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Get Ready for the 3rd Annual Sigma Nu Tau Business Video Pitch Competition!
Dear ,
As the spring business plan, elevator pitch and other entrepreneurial competitions have taken place, we strongly encourage students at colleges and universities with a Sigma Nu Tau chapter to think about entering the
Sigma Nu Tau Entrepreneurship Honor Society 3rd Annual Video Pitch Competition!
The competition is open to all students at the 26 schools with a Sigma Nu Tau chapter who have won a prize in a previous business plan or other entrepreneurial competition. Each chapter may submit only one video entry. Deadline to enter is May 30, 2018. Please visit our website for the competition poster, brochure, and entry form: https://sigmanutau.org/sigma-nu-tau-video-pitch-competition/
The prizes for the 3rd Annual Video Pitch Competition have been increased, with "Best Video Awards" for 1st place ($1,000), 2nd place ($750), and 3rd place ($500) teams. Winning schools will receive a handsome plaque, and their videos will be featured on the Sigma Nu Tau website for a minimum of 1 year. It is important to point out that the video is different from video pitches in which students promote their business ideas/plans. This video competition focuses on the following 3 purposes: (1) to highlight the learning process that takes place when students participate in business competitions. The video should focus on the question - "How has participating in a business plan competition benefited your entrepreneurial learning process?" (2) to promote the chapters' supportive atmosphere for developing great entrepreneurs. The video should focus on the insights gained by students and how their school, department, professors, Sigma Nu Tau chapter, competition organizers, or other entrepreneurs helped them achieve success in the competitions; and (3) to recognize students' entrepreneurial talents which feature successful business plan and other entrepreneurial competitions.
Interested in Starting a Chapter at Your School? If you would like to establish a chapter at your university so that you can recognize outstanding students, faculty members, entrepreneurs, and honorary members, please visit our website (SigmaNuTau.org) and check out our Facebook page to learn more about the process. Or give me a call to discuss it! If you know faculty members or students at another college who might be interested in having a chapter of Sigma Nu Tau at their school, please encourage them to call me or direct them to our website's homepage link: "How to Start Your Chapter."
Wishing you an enjoyable summer,
Nancy J. Church, Ph.D.,
President and Executive Director
Sigma Nu Tau Entrepreneurship Honor Society
P.S. Does your school have any news that you would like us to include in the next issue of our e-newsletter? If so, please send it to me at [email protected] or SigmaNuTauEntHonorSociety@ gmail.com or post your news on the Sigma Nu Tau Facebook page!
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Proud To Welcome
The Following Chapter to the Sigma Nu Tau Family:
Sigma Nu Tau President, Dr. Nancy Church, presents charter to St. Edwards University Dean--Dr. Nancy Schreiber, Faculty Secretary--Katie Finney & Faculty Advisor--Dr. Antonio Alvarado. Photo on right shows all 12 charter members of the chapter.
25th Chapter Chartered at
St. Edward's University --
First Sigma Nu Tau Chapter in the State of Texas!
On Thursday, April 26, 2018, St. Edward's University, an independent Catholic university located in Austin, Texas, received its Sigma Nu Tau charter on their beautiful campus. Five faculty members and five student members were inducted as charter members, and honorary charter memberships were awarded to Dr. Nancy Schreiber and Dr. Debra Zahay-Blatz.
The faculty advisor, Tony Alvarado, and faculty secretary, Katie Finney, assisted in the presentation of membership materials to the charter members. The keynote speaker was Ms. Areej Rabie, Venture Associate,Capital Factory and Sigma Nu Tau Member from Belmont University, who spoke on "Career Outcomes from Involvement in Sigma Nu Tau."
St. Edward's University was founded in 1841, and has implemented a series of ambitious strategic plans and achieved them with unprecedented success. The university has been inspired by the visionary leadership of their Holy Cross tradition, enthusiasm, commitment and shared sense of purpose fueled with academic innovations.
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Upcoming Business Competitions
Around the World
Business competitions are an excellent way of gaining experience, feedback, publicity, and funds for new entrepreneurs. Here is a list of four upcoming business competitions:
(1) Burton D. Morgan Business Plan Competition
Competition is to provide an opportunity for students to learn about entrepreneurship through the development and presentation of a business idea to a panel of judges. Participants in the competition have an opportunity to define their ideas in commercial terms and to compete for substantial cash prizes that could be used to further the commercialization of their inventions.
Prize: $100,000 in cash
Deadline to apply: September 25, 2018
To sign up and more information: https://www.purdue.edu/discoverypark/bdmce/competitions/business-model-competition/index.php
CodeLaunch is an annual competition for people and groups with ideas for "Apps" who are seeking seed funding. The CodeLaunch Pitch Day is the culmination of the competition and a showcasing of the best competitors.
If you have an "idea for an app" and nothing more you are qualified to apply.If you have experience in business and passion for entrepreneurialism you are likely to advance CodeLaunch will continue to grow each year and has become an event with widespread interest from the start-up community including Angel Investors, Venture Capital, and other entrepreneurial organizations and leaders.
(3). MIT $100K Competition 2019
One competition - three independent contests - from October through May.
For 29 years, the MIT $100K Entrepreneurship Competition has been bringing together students and researchers from across MIT and Greater Boston to launch their talent, ideas, and technology into leading companies.
The competition is run as a series of distinct, increasingly intensive contests: Pitch, Accelerate, and Launch.
Each contest focuses on developing specific founding skills, and for each semi-finalist contender the MIT $100K brings together a network of resources, including mentorship from venture capitalists, serial entrepreneurs, corporate executives, and attorneys; media exposure; prototyping funds; business plan feedback; and discounted services.
Additionally, more than $300K in non-dilutive awards help these new ventures accelerate.
Prize: $100,000 in cash & prizes
Deadline: December 31, 2018
(4) University World Cup
This competition is hosted and organized by a Danish non-profit, Venture Cup. Their mission is to establish connections among student entrepreneurs internationally, as well as teach and advise young people about the world of business.
What you need: Preferably, a business that fits into one of the following categories: healthtech, greentech, fintech, hightech and robotics or information communication technology. However, if your idea is cool enough, they'll accept anything.
Who can apply: Only student startups may enter. Therefore, all teams must have at least one person who is a student, faculty member or recent graduate of a Danish university (within the year they're applying).
Where: Finals are hosted in Copenhagen and last one week.
What you could win: Grand prize is $25,000.
2017-18 Deadlines: Not available when we published this information.
Good Luck!
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What's APPin'ing
Save it for later with the Pocket App!
How many times have you run across something interesting, but you didn't have the time to read it right away?
Pocket
makes it easy to save videos, articles, and whatever else you find online so that you can peruse them later. Save directly from your browser or from apps like Twitter, Flipboard, Pulse and Zite.
When you're tired of social networking but still want to wind down at night with something interesting, Pocket might be your best friend. Even better, you don't need an Internet connection to view what you've saved. Pocket is simple to use, and best of all, it's free, but also available in premium versions. Available at the App Store.
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Mission of Sigma Nu Tau:
"To promote, recognize, honor, and reward academic excellence in entrepreneurship and to encourage and recognize the practice of principled entrepreneurship"
4 Types of Membership:
Student
Faculty
Entrepreneur
Honorary
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Sigma Nu Tau Chapters
2009
#1 - SUNY Plattsburgh
Founding Chapter
2011
#2 - Kent State University
#3 -Belmont University
#4 - California State University-San Bernardino
#5 - Clarkson University
2012
#6 -High Point University
#7 - Claflin University
#8 -Suffolk University
#9 - Middle Tennessee State University
#10 - Baruch College
#11 - John F. Kennedy University
#12 - Rowan University
#13 - Illinois Institute of Technology
2013
#14 - University of Baltimore
#15 - New York Institute of Technology
2014
#16 - The George Washington University
#17 - Husson University
2015
#18 - York College of Pennsylvania
#19 - University of Iowa
2016
#20 - North Central College
2017
#21 - The University of Scranton
#22 - Harding University
#23 - Western New England University
#24 - Morgan State University
2018
#25- St. Edward's University
#26- Azusa Pacific University
#27 - Your school could be the next new chapter!
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Making a Purchase at Amazon?
Planning to buy anything from Amazon? Please shop
at smile.amazon.com
and designate Sigma Nu Tau Entrepreneurship Honor Society as your target charity.
It won't cost you anymore
, and Amazon will donate .5% of your purchase to Sigma Nu Tau! Your kind act will help support our student programs!
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Entrepreneur
Lifestyle:
"Did You Pick the Right Name?"
Jennifer Fitzgerald first named her company KnowItOwl before using a process to create a company name that was more suggestive of what her company actually did. The new company name, Policygenius, is a winner for the company that helps consumers find the right insurance policy.
Here are the five steps used by Fitzgerald:
Step 1: The big name dump -- using a shared Google doc to prompt people's crea-tivity over a few weeks.
Step 2: Structured group brainstorming --put up a word re-lated to the business & give group mem-bers time to create names.
Step 3: Cut the crap -- eliminate names that didn't work, were too similar to com-petitors' names, etc.
Step 4: Judge by color -- evaluate names based on criteria such as brevity, evocative-ness, searchability. The mark as red, yellow, green. Too many reds lead to cutting a name.
Step 5: Test people's memories -- could they remember it, did it conjure up negative emotions?
Source: Entrepreneur magazine, May 2018, by Jason Feifer, p. 28.
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Inspirational Quote:
"It doesn't matter how many times you fail. It doesn't matter how many times you almost get it right. No one is going to know or care about your failures, and neither should you. All you have to do is learn from them and those around you because all that matters in business is that you get it right once. Then everyone can tell you how lucky you are."
-Mark Cuban
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Entrepreneurship
Article of Interest:
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"Fight Your Fears"
Six founders of com-panies
shared what parts of running a business scared them the most and what they did to get over their fears:
(1) Fear of the "money man" and finances: Sarah Ahmed, CEO of Warp + Weft, meets with her accountant every two weeks and checks the previous day's sales keeps her on top of finances.
(2) Fear of the stage: Cheryl Kaplan, president of M. Gemi, takes extra time to thoroughly prepare before she does public speaking in order to feel more confident.
(3) Fear of the big decisions: Jennie Baik, CEO of Orchard Mile, overcomes the problem of indecision by taking her time, gathering data, and sleeping on it before making big decisions.
(4) Fear of the risks: Matt Pholson, CEO of Omaze, feels that fear of risks stems from fear of failure so he recommends two ways of overcoming it: (a) being grateful for what you do have and (b) focusing on what you have to get done each day rather than worrying what could happen in the future.
(5) Fear of the competition: Christina Stembel, founder of Farmgirl Flowers, advises one to tune out the comp-etition and focus on providing the best product and customer experience.
(6) Fear of the hiring: Jessica Herrin, CEO of Stella & Dot, states that hiring the wrong people is bound to happen, but that you can learn from everyone you meet and it will be a valuable experience, even if they're not a good fit for your company.
Source: Entrepreneur magazine, "Fight Your Fears," April 2018, p. 28.
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Great News!
Sigma Nu Tau announces that it began accepting all major U.S. credit & debit cards on November 15, 2016!
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learn more about entrepreneurship.
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Our website offers easy-to-find honor society forms and introductory information pages. The website now has step-by-step instructions for petitioning to establish a collegiate chapter of Sigma Nu Tau Entrepreneurship Honor Society at your college or university. Visit sigmanutau.org today and see for yourself! |
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To obtain materials to petition to start a chapter at your university & for more information about Sigma Nu Tau's mission, constitution, bylaws, or general information on the benefits of starting a chapter,
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May 2018 -
Issue 33
Editor:
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