BPC bonanza

Guest post by Claire Koerner, co-founder of nomON and Foster School class of 2014
nomON is a randomized food delivery app. Claire and the rest of the nomON team competed in the 2013 UW Business Plan Competition and made it into the Sweet 16 round. In this guest post, Claire reflects on the BPC experience and lessons learned.

nomON’s Business Plan Competition (BPC) journey drew to a close on May 23 at the Awards Dinner amid friends, mentors, and fans. After two months of hard work, we were all very eager to reach the culmination of the event, and be able to look back at all we have learned along the way. At the beginning of the BPC, we had a 7 page executive summary that was absolutely gorgeous (thanks to Tarryn!) but with some major holes. Our financials were complete estimates, we had yet to sort out credit card processing, and much of our plan was built upon assumptions. After advancing to the investment round, we had the chance to perfect our 2 minute pitches for judges, create nomON swag, and start raising hype about the brand. But it was when we advanced to the Sweet 16 (yay!!) that the learning really began: we met with multiple coaches and mentors – thank you Sanjay Kumar, Craig Sherman, Emer Dooley, Charles Seybold and several others along the way- who helped us find and fill the holes in our business. nomON went from being a quirky mobile app cobbled together at Startup Weekend to a real business with well thought out financial projections (you should see the spreadsheets), a solid partnership with ordr.in, and an entirely new user interface. What a roller coaster! Although we didn’t advance to the Final Four, nomON is now armed with a full 15 page business plan, an investor slide deck, and most of all, important insights and truths about our business. Thank you to the Buerk Center for Entrepreneurship and everyone who helped us during this process. We are excited to move forward with the business, continue learning and improving, and most of all…bring nomON to you soon!

Top 5 things we learned:

1. Businesses are hard- the to do list keeps growing, no matter how many things you check off
2. Pitch to everyone- you never know who is going to have a random genius insight
3. All it takes to keep a designer happy is free-flowing white chocolate mochas with extra whip
4. Practice makes perfect
5. Businesses are fun- the deeper you go, the more you learn, and the more you love your team 🙂

The nomON team:
Claire Koerner – Business Administration (Marketing)
Stephanie Halamek – BA (Finance)
Tarryn Marcus – BA (Entrepreneurship)
Evan Cohen – Informatics
William Voit – Electrical Engineering