Student Entrepreneurs Win $20,000 at Gillespie Competition – The Local Voice

More than fifty Ole Miss student teams competed for the top prize

By Angelica Owens

A digital marketplace for vintage clothing that allows sellers to elevate their brand through a shared customer base won first place during the 20th Gillespie Business Plan Competition at the University of Mississippi.

Hosted by the University of Mississippi Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, the annual competition allows student entrepreneurs to pitch their business to expert judges for a chance to win $20,000 and an office space at Insight Park.

Fifty-four student teams compete in the event, with seven teams advancing to the final round. All seven finalists received $1,250 in funding.

Owen Ridgeway, a senior entrepreneurship major from Jackson; Preston Rollins, a senior business management major from Atlanta; and David Markham, a senior accounting major from Houston, Texas, are the founders of SellVNTG (pronounced Sell Vintage), which took home the Edward G. Francis Sr. Entrepreneur Award as well as the competition’s first place prize.

The team developed the concept of an online vintage marketplace and pitched it to the CIE 18 months ago, said Ridgeway, CEO of the startup. They entered the 2022 business model competition but did not progress far in that challenge, he said.

They honed their business plan and made the finals of both the 2023 Gillespie competition and Business Model Competition.

“A year and a half of mentorship, hard work and consistency has positioned us perfectly to compete and win the 2024 Gillespie Business (Plan) Competition,” Ridgeway said.

This year’s competition was the largest ever, with some $80,000 in cash prizes and awards, said Clay Dibrell, CIE co-director.

“One of the amazing aspects of the Gillespie Business Plan Competition is to watch the growth from one year to the next, such as SellVNTG going from a finalist in 2023 to winning the $20,000 Melanie and Doug Wilson 2024 first-place prize and incubator space at the UM Innovation Hub at Insight Park,” he said.

Ole Miss students Madison Hanna, of Leawood, Kansas, and Maryn Sifrit, of Overland Park, Kansas, co-founders of the Collegemate App, won the Charles R. Doty Entrepreneur Award and second place in the competition. The Collegemate App is an online platform that connects incoming college freshmen to prospective roommates.

“Preparing for the Gillespie Business Plan Competition was beneficial in mapping out our business’s future,” Hanna said. “The guidance from our mentors and pitch coaches was super helpful, along with the feedback from the judges.”

“Collegemate has grown immensely over the past year and it would not have been possible without all of the support from the CIE,” Sifrit said.

Runners-up in the competition included:

• YaXin Huang, a senior entrepreneurship major from Forest, founder of Sing Sauce
• Julien Bourgeois, a freshman computer science major from New Orleans, co-founder and CEO of Automatic AI LLC
• Claire Watkiss, a senior entrepreneurship major from Chicago, founder of Needle
• Stephanie Handford, a senior mechanical engineering major from Milwaukee, and Evan Lampsa, a senior entrepreneurship major at the University of Miami from Milwaukee, founders of Ketchup Please
• Will McEwan, a senior accounting major from Memphis, Tennessee; Alex Bailey, a senior accounting and finance major from New York; Eric Russ, a senior accounting and economics major from Nashville, Tennessee; and Carson May, a senior finance major from Austin, Texas, founders of Sticky Boobs.

“We are excited to see what each of these teams will do going forward,” Dibrell said. “Entrepreneurship is alive and well in Mississippi.”