 All righty, good evening everybody. Thank you so much for coming to our first entrepreneurial exchange of the Vermont Pitch Challenge. My name is Jay Jacobs, I use he, him pronouns and I have the honor of serving as the vice provost for enrollment management here at the University of Vermont. What that means is I oversee undergraduate admissions, student financial services, the office of the registrar, new student orientation and things of that nature. I'm really, really excited about tonight. This is, as you can see, our first entrepreneurial exchange, our first real public launch of the Vermont Pitch Challenge. So we're going to, sorry, if you can hear the motorcycles behind me, it's a beautiful night here in Vermont, so have the window open. Tonight, I'm planned to go over an overview of what the Vermont Pitch Challenge is. And then I'm gonna pass things over to our panelists and speakers who are current students, faculty and alumni of the University of Vermont, all in the realm of innovation and entrepreneurship. So thank you all so much for coming tonight. I wanna start with the parties involved with the Vermont Pitch Challenge. We've been thinking this up for a long time and it feels really good to get it off the ground and running. These people include colleagues from the University of Vermont undergraduate admissions team, friends and now colleagues from the University of Vermont Entrepreneurship Club, the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, sorry, the Catamount Innovation Fund. And then finally, the ARC program, I always butcher this acronym, so Mason, help me out here. Academic Research Commercialization Program. Thank you very much, which is a group of students who help our faculty commercialize their innovative ideas and then friends and colleagues from CFES Brilliant Pathways, a nonprofit community-based organization based in upstate New York. Thank you all for your effort and your continued effort throughout the rest of the Pitch Challenge. So let me first start with the, what is the Vermont Pitch Challenge? So the Vermont Pitch Challenge gives high school entrepreneurs from Vermont throughout the country, throughout the world, the chance to pitch innovative businesses that make a difference in their communities throughout these next few months, you will have the opportunity to learn from top experts about various things that may help you throughout the challenge, like writing a business plan, creating a compelling pitch, creating your teams, and ultimately achieving your goals. All students of cash prizes and a scholarship to the University of Vermont. Students who are interested in this in order to be eligible, you need to be in grades 10, 11, or 12. You can compete in teams of up to three total students. You can compete with teams of two students. If you have an idea that you're ready to run with by yourself, you can compete by yourself as well. Your business plan will be judged by some of the students that you'll meet tonight and others in the Entrepreneurship Club and the ARC program, and will be judged using the following criteria. Does the product or service offer a solution to a problem faced in a target market? Does the product or service create a positive impact? Is it creating something different in the market? And how effectively does the plan achieve these stated goals? All of your submissions can be in various formats, whatever is most comfortable for you all and what gets your points across most effectively and efficiently. It can be in a video format of four minutes or less, a podcast or audio format of four minutes or less, or a written document up to five pages long. We believe successful plans will provide a brief overview of how the product or service creates value and its positive impact, providing overview of the sector, the target customers, and the competition in the market, and will show how you will successfully market and operate your venture, finally, how you plan to garner your startup resources. Applications will open on January 15th and you have to submit your pitch by February 15th. Later in February, finalists will be announced and five finalist teams will be invited to pitch your ideas in-person at the University of Vermont on April 4th. On April 4th, after those pitches, winners will be announced and all five teams who are invited to the University of Vermont to pitch will be a prize winner. The grand prize will be a full tuition and fees scholarship for all team members at the University of Vermont. Second and third place winners will receive checks for the team of up to $5,000 and the fourth and fifth place teams will receive $1,000 checks. So pretty exciting stuff. What between now and January while you're thinking about your ideas and building your pitches, this is probably the thing I'm most excited about with the Vermont Pitch Challenge are entrepreneurial exchanges like today. Entrepreneurial exchanges will happen at 7 p.m. on the second Tuesday of every month between now and March. We got a lot of really great ideas for you. We will, you will hear from local innovators and entrepreneurs. Next month in the hall, the co-inventor of the first sports bra and inductee into the National Inventors Hall of Fame will provide you insights from her experience. You will learn how to build a successful business model. You will learn other insights from other local Burlington based innovators and entrepreneurs how to create a compelling and successful pitch. And then finally meet some of our alumni who are doing some really great things in the world of innovation and entrepreneurship. These will be recorded. If you're not able to join on Tuesdays at 7 p.m. then you can look at the Vermont Pitch Challenge website for the recording of those sessions. Okay, so without further ado, we have a number of great students and alumni here on campus here with us tonight to talk about their experiences as innovators, as entrepreneurs and as University of Vermont students. So in no particular order, I will introduce everybody and then Dan, I'll kick things over to you to take the rest of the evening. First, I'd love to introduce Lily Merchant who is a current senior representing the Catamount Innovation Fund. That's one of many, many things Lily does here on campus. I seem to see her all over the place. Mason Tuff, a current junior on campus who is representing the UVM Arc program. You heard from him just a couple of minutes ago. Dan Hibbs, who is the current University of Vermont Entrepreneurship Club president and current senior. And then we got some great alumni for you all. Matt Boudre Shapiro, class of 2012 who is currently the chief marketing officer at Vitalize Health. Zach Regan, a recent alumni from the class of 2022 and current owner of RJ's detailing here in the Burlington area. And then finally, Nicole Eaton, UVM class of 2023, former Arc student director and current head of partnerships at Verde Technologies Inc. Thanks so much for being here, friends. And then Eric, I don't know if you're technically a panelist or not, but let me introduce Dr. Eric Munson, one of our outstanding faculty members in entrepreneurship tonight. So Dan, I'll put myself on mute and I'll let you take it over from here. Thank you so much, Jay. Hello everyone, my name is Dan Hibbs. I'm the president of the UVM Entrepreneurship Club. My hometown is Burlington, Vermont and I'm a senior studying community entrepreneurship. Over the summer, I interned at the Vermont Small Business Development Center and I also worked as a production technician at a startup company in 2021. To me, being an entrepreneur means being brave, bold and imaginative. It means meeting new people and making new connections, standing up for what you believe in and being open to feedback from others. Being an entrepreneur is about blazing your own path. And as Steve Jobs, founder of Apple said, your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. The UVM Entrepreneurship Club is a student-run organization that works to provide its members with the experience of running their own business. Through guest speaker seminars, pitch competitions, ideathons and community projects, we help foster an interest in entrepreneurship, support the entrepreneurial mindset and encourage engagement in the thriving community of young entrepreneurs at UVM. Our weekly club meetings offer a space for sharing ideas, meeting partners, identifying value in new businesses and solving problems in innovative ways. We help answer questions like, how can I turn my hobby or interest into a business? How can I improve my business pitch? What kind of impact can I have on my community with a good idea and the passion to try something in? Where do I look for advice, support and funding to grow my business? Our members have the opportunity to receive a device from successful entrepreneurs like Matt Buttership Hero to develop and advance their ideas. Club members also have the opportunity to join our leadership team and make a lasting impact at UVM by helping support other student entrepreneurs. If you are interested in joining us and building a stronger, more connected and sustainable ecosystem of entrepreneurs at UVM, find us on social media and contact us at entrepreneurshipclub at UVM.edu. We look forward to hearing from you and best of luck with the Vermont Pitch Challenge. We can't wait to hear about your ideas. Next, we'll hear from alumnus and chief marketing officer at Vitalize Health. Please join me in welcoming everyone, Matt Buttership Hero. Thank you, Dan. Great to meet everyone. I couldn't be more excited about this opportunity for students to get to pitch their ideas for a chance to win a free tuition along with so many incredible prizes, how cool is that? Really awesome opportunity. For me, Vermont will always be such a special place because it's where I found focus and drive to actually pursue a career in business. Before UVM, candidly, I was not the most serious about school. I think my high school teachers would agree I wasn't the world's best student, but I just hadn't found my passion yet and maybe some of you, I just didn't really know what I wanted to do in my life and thankfully I got to UVM and it was the first time I was truly engaged. I was engaged in my classes, internships. I learned to channel the competitive nature that I brought out through sports in the business and it really gave me that awesome environment for creativity, hustle, and still keeping my freedom. And so for me, I'd say number one class I took, at least I made a big impact on my life was public speaking. I went from literally trembling. I was doing my first speech in front of the class being able to talk to you guys tonight, totally fine. Thankfully not trembling anymore. And, you know, Burlington was close enough to New York City that I was able to land an internship on Madison Avenue after school. Actually, that was during school and then turn that into a job after school. And that was just honestly through public communication teaching me about how interesting advertising was and, you know, taking sales into a digital line of advertising and marketing was awesome. I'd also be lying if I said binging mad men junior year didn't play a small role in that decision, but needless to say, it turned out okay. And I jumped in where I worked on Madison Avenue for a few years and then I worked in politics where I led the New York media team for the largest political marketing firm in the country. And this was really a dream job for me and I'm still very involved in politics today. But I spent a lot of time on trains between New York and DC and got a little bored and in my ADD nature started kind of brainstorming some business ideas and actually a friend of mine from University of Vermont and I went out and tried to start a business. Our original idea was trying to help patients navigate through their healthcare experience. We raised a couple hundred grand. We set out trying to build a company and I quickly learned how little I knew about building a business. Well, our idea was like, okay, conceptually, getting patients who can't afford to pay medical bills to pay for a service to help them reduce them was a terrible business idea, but luckily my persistence and competitive nature forced me to pivot until I figured it out. And we started working with healthcare providers directly so that we could then work with a larger number of patients at a time and also could charge the healthcare providers for our services instead of the patients, which is a better business model. And it caught on, I built it for about six, seven years. We worked with over a million patients, raised several rounds of venture funding, got up to about 40 employees before selling our company to a business in the value-based healthcare space where I now serve as their chief marketing officer. Truthfully, I didn't think I was gonna last that long before I wanted to start my next business, but the last couple of years have been incredible. We're the 71st fastest growing company in the country. We've raised $200 million and we're managing about $4 billion in medical spend, not the path I envisioned for myself, but I learned that as much as you can plan, nothing ever happens as you expect. So you just have to be agile and get very, very comfortable being uncomfortable. And cause I'm like to get my hands on a lot of things, I've found an interest in exploring other industries and companies by advising and investing, and I've invested in over 20 businesses across consumer, food and beverage, healthcare and enterprise. One of my first investments that I serve as a fractional CMO for is Ensemble, which is now the largest music school in the country. We have over a thousand music school teachers, which is awesome. And I've done a lot of investments in the celebrity space. My business partner is Machine Gun Kelly's team, who I grew up with MGK. And so I do a lot of stuff in the celebrity driven kind of brand space. And I'm the advisor to the mayor of Cleveland and the largest super pack in the country, future forward. And I think entrepreneurship for me has been able to take on lots of new cool, interesting things that is very different than like the normal like idea of what at least I thought of building a business was, which was like kind of keeping your head down and staying in a basement and building. It's very social. It's getting out there, you know, constantly fundraising and doing sales and so learning how to work with people and figure out what they're looking for. So you can solve their problems. The last thing I like to do with is one question I get a decent amount is just any advice for young entrepreneurs or people trying to start a company. I would say I always kind of laugh answering this because when you start a company, you get a lot of solicited and unsolicited advice. And this would obviously fall into the unsolicited category. So it's up to you to listen to what makes sense. But for me, I would hear people that reach out with great ideas telling me they really wanted to start a business, but they just weren't quite ready. And then I talked to them like a year later and they're in the exact same place. They're just like not quite there. And, you know, truth is like you will never get off the back. And if you wait until you're 100% ready to start a company, it's just not positive. But if you are persistent and you keep it going, you will knock it and you'll make it work eventually. So I can't wait to hear more about what everyone's ideas are and come up with and I'd love to be a resource for everyone. So don't be shy and good luck. We'll talk soon. I think it's over to you, Lily. OK, cool. Yes, thank you so much, Matt. Hello, everyone. My name is Lily Merchant. I want to thank you all for being here. We are so excited to be able to meet you in this virtual space and so excited about your interest in this challenge. So again, my name is Lily Merchant. I am a senior at the University of Vermont. I'm from Essex, Vermont, which is about 20 minutes away from campus. So I didn't stray too far from home as I followed my college career. I'm studying business administration with a focus in marketing and global business. And when I entered college, I had no clue that I was going to be joining the entrepreneurial sphere. I didn't consider myself to be anything of a business owner to have a million great ideas. And I wasn't really sure if that was my passion. But I took a risk. And in the spring of my first year at UBM, I joined the Entrepreneurship Club, which Dan now leads. And I had such a great time in that club meeting new people, chatting about business ideas, just having fun in different workshops and meeting guest speakers, people like Matt. And the Entrepreneurship Club became a space for me to be able to follow passions, to be able to learn more about what it takes to be an entrepreneur. So before I knew it, I became the marketing director for the Entrepreneurship Club. And as time went on, and I became more comfortable and then stepped into a role to be president this last year, just recently passed the reins off to Dan. He's doing an excellent job so far. And in that time, I have also been part of the Catamount Innovation Fund and have acted as the co-president. And so that's who I'm representing today. The Catamount Innovation Fund runs as a student-led accelerator program. So what this means is that students lead other student business owners. What we do is we provide workshops and hands-on support for these student businesses. And we help our peers out. That's kind of the general statement. So students apply to this program. They tell us that they want to increase and grow their business. And they're asking for our help. And through this application process, we're able to get to know other students, to hear about their passions, to see and hear their vision for their businesses. And once they're accepted into our program, we meet on a weekly basis. We provide them with hands-on help. We lead different workshops about funding, marketing, resources available to them in the Burlington, Vermont area. And there are many resources available. So we are here to just raise awareness about entrepreneurship with a group of very serious student business owners. But of course, we have lots of fun. You can see in some of our photos here, we have students leading workshops in the bottom left corner. This is a workshop about networking, about earning funding, what it takes to be an entrepreneur as a student and as a business owner. We have pictures of pitch competitions that we help host with the Entrepreneurship Club every year. And this is one of our students who won. His name is Zach Dunn. In the past, we were very proud of him. You can see our analysts. These are students from every major, from every interest level or entrepreneurship experience level. They have lots of leadership roles in other groups across campus and have proven that they can be a reliable source to provide funding and advice to other students. And you can see another one of our business owners in the top left corner. We have lots of fun in our meetings, at our workshops, on field trips, and so much more. So again, when I was entering the entrepreneurial sphere at UVM, I really didn't know what it meant to be an entrepreneur. I didn't feel like an entrepreneur. I had no intention of being a business owner. And the truth is, I still am not a business owner. But because I felt like I was a great communicator, like I was willing to help with other people's projects and that I was organized, I found that the Catamount Innovation Fund was a great resource for me and a great program for me to get involved in. So I think that an entrepreneur is really someone who's ready to help and someone who's ready to bring new ideas to the table. And I learned about the term entrepreneurship, which really means being an entrepreneur by really helping other people out, not necessarily being a business owner, by being readily available, by being willing to connect other people with the right resources and just really vouching for everyone in their business. So I would like to introduce you to one of our students who participated in the Catamount Innovation Fund while I was a student analyst. His name is Zach Regan, and he's still running his business today. So, Zach, please introduce yourself and take it away. Hello, everyone. My name is Zach Regan. I am the co-founder of RJ Detailing Services. We're a mobile detailing company. Based out of Burlington, we do work all over the Greater Vermont area. Anything from local door to door, commercial deals with rental companies. Then this all started back in early college over the summer. It used to be a detailer at a car dealership and started doing it on the weekends. And then came up to Vermont, met a buddy of mine, and he said, just do it full time. And that's what entrepreneurship is all about, is just taking that jump. And so that's what we did. And, you know, we're in year two now and I give a lot of credit to the Catamount Innovation Fund. We were part of CIF in the fall of 2022. This is actually my last semester of college, so it was a nice hurrah. And what I loved about the program was it allowed you to soundboard on a weekly basis. So you got opinions from other student advisors, from other people trying to start businesses, those who own businesses and being able to kind of learn and kind of open your field of vision, because that's definitely one problem that I personally have with entrepreneurship is I like to do the whole basement focus, learn, grow. And it's like, no, as we were talking about earlier, you have to step out of your comfort zone. You have to go meet people. You have to go socialize and grow your business and open your field of view. And CIF did that tenfold. Not only CIF, but UVM itself as a school has done a ton for me in growing my business. I started in the fall of 2021. So again, I was in classes and you had to learn your time management and you can't, you know, you don't want to do one very well and one not so well. Like, I'm not going to fail college and I don't want to fail my business. So you have to learn how to manage your time. And that was that was a big part of how UVM helped me was. You know, time management and then also reaching out to people. And so I get a great example of this is one of my marketing classes. Early on, we had an assignment where you had to make a website on Wix and do blog content to kind of explain what was going on throughout the semester, what you learned and summarize stuff like that. And through that, I ended up making the website for RJ detailing. So using what she taught about website design, how to market all those things. I was able to not only build my website, but then sound board off of my professor on top of that. You know, maybe you don't learn what you necessarily were looking to learn to help grow your business in a class, but you're right there with a professional who's done it. You know, your teachers are great resources. And so being able to go to them, talk to them, ask them advice. Like I've detailed one of my old finance professors cars, right? Like it wasn't necessarily something I learned in class, but I got to build a relationship with a professor. And now I have, I got a recommendation for a scholarship through him. And so I think college is a great way to learn, but you also need to think outside the box. How do you use those relationships and what are your professors teaching you outside of the course curriculum because there's so much more entrepreneurship than just checking boxes, right? And so that kind of leads me to like, what does it really mean to be an entrepreneur. In my opinion, it's way less of the business knowledge and more so character trait building, right? It's, are you disciplined? Can you focus on one goal? Do you have the structure to kind of grow something and build something because quite frankly, I'm not the smartest person in the world. But you know, we, if you just do the thing over and over eventually you'll be good enough at it. And so I think that's a large part of it is just self development more than anything else because you got a long life to live so might as well start with building those strong character traits early on. And that's probably one of my biggest takeaways from starting this business as simple as mobile detailing is, is it's like, I was an introvert and I have to learn how to talk to people, you know, learn how to socialize. You have to learn how to do that like starting out you have no business so start cold calling like this sucks but we're going to do it right and that's what I think entrepreneurship is all about is just getting uncomfortable. And so to anyone who wants to get into the space and then become an entrepreneur I think it's less about thinking and making sure everything's perfect and more about just doing it. Right, there's so many frameworks and thought processes that can quote unquote give you a successful business or it's the right path to take and in reality there is no right path you just have to jump and start doing. And so to anyone who wants to get an entrepreneurship. That's my advice for you is just, you have something you know what you're doing you can do a certain skill. Try to monetize it. See what happens. Right. That does details I never saw detailing being in the business that I was running but something I learned, you know I was able to take that skill and then market and then the rest kind of fell into places it went and I got a lot of credit to both CIF and UVM for helping me get where I'm at today. Thank you guys for having me. Hey everyone. I'm Mason tough. I just want to stay right off the bat that I think this is so wonderful and so telling of UVM that you know an awesome program like this can even take form. So, you know, I'm extremely appreciative to to have this opportunity to speak but also for, for all those that, you know, made this happen. So yeah, like I said, I'm Mason tough and from Wellesley, Massachusetts, my current junior studying ecological technology design. My design major which might be, you know why you're thinking that doesn't really sound like something real necessarily and, you know, especially with, if you consider that, you know, in the context of why I'm talking about entrepreneurship you know, I'm quite confused, but I just like to tell the story of how I got involved in the art program, and it sort of makes those things clear so the first, I guess, week of college freshman year first year. I just I was looking at all the various clubs that I could join and entrepreneurship club was, you know, something in the back of my mind that I was like okay that that could be potentially interesting. I showed up to the first meeting, and I ended up meeting Skyler Bagden who if you haven't heard of him in the Vermont ecosystem. He's been one of the most influential people. You know, in my life in terms of, you know, UVM entrepreneurship and getting engaged with stuff that you're passionate in but he was basically like, you know, I know you're into engineering or whatever, you should check out the art program. So I was like, alright, I'll just toss in an application. So I did and, you know, sort of was having many doubts being a first year and studying engineering like how does this translate whatsoever. I ended up being accepted the program and actually worked with Nicole Eaton who you'll hear from shortly with a company called Verity Technologies in the solar technology realm, and had a wonderful opportunity to dip my toes in the water of entrepreneurship and ended up loving it. And so for the past two years, sort of worked my way up into the entrepreneurial lead role and then eventually the student director role, which has been invaluable. So you might be wondering what is ARC and I'm happy to elaborate on it. Basic premise is, you know, taking university technology and bringing it to market. So the program is entirely student led and supported through, through UVM, through the UVM tech transfer office, and the student founders, including Skyler Bagdon, kind of saw this, this main, you know, crossroads or disconnect. And it's, we have wonderful groundbreaking research in the lab, but you know, university professors don't have the time, you know, or expertise and many, in many cases to actually bring that technology to the world, to the market. And this is sort of this is where students come in. Undergraduate students are, you know, a reservoir of knowledge, creativity and passion. And, you know, if we compare these students with these research teams, we can start devising solutions and thinking through how could this technology actually be implemented into the world. And that's exactly what the founders, student founders of ARC did in 2021. And the basic premise of the program is we pair, you know, three students with a specific research team with the technology they're working on in the lab. And, you know, we work over a one year cycle to bring that venture forward as much as we can. We don't necessarily have the standard of, okay, this needs to turn into, you know, a fully fledged startup in Vermont, or, you know, this needs to, you know, bring back this much capital. It's really just an exploration. And it's, and it's all about the student experience and being empowered to actually start working in the entrepreneurship world. And personally, it's been the most gratifying and the greatest opportunity for professional development, like to be able to have that opportunity as an undergraduate student. You know, let alone, you know, not, you know, not having all of these credentials being an MBA student or grad student, you know, you have the full responsibility to take this wherever it goes. And that was a really, really cool idea to me. And that's kind of stuck with me. But yeah, I would contend that it's definitely the most important thing that I've been involved with during my time at UVM. And it's been the coolest thing has been, you know, getting together with seemingly completely different sets and perspectives, you know, we have psychology majors, we have engineering majors. You know, of course, you know, marketing and finance majors, but to have this so much collective passion in one room at one time, that has hands down been the best part for me. And so I'm really excited to see where our can go in the future, you know, we already have universities around the world that are really interested in this model and it's certainly very modular and can be applied to a lot of different landscapes, you know, within university settings and even outside of the university setting. So, yeah, and that kind of brings me to, you know, my sort of idea of what an entrepreneur is and I would say this is certainly inspired by Skyler Bagden it's, it's having this like, you know, unabatable sort of vision or passion or interest that no one can break down and you need to be sort of incessantly driven towards, you know, seeing this happen. And when you have that sort of innate passion and can't see other any other, you know, way to adopting it, like, those are the people that that can ultimately thrive. And I think entrepreneurship is a great landscape for people that are passionate about something to go and do something about it. So, with that, I'd love to introduce Nicole Eaton who I've had the pleasure of working with the past two years, and she can talk a little bit more about her experience in ARC and and on. Thank you guys for having me. Yeah, I'm Nicole, I just graduated in May so I am fresh out of college. I guess I guess my story is that when I was a sophomore I was taking my favorite class ever which was CDE 166, which is a pop up class so you basically get to come up with an idea and bring that business to life on campus and sell your product to students on campus. I'm highly recommend once again CDE 166 I'm totally pitching it right now because it is the best. My other bag didn't was my TA and he was like, hey, I'm starting this new program. You guys should apply so I applied, because I honestly being a public communication major at the time, a lot of the jobs in the market and internships that I was looking at was purely social media. Social media is great, and I do think it's a very powerful tool I knew that I kind of just wanted to talk to people and interact with people that's what I wanted to practice because I knew that was kind of my interest of is that interpersonal communication rather than through social media. And so, I got to see our program was at the community outreach lead. One thing I do love about the program that Mason kind of touched on was the students are the leaders and so no matter what position you are, you are a leader because that's what an entrepreneur is no matter if you're a CEO like Lily said if you're CEO, if you're just helping with a startup if you're helping with an idea and you didn't found that idea you're still an entrepreneur you're still doing stuff you're doing some ideas. And so that's what I love about the program is having that leadership position. So after being on that team for a summer I then led business development for Verde Technologies when it was in the art program. And then I hired Skyler to be the CEO Verde Technologies as a Skyler graduated and I was then the director of the art program, which was great and then Skyler then rehired me to be at a partnerships for Verde. So it's kind of a funny story. But yeah, now I'm here. And I think the best part about the art program as well that hasn't been touched on yet is, is the amount of resources and I think it goes beyond the art program it goes to the entrepreneurship clubs. It goes to CIF. And it really goes to all students at UVM. The co-working spaces are open to you. And there's advisors that are going to advise you for free as well. So I do recommend plugging into Visa Vermont Center for Emerging Technologies and Hula Lakeside. They're both great resources and more than happy to help you with your idea. It's as easy as emailing them if there are questions at the end or if they're, if you want to give out my contact would be happy to set people up with those resources, because they are great and they helped the art program and just my own personal journey with resume building. But yeah, I would definitely plug in those spaces. And my last thought on entrepreneurship is you need perseverance. And so if you, if you like a schedule and you're a planner like myself, you should, you should challenge yourself and get, and get into the entrepreneurial sphere because every day is different and it's truly changed who I am and change my outlook on life in terms of just pushing through. It's a great life lesson. And it's so fun when you get to do it with a bunch of students and when you don't have a lot of risk, it's very low risk and a high reward in this situation when you're young and in college. I would highly recommend plugging into this space and doing this competition and just getting your name out there, even if you don't win getting your name out there into this into this system of entrepreneurs like us on the call right now and also advisors and faculty like like Jay and Eric on this call like we're all willing to help and so I just highly recommend that you get involved and you apply because once your name is out there. If anyone in the state of Vermont is willing to help you, they will do anything. That's the beauty of being in this small state. So that's kind of all I have to say, but more than happy to give out those contacts as I said and feel free to connect with me on on any platform. So I'm thank you to Nicole and Dan and Zach and Matt and Mason who have all spoken. We are now going to move into the Q&A. So if any members or attendees want to put a question in the Q&A submission box now is the time. In the meantime, I would like to pose a question to the group. We touched on it a little bit talking about how Burlington as a city and Vermont as a state could be deemed as relatively small. But we've also mentioned that there are a lot of resources off campus for our student entrepreneurs. I heard the phrase V-set. I know about a few others. Would anyone be able to talk about a few more of these resources? Zach, I know you're part of BNI. Dan, you work with Vermont Small Business Development Center. Would anyone be able to speak up and share about some of these resources? I can share about V-set quickly just to expand on it. So V-set is a co-working space, but it's also an investment fund. And so, and there's two main advisors, Sam and Dave, who are super approachable. And V-set actually has a partnership with UVM. And so you can apply to become a member there and get V-set perks for free. And so that's 24-7 access to the co-working space. That is access to Sam and Dave whenever you have a question. Free coffee, which is great. Bagels all the time. And just really able to connect and network. A huge thing about co-working in Vermont is like I just said, if you get your name out there, you will be golden because everyone knows everyone around here. And so V-set specifically is a tech-enabled space. And so you go in and you talk with tech workers and really cool people who are doing really cool entrepreneurial things. And so, yeah, that's V-set for you. I know Hula's the same, but yeah. And so to follow up with that, one of the cool things about CIF is they will provide your business with funding. And so we chose to use that funding for a B&I membership, which is essentially a global referral network referral group. And so you meet on a weekly basis. And the coolest part is you get to, one, not only understand what referral marketing is, so you kind of are able to push referrals to each other, get to know each other's businesses. But I think the coolest part, especially as an early entrepreneur, is they do things called one-to-ones. Now one-to-one is essentially like speed dating a business owner. So if you're starting a business, there is no better person to talk to than someone who's been in business and is doing this. And so through the funding that CIF gave us, I mean, that's a big reason that I've kept running the business today is like, you get that opportunity to network with other business owners. And not only that, I'm happy to bring anyone on as a visitor. You can come sit in, meet these other business owners. And it's just a really, really cool opportunity. And that just shows the power of networking, right? Like meeting other people, building relationships. That's one of the biggest parts of entrepreneurship. And without CIF, maybe I wouldn't have joined B&I, right? Like, there are certain opportunities you get through UVM that you should take advantage of. And I think CIF, Entrepreneurship Club, the art program, all very great ways to kind of dip your toes in entrepreneurship. Again, at a very young age, low risk. And just put yourself out there, try something new. And we have a question from one of our participants. How did you all decide to tackle unique city problems, especially when it may not affect you or someone close to you? I'd say something that is pretty relevant right now is that a nearby town has recently been repairing from some floods. And the great thing about Vermont being smaller in size is that we have such a strong community feel and we're all here for each other. So, this town, Middlebury, Vermont, has been able to pick itself back up on its feet because there have been so many businesses, not just in Middlebury, but across the state, especially in Burlington. We've been able to raise support and actually help this town and the state as a whole. So just in general, that's one natural disasters. Our winters are cold. Things like that happen somewhat frequently in our small state and we're able to support each other and get through these tough times. And that's just something that can't always be replicated in other states and other school communities and students just across the UBM campus are very much service oriented. They want to help, they want to be an ally, and they want to advocate for things that they care about. So when it comes to helping an underdog in a time of need, we're definitely there for each other. So that's just one example. Just to add to that, I think that doing market research is a great way to learn about different entrepreneurial opportunities. You can learn about people who live in different places where you might have an interest. And it's a great way to kind of expand your horizons into what kind of possibilities could be created if it's a product or a service if there's a certain group of people that you want to serve. So market research is a great way to learn about doing those things and help solve problems that don't affect people who are living directly near you. And to kind of follow up with that. He was mentioned earlier, Zach Dunn, right? He does painting, you know, it's a service that's needed anywhere, but the way he's spun it to help tackle unique city problems is he donates a percentage of his profits to CVOEO. Right. And so he helps with the housing problem and the homeless issue through just a simple service business, right? And so it's maybe your business doesn't have to focus on solving the problem itself. Rather give some of those profits, share some of the benefits to a program or an organization that will help the community in general. And so I think a big part of entrepreneurship is just giving back, right? And maybe your business is kind of what you want to do, but you're giving back to the community while you're doing it. And so, again, thinking outside of the box, that's entrepreneurship. And then being able to support different programs and different things that help the community while doing what you love is a great way to be an entrepreneur, right? And help solve those unique city problems. And if I can add a few words as the client professor entrepreneurship tonight, but tonight it's all about the students and not about me. That said, I'm also a resident of Burlington where I, you know, where UVM is. And students, we're a town of about, you know, 40,000 people. There's over 12,000 students at UVM. They make a difference in the city. They work in the businesses in town. You buy clothes from them. You buy ice cream from them. You buy, you know, food from them. They're also residents of this town. They're, you know, they're a quarter of the town, so to speak. And so when elections and politics come up, you know, Matt Puder Shapiro alluded to politics earlier. Students are very active in politics in this town. So if you come to Burlington in UVM, you will have many opportunities not only to contribute to the university but also to our local community and making it the strong place that it is. Thank you all. So you all are in various stages of your entrepreneurial journey. I'll pose two questions and I'll let you guys choose which ones you all want to answer. What are you most excited about in your next step of your journey? Or what's a problem that you're trying to tackle right now in getting to that next step of the journey? One thing I really care about right now, sorry, is connecting all the entrepreneurial programs across campus and that's something that I've been working on throughout my time at the University of Vermont. Being able to be on a panel with a bunch of groups at once is a great step in the right direction and we've been working on collaboration for quite a few semesters now. One thing that's really exciting is we just hired a student entrepreneurship coordinator. I don't know if that's the official title, but Molly Davis is one of our new hires and she is just here to support students. Her main goal is to support these entrepreneurial endeavors that students are leading to make sure that they continue on as students graduate and pursue their own businesses. And so having this resource, having a space that students are going to be able to go into and use as their space to collaborate is going to be a great step for entrepreneurship at UVM. And there are lots of entrepreneurship outlets across campus. We've seen this just in this panel, and there's so many more that we didn't talk about, but having one person dedicated to serving students and just really growing the sphere across campus is really exciting. Yeah, Jay, to address your first question, you know, it's become very clear throughout this webinar that we have so many resources at our disposal as UVM students, and it's amazing, and I'm really curious to see sort of how that extends upon graduation. And I think if, you know, the recent years have shown anything in terms of the number of entrepreneurs with, you know, amazing ideas and a strong passion to stay in Vermont and build something cool in Vermont. So I can totally foresee myself falling, you know, under those footsteps and embracing all of those resources and sort of expanding upon them as I graduate. And I don't know exactly what I want to tackle just yet, but I think it's really cool to know that there is, you know, a network of resources, namely people I think that, you know, you do have the opportunity to do that, you know, once you graduate, so. So I am considering going to grad school after graduation. And I just really appreciate how much the student led organizations can do to build a resume, as well as build your network, and just having the amount of connections to professors, professionals outside of UVM as well as the collective mind of students and all the connections you can make with students has just been an invaluable resource for building my resume and finding new opportunities post graduation, especially grad school for me. Beautiful. Well, we're coming up to time here so let's close this out. Zach Mason, Lily, Nicole, Dan, and Matt. Thank you all for taking the time and presenting to the high school students interested in the Vermont pitch challenge. Eric, thanks for coming. Thanks for your continued and seemingly eternal support. We so appreciate it. And you see all of the students nodding their heads vigorously here as well. Kelsey from CS, Brooke from UVM admissions, Kelsey from CFES. Thanks so much for, for getting this off the ground and running for us tonight. For everybody attending and watching I just put in the chat for, for one last nudge to go check out the Vermont pitch challenge website. If you have any questions specifically about the Vermont pitch challenge. Please feel free to email us at vtpitch at uvm.edu. Brooke and our colleagues in UVM admissions will be happily able to find answers for you, or as you've heard a number of times today, direct you to the resources to get you the answers that you need to be successful in this pitch. Thank you all so much for joining us. Thank you again panelists for joining us and taking their time. We're super excited about the Vermont pitch challenge. We hope that you are all too. And good luck as you learn and submit your submissions later this winter. Take care. Thank you. Thank you.