Yardley Wins Bulldog B.I.T.E.

As the winner, he received the Cody Sumter Excellence in Entrepreneurship Award and earned a prize of $3,000 for his pitch for Receipt Hero, a business solution designed to assist construction companies with easily and conveniently collecting and sharing receipts for tax preparation.

Esther Lee, a sophomore business administration major, received the Amanda Gioia Entrepreneurship Award and earned $2,000 for her pitch of Smarter, an automated study partner with voice recognition capabilities to enhance study time for students. Mitchell Kronsbein, a senior business administration major, finished third and won $1,000 for his pitch for Fur Hearts, a premium pet food business that directs a significant portion of its revenue to support animal shelters.

The other students who made the finals were Mackenzie Miller, a senior business administration major, Victor Wei, a sophomore computer science and statistics major, and Brandon Winston, a sophomore business major.

Bulldog B.I.T.E., which stands for Business Innovation by Truman Entrepreneurs, allowed participants to pitch a for-profit or not-for-profit concept. The competition is funded through the Villhard Innovation Fund, which was created by Doug and Diane Villhard to stimulate innovation and entrepreneurship at Truman and has received gifts from both individual and corporate donors.

Volunteer judges selected six individuals to attend the finals April 9. This year’s finals were conducted through a Zoom meeting. Contestants were judged based on the problem, product/service solution, market, competition, value creation, seed money, a Q&A session and the presentation of the concept.

The qualifying round judges for the Bulldog B.I.T.E. were Dan Schmidt (’02) and Dane Stangler (’01). The practice round judges were Stephanie Mills (’07, ’10), Rashmi Prasad, Anastasia Tiedemann and Eric Wang (’19). The final round judges were Amanda Gioia (’93), Mike Heckman (’99), Marco Ilardi (’99), Paul J. McCain (’12) and Cody Sumter (’10).