ESU Student-Owned Business Wins tecBRIDGE Business Plan Competition

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Posted by: Elizabeth Richardson on May 5, 2020, No Comments

For the second year in a row, an East Stroudsburg University (ESU) student-owned business and a Monroe County-based business won both the collegiate and non-collegiate divisions of the tecBRIDGE Business Plan Competition held via Facebook Live on Wednesday, April 29, 2020.

Erik Diemer, a recent ESU graduate and founder of Mite Fight, a subscription service that provides supplements and medicines needed to keep honeybees healthy, won first place –

claiming the $10,000 cash prize and over $100,000 of in-kind services to help launch his business. ParkingShark, founded by ESU computer science majors Amirah El, Sean Crowley and Hunter Barabas, also competed in the top five businesses of the collegiate division. The students developed the ParkingShark App to easily locate available parking spots.

Mash Motor Company, based in Stroudsburg and founded by Ben George, won the non-collegiate division of the competition. George also claimed a $10,000 cash prize and over $100,000 of in-kind services to help further the business. Mash Motor manufactures unique three-wheel auto-cycles, combining the look and feel of a classic American hot rod with the thrill of a motorcycle to create an affordable and eye-catching vehicle.

Diemer graduated in December of 2019 with a degree in business management. In his last semester at ESU he launched Mite Fight, an effort to save honeybees with an affordable subscription service that sends beekeepers all the supplements and medicines they need in order to keep their bees healthy. Mite Fight will also collect data on the health of honeybees and the spread of disease. The data will be used to create Honeybee Health Forecasts, a system that will allow commercial beekeepers to better mitigate disease and risks for their hives. The Honeybee Health Forecasts will be sold as a service to commercial beekeepers. In addition to winning the tecBRIDGE Business Plan Competition, Diemer placed first in Pennsylvania’s State System of Higher Education (PASSHE) Startup Challenge on April 22, wining $10,000.

In the 2019 tecBRIDGE Business Plan Competition, Falchion Systems, founded by then ESU students Zachary Waldman and Nick Neeley, placed first in the collegiate division. Organtick, a company based in the ESU Innovation Center and founded by Nicole Chinnici, director of ESU’s Dr. Jane Huffman Wildlife Genetics Institute, placed first in the non-collegiate division.

The tecBRIDGE Business Plan Competition is an annual event that showcases entrepreneurship and innovation in the northeast Pennsylvania region. Student teams from fourteen local universities and colleges compete in the collegiate division and early stage entrepreneurs compete in the non-collegiate division.

For more information on the tecBRIDGE Business Plan Competition visit tecBRIDGE pa.org/bpc. For information on the East Stroudsburg University Business Accelerator Program, contact Keith Modzelewski, director of entrepreneurship, kmodzelewski@esu.edu.