Business Pitch Competition

Rock The House is at Kalahari Resorts for the Council of Smaller Enterprises  (COSE) Small Business Convention all week. As a Gold Sponsor, Rock The House is committed to the cause of COSE which is growing small businesses like us in our region. As the Audio/Video/Production company for the event, we are thrilled to have a client like COSE who has let us do what we do best – create lasting experiences for guests at our events.

The first day is the soft opening of the convention and centers around one of the week’s most exciting features – a business pitch competition where $40,000 in cash is given between four finalists. These finalists had to go through a few rounds to get to this live competition to see who has the best pitch and to win the grand prize of $20,000! Have you ever seen the TV Show Shark Tank? That’s the style of this competition but the drama was heightened because this was live in front of some of the best entrepreneurs in the region. The finalists shared many traits in common but the most compelling was that each of these business ideas were personal. These business owners were faced with very real problems at different points in their lives and created creative solutions with sustainable growth models. They did their homework and it was a VERY tight race.

What made this competition so prestigious was the level of judges that COSE put together. Judges included

• Bernie Moreno, The Collection Auto Group
• Sharon Toerek, Licata & Toerek LLC
• Darrell McNair, MVP Plastics
• Autom Skoczen, Auts Tipse Treats
• Jeff Hoffman, The Priceline.com Family of Companies

I’m sure you are dying to hear who the finalists were and what place they came in. Well, the judges found the contest so close that they offered the finalists the opportunity to split the $40,000 evenly if they unanimously came to that consensus. They opted to go for it all and the judges verdicts came to pass.

The four finalists were:

4th Place -Deb Stanzak founder of Ron Wear, clothing with ports, made to enhance the quality of life through comfortable and dignified fashion.

3rd Place – Nichelle N. McCall founder of Bold Guidance, software that makes college applications easy for students.

2nd Place – Erika Boll founder of The Toasted Oat which is a VERY tasty gluten-free granola snack.

1st Place – Daniel Mansoor founder of GiveNext. GiveNext is an easy way for donors and nonprofits to manage charitable giving.

Rock The House is honored to have provided the sound and lighting for this really exciting competition. This is only the first day of what is shaping up to be a very exciting week at Kalahari.