Ready, Fire, Aim…. Flash Business Plan Competition

Ready, Fire, Aim… Flash Business Plan Competition

Do you have a great idea for a business or product that you’d like to create one day? Will it be the next Facebook, Slack, or Purple Mattress? (You haven’t heard of this one? It’s hot, Google it!) Or, would you like to work with a friend who has the next big idea? Do you want to work on an innovation that will change or disrupt the world? Then you will not want to miss this workshop.

What is a flash business plan competition you might ask? It’s a guided, one-hour project that takes you through the key steps of creating a new business concept, including consumer testing. After one hour, you will present your business to the other workshop participants who will select the winner.

There will be prizes…and they will be good. But mostly you will secure life-long bragging rights for having won this chaotic and stressful, no-holds-barred workshop!

You will learn many things, including the most essential steps in marketing:

1. What is market segmentation and targeting?
2. What is positioning?
3. How to collect market research and consumer input.
4. How to pitch your idea.

Workshop Leader

You’ll be led by Joel Appel, an entrepreneur most of his life and part of CMC’s class of ’87. After graduating from Claremont McKenna College and Northwestern’s Kellogg Graduate School of Management, Joel worked at the Quaker Oats Company for 8 years. He then co-founded Orange Glo International with his parents. The company’s brands included Orange Glo, OxiClean, and Kaboom, which they sold to Church & Dwight/Arm & Hammer in 2006. A year later Joel founded Launch Pad LLC which partners with inventors and entrepreneurs who have created such cool companies as Tortle, Brainetics, FullBar, Base Education, and Sleep For Life. Joel sits on the boards of First Descents and the Hoffman Institute. Joel is married to Tiffany Glucksman Appel, has two kids, and loves everything outdoors.