Student entrepreneurs to compete for $4,000 prize at University of Tampa

Win $4,000 in 90 seconds? Student entrepreneurs in the southeasten United States will have just that opportunity during the Spartan Business Pitch Competition at the University of Tampa.

The event is a part of the 2015 Southeast Entrepreneurship Conference, which will take place at UT on Feb. 27-28, 2015.

Students of all academic majors through the southeast are invited to register, particularly students who have already developed an entrepreneurial enterprise.

During the two-day conference and competition, enterprising students will hear from more than 20 nationally renowned speakers, including keynote speeches from Joe Quaglia, president of Americas of Tech Data Corp, and Daniel James Scott, executive director of the Tampa Bay Technology Forum.

Scott’s keynote speech will focus on the realities of entrepreneurial success – and failure.

“When entrepreneurs hit big, we usually only hear the positive spin of their journey to the top. Most success, in reality, is a path that was longer and more difficult than ever imagined,” Scott says. “I'm going to dispel the myths that attitude and failure are the magic bullets for achievement, and talk about the three shared traits - that you don't learn in college - that afford us the opportunity to win.”

SEEC 2015 sponsors include local Tampa companies Agile Thought, Total Quality Logistics and Gray-Robinson Attorneys. The conference’s emcees are professional speaker Topher Morrison and American performance coach Jairek Robbins.

SEEC brings participants together for networking opportunities with students and speakers alike. The conference is hosted by UT Entrepreneurs, the UT chapter of the Collegiate Entrepreneurs Organization (CEO).

“Tampa Bay is quickly becoming a major hub for Entrepreneurship education,” Scott says, noting that the Association for Small Business and Entrepreneurship (ASBE) and the Entrepreneurship Education Project Conference are both headquartered in the Tampa Bay area.

The USF, USF St. Petersburg, and UT Entrepreneurship programs have all received accolades in recent years; the programs at USFSP and UT were back-to-back winners of the United States Association for Small Business and Entrepreneurship (USASBE) Outstanding Emerging Entrepreneurship Program Award, in 2013 and 2014; and students in the Entrepreneurship program at USFSP are three-time winners of the CEO's national Startup Simulation Challenge Champions (2012-2014).

Scott himself was named the ASBE Entrepreneurship Educator of the Year in 2013; UT’s Eric Liguori was named the Lyles Center for Innovation & Entrepreneurship's Entrepreneurship Education Excellence Award winner in 2014; Bill Jackson at USFSP was named the USASBE Entrepreneurship Educator of the Year in 2015; and Rebecca White at UT was named a Fellow of USASBE in 2015.

“Every student in an Entrepreneurship program in the US should attend and pitch at this event,” Scott says. “The visibility is outstanding, it is an opportunity to practice pitching, and there is an award and cash available. It is a win all the way around.”

“Plus,” Scott adds, “Who wouldn't want to be in Tampa Bay during February?”