OCC entrepreneurs step up to the ‘Pirate’s Plank’ with their business ideas
Orange Coast College fashion student Raheela Maniar stepped forward Thursday evening with a chance to share a dream.
Her presentation to a panel of judges and hundreds of other onlookers at the school’s Robert B. Moore Theatre was Zero Degrees Zero, a fashion and lifestyle brand geared to Muslim women like herself who want some cosmopolitan flair in modest clothing choices.
The judges liked it. Maniar won $500 and the Most Likely to Succeed award in the Costa Mesa college’s first “Pirate’s Plank,” a business pitch competition created by business instructor Mark Grooms and modeled after the ABC-TV show “Shark Tank,” which puts entrepreneurs in front of potential investors in an effort to gather seed funding.
Pirate’s Plank, however, was more about education than big money. After each of the seven OCC students presented his or her project, the judges — Betsy Densmore, founder and president of the Academies for Social Entrepreneurship; Joseph Jeong, a senior vice president with FirstBank; and Jeff Hyder, an executive with Simple Green — asked questions as though they were prospective investors.
Hyder joked that he was ready to give Maniar $25,000 to get her company going. Maniar turned to Jeong and said, “You can make a counteroffer.” The audience laughed.
The $500 award for Most Innovative Idea went to TextTrade, the dream of business management student Michael Ambrose. TextTrade would be a smartphone app with which students could sell their used college textbooks to one another at potentially cheaper prices than online retailers or the campus bookstore.
Ambrose, lamenting that publishers charge hundreds of dollars for books, said TextTrade could bring more equity to the “corrupt” market. To help prove his point, he lobbed a heavy book onto the stage, much to the delight of hundreds of students in attendance.
The judges were skeptical of some of the pitches. Pouria Moalemian, a business student, proposed an international shipping service called CheapoShip, which would rely on couriers.
Densmore asked how CheapoShip would screen the couriers and give customers the feeling that their packages would get to their destinations safely.
“I think there’s more work to do, even though it’s a big idea,” Hyder said.
Business student Christian Castelblanco took the stage with a plan that’s well underway for his Tailgate Adjuster, a ratchet-style accessory that would let truck tailgates rest in multiple positions, not just either closed or fully open. Using the device could enable drivers to bypass cables or ropes for securing items in a truck bed.
A commercial Castelblanco screened declared, “Don’t get caught with your tailgate down.”
He said the devices are being made by his grandfather at his shop in Valencia. A patent is pending, he said.
Castelblanco described himself as co-chief executive of Tailgate Adjuster, alongside his father, who apparently wants to see his son finish school.
“I will be more once I graduate college, hopefully,” Castelblanco said.
Twitter: @BradleyZint
