Contest Aims To Encourage Entrepreneurship In State (Connecticut)

It’s 10 a.m. on a Thursday, and the ballroom at The Hartford Club is a subdued place, a quiet staging area for a dozen or so people in business suits
who sip coffee and review notes.

Stacy Wong
Hartford Courant

Across the hall in the red-carpeted Yacht Room, Awo Quaison-Sackey starts talking about her new company, AQ Solutions, to a panel of judges. Here,
within one of Connecticut’s most venerable old-line institutions, a competition to spur a new spirit of entrepreneurship begins.

This contest’s prize is not money, but opportunity – the opportunity to land investment, add jobs and, most of all, build a successful business.
Quaison-Sackey’s team is one of four to compete today, but contest organizers hope that no matter who wins, will all retain their drive to start new
businesses.

"The purpose is to encourage entrepreneurship because investors were telling us you don’t really have a management cadre, an entrepreneurial culture,
to match that of Silicon Valley," said Mike Roer, executive director of the Connecticut Venture Group and one of the event’s organizers.

Surveys in recent years have shown Connecticut has the brains and the money to start new businesses, but ranks low when it comes to new business
starts, a measure of entrepreneurial drive.

The group started a business plan competition a few years ago for college students to trigger more entrepreneurial thinking, then expanded it this year to
include Connecticut start-ups.

The start-ups compete for a free slot at the Crossroads Venture Fair in New Haven, which last year drew more than 800 people – most of them venture
capitalists – from throughout the Northeast. A free pass saves a cash-strapped start-up almost $600 in fees and lets it court hundreds of venture
capitalists.

The winner also gets a free listing on Ace-Net, a forum for angel investors that is running this year’s competition.

Ann Armstrong, chief executive of iEDIGroup Inc., a New Haven e-commerce company, said the eight-minute time limit for presentations forces
competitors to focus on the most important aspects of their business.

Her team participated in a practice run and made adjustments based on the feedback. "The more you practice, the more you get it down in your own
mind," she said.

Her company has landed about $700,000 from investors that include NextGen, the fund operated by the state’s venture capital arm, and The Phoenix
Cos Inc. AQ Solutions landed more than $1 million from NextGen and other investors.

NextGen President Tom Conroy watched his two portfolio companies compete in the Yacht Room with an almost fatherly air, like a proud parent
watching a middle school spelling bee.

After lunch, the winner was announced: AQ Solutions, a provider of information technology services with operations in Ghana, West Africa, and New
Haven.

Founder Quaison-Sackey, a former Pratt & Whitney executive, said, "I feel like I just won the Grammy Awards." She delivered her presentation again,
this time to the entire ballroom audience, whipping through her PowerPoint slides with a sure, rapid-fire delivery.

After she finished, Ace-Net President Dan Mitchell summed up why she won: "She was confident, she didn’t get off track, and she had a great
proposal."

First place in the college competition went to NextStep (Yale), $20,000; second place, MediTek (University of Bridgeport), $12,500; third place, United
States Stock Insurance Corp. (Yale), $10,000; fourth place, The M*Power Group (Yale), $5,000; and fifth place, Erisa Claim Exchange Inc. (Yale),
$2,500. The $50,000 in prize money was provided by the state Department of Economic and Community Development.

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