sure that she and her sister were "the first people to develop a product like this for the fly fishing market. It is essentially a new product category," she said.
The ideas that Grainger's Line Guard defeated in the finals ranged from a portable bubble juice cart, to a Saudi Arabia-based website that connects prospective volunteers and philanthropic organizations, to a downloadable browser add-on that allows for Internet users to chat online in real time with other people on the very same webpage.
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"PageChat" netted its creator Brett Csorba a $1,000 check for second place, while "Sweat Tee," an undershirt with an innovative quick-dry fabric for keeping dry and fresh, earned creators Pamir Niaz and Christopher Bahlo $500 to round out the top three. The $5,000 in prize money was provided by the Richmond Association for Corporate Growth.
Despite missing out on first place, Csorba still plans to move forward with PageChat. "You're reading a lot nowadays how people are limited in their comments online," he said. "This technology came out really recently-it's called Web RTC, Web Real Time Communication-and it allows arbitrary data transfer between web browsers. This can be used for data, such as text, but it can also be used for video and audio. You can even have Skype in two browsers without downloading anything."
"It's gonna be huge," Csorba said.
Contact reporter Jacob Steinfield at jacob.steinfield@richmond.edu
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