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Start Up Event Spawns Businesses

Jim Browne
/
WGLT

During an entrepreneurial event at the Uptown Normal Marriot, 18 businesses, and people who want to run a businesses pitch ideas to a group of judges. The Startup Showcase is a student business startup competition sponsored by the George R. and Martha Means Center for Entrepreneurial Studies at Illinois State University. Inside the room, tables are covered with displays on different ideas. Bud Styer is one of the event judges. He says it's kind of like the TV show, "Shark Tank," where ideas are pitched to a group of business people.

Over $100,000 in prizes are being awarded to the top ideas. Organizer Mark Hoestettler of the George and Martha Means Center says past winners have gone on to run successful businesses.// Ideas range from one idea to become an on-line agent for artists, to an app that would match farmers and consumers, with an accent on locally produced food. Another offers to provide services to area residents from ISU students who need money. Services would include things like snow shoveling and mowing.

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