Texas Showcase - Dan Driscoll
For the past two years, Reaching Out Masters of Business Administration (ROMBA) has held an entrepreneurial pitch competition in Boston that is designed to highlight the best ideas from lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and allied MBA students.
This October, AdGrad Dan Driscoll won the pitch competition for his start-up company, reQwip. Driscoll beat out over 40 other applicants, including competitors from Harvard, Columbia, Cornell and MIT.
As the winning finalist, reQwip, which is a peer-to-peer mobile marketplace for buying, selling, renting and donating high-quality sports and recreational equipment, received a $5,000 cash prize to help fund their idea, as well as a post-conference mentorship to help their idea come to fruition.
Driscoll is the CEO and co-founder of reQwip. His business partner, Zara Steadman, is an AdGrad alumna.
Driscoll got the inspiration for reQwip while he was working in Washington D.C. and coaching athletics to kids in the city in his free time.
“It became apparent that when people had access to sports gear that was a little bit better quality, they had more self-esteem,” he said. “reQwip creates an economic model that incentivizes people to do what I think is a social good. We plan to apply it to other verticals in the future.”
Though he participated in the ROMBA competition as an MBA student, Driscoll attributes a large part of his success to the AdGrad program.
“I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to even start a company like reQwip if it hadn’t been for the [Texas advertising] program,” Driscoll said. “Dr. Wilcox, Dr. Cunningham and the whole faculty have been really helpful and supportive.”
In addition, Driscoll found that his AdGrad background came in handy while preparing for his pitch. “Part of it was the pitch competitions they do in classes like account planning and integrated management communications,” he said.
“Those [classes] are really helpful and useful for putting yourself out there and having to present something the right way. That meant a lot.”
As for the $5,000 cash prize, Driscoll plans to use most of it on digital marketing, including targeted Facebook and Google ads, when reQwip launches at the beginning of 2013.
“I’m really grateful to the [AdGrad] program,” he said. “I’ve had talented classmates to learn from and really exceptional professors. The school and the advertising department have all of these resources and are very supportive.”
Photo credit: Israel Ferraz