2020 Startup Case Competition
Start@Shea hosted its first annual case competition with Drizly!
This Fall, the Start@Shea center was lucky enough to partner with Drizly to host the first ever Start@Shea Case Competition in which six finalist teams of Boston College students across all grades competed to solve an issue Drizly was facing.
The prompt that Drizly provided us with is a real case the company is currently facing and allowed students to become consultants presenting a viable solution to the company. In the first round, Contestants were to submit a two page executive summary of their solution. After Drizly personally read all the first round summaries, the six teams that entered the final round gave a ten minute presentation followed by a five minue Q&A session.
Everyone who competed did so for their own reasons, including taking advantage of this opportunity to solve real-life business problems, their interest in start-ups, and the unique ability to work with Drizly in this way. Not only was the problem solving spirit evident in the presentations, but the incentives of the prizes made the competition very genuine. Third Place
would be awarded $200 and Second Place $300. First Place winners receive $500 and most importantly, a first round interview to work at Drizly when they turn 21.
The Judges were Sofia Papastamelos ’13 who is a Senior Product Manager at Drizly, Eric Lopez ’11 who is the Head of Operations at Lantern, and Justin Robinson ’11 who is the Co-Founder of Drizly and Lantern. They evaluated the finalist teams on the feasibility of the idea, the informative nature, and effort put into their presentation.
In Third Place, with an idea that was “outside of the box” was Michelle Horning ’23 and Sophia Cassidy ‘23. Second Place was awarded to Bijoy Shah ‘22, Justin Hatlett ‘22, and Bozhena Kulchyckyj ‘22 who put the “value and mission of Drizly at forefront” of their presentation. And, finally, with the “most feasible” idea, First Place was awarded to two Class of 2023 students, Naseem Haj-Dashmane and Peter Maris who were complimented on their “sharp arguments” and “relevant data to back up every point made”.
Every team put forth great effort, with finalists Matthew Paliotta ’21, Kel Eleje ’21, Christian Landry ’24, Diane Yoon ’24, John Kalil ’24, and Patrick Wu ’24 contributing incredible work and presentations.
A huge thank you to the partnership and work from Boston College alumni at Drizly and Lantern for helping with this incredible learning experience.
Additionally, shoutout to our three Start@Shea Board Members, Bijoy, Bozhena, and Sophia who were in the top three!
Meet the finalists, judges, and watch the announcement of the winners below or watch it on our YouTube!
Thanks for reading! We are Start@Shea, the student executive team of the Edmund H. Shea Jr. Center for Entrepreneurship at Boston College.
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