10-25 IAN Business Plan

  Business plans can be very lucrative as we all know, and the University of Idaho is helping put them together.

University of Idaho’s Gaylene Anderson has quite a knack for business plans and developing businesses for those of her students who are interested in agricultural projects. The U of I offers an outreach program for anybody with a unique approach to some agricultural project. For 10 years now I have been putting together business plan teams  with students that come from science, law and business to work on full-time projects. Because I was an actual student, I thought well rather than be the coach, I will just roll up my sleeves and learn what it feels like to be on the team. So I did that this time and fell in love with the project and so in doing that process, not this spring but last spring in 201, we entered several business plan competitions with our presentation and had a lot of success. We placed 3rd at the University of Washington competition, we won the University of Idaho competition then we went down to Boise, we were at WSU. Investors actually fly in from all over the world to see this and put up money. I think the top team one something like $870,000 in different types of equity and cash prizes, but more important than the money that was gained their where access to contacts that continue to be helpful.