[April 01, 2014]

IPOP Foundation Awards $5,000 in Scholarships in Second Annual Mobile App Idea Competition

The IPOP Foundation, a charitable organization dedicated to helping cultivate entrepreneurs, today announced the winners of its second annual IPOP Mobile App Idea Competition, a contest that challenges high school students to develop ideas for a new mobile app and compete for the opportunity to win scholarships totaling $10,000.

Students at Alta High School in Sandy, Utah, were tasked with developing a business plan for their mobile app including detailing the target market, market need, competitive differentiators, revenue model, and sketches. Modeled after the popular TV show "Shark Tank," the top 10 ideas were announced at an assembly at the school, and the students presented their business plans to a panel of judges.

The first, second and third place teams received $2,000, $1,500, and $1,000 in scholarships, respectively, and the peer audience also had the opportunity to text in a vote for its favorite idea, with that team winning a $500 scholarship. The winning entries were:

1^st Place: Verve by Bryan Luu, Zach Gundry and Matt Blake - A competition app that allows users to post a video of a skill or activity and challenge others to beat them by posting their own videos to prove it.

2ⁿ Place: Airwave by Rocky Evans and Bridger Pennington - An app that connects smart phones to share screens and cameras so they can watch video or listen to music simultaneously with their friends. (Airwave also won audience favorite.)

3^rd Place: Stick Talk by Nathan Hood - Rather than sending a simple text message, users can send a recording of their voice along with a stick figure avatar that will speak their message.

In addition to the winning entries, the top 10 ideas were also awarded scholarships valued at $5,000 that cover their registration for the University of Utah's Innovation Week, a student competition that will pair the high school students with engineering students from the University to help develop their applications.

"A key goal for IPOP is exposing young people to entrepreneurship as a pathway to self-reliance. Our Mobile App Idea Competition is the perfect way to give high schoolers hands-on experience in formulating their own business ideas, with the hope of igniting a passion for entrepreneurship," said Amy Rees Anderson, co-founder of the IPOP Foundation. "After last year's very successful competition, our expectations were extremely high for this second outing - and we were once again blown away by the creativity and ambition that was on display at Alta High. The business ideas these kids come up with are absolutely amazing."

The esteemed judges on the panel included Anderson; Rollin Anderson, co-founder and executive director of the IPOP Foundation; Brad Andrus, president of Bridge Realty Capital; James Clarke, founder of Clarke Capital; Dinesh Patel, co-founder of vSpring Capital (now Signal Peak Ventures); Warren Osborn, CEO of Stoneway Capital; and Adam Casto, Shani Allsop and Dave Chidester, partners at REES Capital.

About IPOP Foundation

Co-founded by Amy Rees Anderson, Managing Partner of REES Capital, her husband Rollin, and their two children, the IPOP Foundation is dedicated to helping entrepreneurs learn to excel by helping them develop their own talents and abilities. The IPOP Foundation - an acronym for "In Pursuit of Perfection" - focuses on the promotion, education, and perpetuation of entrepreneurship as a pathway to self-reliance, self-confidence, and selfless giving in order to impact the world for the better. For more information on the IPOP foundation, visit www.ipop.org.

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