Xavier University has brought back its X-Lab (Xavier Launch-a-Business) competition, giving area entrepreneurs a chance to make their business ideas a reality.
X-Lab launched last year as an effort to connect the university's business experts with the outside community. It's open to any area entrepreneur, including college students, who want to start a business, nonprofit or social enterprise.
The University's
Williams College of Business founded X-Lab. Winners will get to meet with potential investors and receive training and consulting services provided by 65 professors, 500 executive mentors and 1,000 MBA students from the business college. X-LAB will also help existing small-to medium-sized businesses improve and expand.
X-Lab has grown in its second year, hiring an executive director and full-time staff to run the program and recruit angel investors.
Last year more than 160 applied; one of last year's participants was Drs. Denise and Keevin R. Davis who founded
Doctors in the Kitchen, healthy cooking business. The veteran husband-and-wife physicians host an online cooking show and offer a range of speaking, conference and corporate health and wellness consultations that focus on wellness, preventative medicine and healthy eating.
They started the business two-and-a-half-years ago after operating a successful medical practice in Cincinnati. X-Lab helped the couple develop focus and a business plan, Dr. Keevin Davis said.
"They helped us understand our target market and helped us focus and understand how a business operates." X-Lab also helped them harness their passion to educate people about wellness, he added.
"Most people have great ideas, but don't know how to make them into a profitable and a meaningful business," he said. "It takes more than an idea and desire to change the world for the better to be successful," he said.
The X-Lab application process is open until midnight May 16. Ideas are vetted in several increasingly competitive stages. Those who meet an initial idea evaluation will complete a more detailed questionnaire, followed by a 30- and 60-minute meeting with two expert panels. Winners will be announced by September 2011.
There's no entry fee; you can find out more and register
here.
Writer: Feoshia Henderson
Source: Xavier University and Doctors in the Kitchen co-founder Keevin R. Davis
You can follow Feoshia on Twitter
@feoshiawrites
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