Two Teams Earn First Place in Panasci Competition

In an impressive turn of events at the finals of the annual Panasci Business Plan Competition at Syracuse University's Whitman School of Management on April 21, all four finalist teams walked away with prize money to launch their businesses—and two teams were awarded first place.

The teams of Zapdot Interactive and Logmedia shared first place honors, splitting the combined $35,000 normally allotted for both the first and second place teams. Third place, and $5000, was awarded to Funk N' Waffles. Impressed even with the performance of the fourth place team, judges donated $200 each to offer Dynamic Tint Systems a $1000 prize.

Zapdot Interactive, founded by junior Michael Carriere (pictured at right), aims to push the online gaming community to a new level of professional competition by offering proprietary tools to help teams organize, interact, and improve.

Logmedia (presenting at left) provides video logging and other services to television networks and media production companies. Team members are Janet Levine, Evan Olesh, Alison Pellingra, Kevin Prince, and Emily Wasco.

Judges for the event, which is sponsored by the Whitman School's Falcone Center for Entrepreneurship, were John Couri, chair of the SU Board of Trustees and founder and former CEO of Duty Free International.; Jonathan Holtz, president and CEO of McIntosh Box & Pallet Co.; Shawn Kreloff, chair and CEO of Sona Mobile; Phil McNeill, managing partner and chief investment officer of SPP Mezzanine Partners; and Jennifer Tegan, a partner in Cayuga Venture Fund.

Now in its seventh year, the Panasci Competion is an all-SU business plan competition that was made possible with a million dollar gift from the late entrepreneur Henry A. Panasci Jr. This year's competition attacted 65 teams, who spent months developing and honing their business plans. Sixteen teams competed in the semi-finals on April 20.

Source: Whitman News Room, April 23rd, 2007.