Winners of Panasci TEC make entrepreneurial bid
Alan Zdon and Jaroslaw Sloboda, graduates in the University at Buffalo School of Management’s Professional MBA program, and Ryan MacLean, a student in the JD/MBA program, devised a plan for a company that helps bidders determine the actual fair-market value of consumer goods on auction sites like eBay.
The three MBA students won more than $30,000 in cash and prizes at UB’s annual Henry A. Panasci Jr. Technology Entrepreneurship Competition (Panasci TEC) in 2005 for their new venture, AuctionCruncher.com. They were among six teams that participated in the competition, with four teams of finalists presenting their business plans publicly in the competition’s final round at the Jacobs Executive Development Center.
The competition led Zdon and his business partners to make the risky decision to leave their employers and start their own business. “The competition helped with the overall mentality of being an entrepreneur,” said Zdon. “I don’t know otherwise if I would have had encouragement to go out and start my own business.”
AuctionCruncher.com will also offer online sellers a direct market advertising service to give them the ability to reach target audiences at the product level. In addition, the company has developed a software package called BiddingBuddy, which will allow customers to view average selling price and price-range information while surfing active eBay auctions, enabling them to make smarter bidding decisions and save time and money.
AuctionCruncher.com derives its expertise in the online retail marketplace from its other e-commerce businesses, DigitalFix.com and MidnightBox.com, which specialize in consumer electronics, offering customers the opportunity to purchase products at deeply discounted prices.
Zdon said they are currently about twelve months away from going live with AuctionCruncher.com. “We are projecting a pretty progressive growth. The first two years of the business will be focused on marketing and distribution. Our biggest distribution is through other partners of eBay, eBay drop shops, which are like consignment shops. With our software, the drop shops will be able to give their customers real pricing for their item, based on the statistics the software generates,” he said.
Panasci TEC awards seed money and business services to the team that presents the best plan for the launch of a viable new business. The prize package includes $25,000 in seed funding and one year of accounting and legal services.
In the most recent competition, two UB students comprised the first-place team. Justin Call of Amherst is in the JD/MBA program, and Alfonzo Cutaia of Clarence is a law student. Together with Yaoqi Zhou, associate professor in the Department of Physiology and Biophysics and the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering; Alan Walczak, a research assistant in the Toshiba Stroke Research Center; and Taher Hegab, a doctoral candidate in the Department of Chemistry, they will launch their proposed venture, BioHammer, which is developing software to help biotech companies and pharmaceutical firms be more efficient in their research-and-development processes.
The late Panasci, UB alumnus and cofounder with his father of the former Fay’s Drugs pharmacy chain, gave a $1 million endowment to the university in 1999 to create a competition that would encourage students and recent alumni to become entrepreneurs. The Panasci TEC was created by the School of Management and the Office of Science, Technology Transfer and Economic Outreach to facilitate and promote the commercialization of UB-generated technologies. Through Panasci TEC, students from different disciplines together and students from the School of Management mix to maximize their business and scientific potential.
