University of Arkansas Team Wins Two National Business Plan Competitions

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BiologicsMD Team, l. to. R. Van Clouse, Cardinal Challenge director; Robyn Goforth; Misty Stevens; Paul Mlakar; Michael Thomas; and Carol Reeves

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – A team of graduate students from the Sam M. Walton College of Business at the University of Arkansas has taken the top place in not one, but two national business plan competitions.

The team won first place and $15,000 in the Cardinal Challenge at the University of Louisville on Feb. 20. They also won the $500 spirit award for the most enthusiasm. Just one week later, the students took first place and $10,000 at the University of Cincinnati Spirit of Enterprise MBA business plan competition and second place ($250) in the trade show booth competition.

The business they proposed is BiologicsMD, which is developing a drug that builds bone to treat osteoporosis. The students include Paul Mlakar, Michael Thomas and Misty Stevens, all students in the Managerial Master of Business Administration program, and Robyn Goforth, who is in the Certificate in Entrepreneurship program, a program through which non-business and business students come together to develop new businesses.

“This team is simply outstanding,” said Carol Reeves, associate professor of management and mentor for the team. “At Louisville, they beat finalist teams from Indiana University, Johns Hopkins University and Rice University. Other universities in the competition were the University of Louisville, Brigham Young University, Kennesaw State, University of Illinois Chicago, University of Cincinnati, University of Manitoba and University of Michigan.

“At the Cardinal Challenge, I can’t tell you how many people came over after their presentations to tell them they blew everyone else away. This win qualifies them for an automatic bid to the Global Moot Corp, the ‘Super Bowl’ of business plan competitions at the University of Texas at Austin.”

The competition at the University of Louisville, hosted by the Forcht Center for Entrepreneurship, featured 12 graduate teams from across North America.

Mlakar said, “The judges were first-rate, tough, expert and fair. But as a team, we were prepared for their questions.”

As the Cecil and Gwendolyn Cupp Applied Professor in Entrepreneurship, Reeves has been mentoring both undergraduate and graduate student teams in business plan competitions since 2002. “I’m grateful that we have a group of business people as well as other faculty who volunteer to help the students fine-tune their business plans and perfect their presentation skills.”

At the University of Cincinnati, BiologicsMD team members Goforth and Stevens won against other finalist teams from Johns Hopkins University, which took second place; University of Illinois at Chicago, which took third place, and Indiana University, which came in fourth. Other teams participating included the University of Michigan, University of Manitoba, Purdue University and Rice University.

A team from the Walton College, Tears for Life, also won last year’s Spirit of Enterprise competition at the University of Cincinnati.