Motion Management, a student-run sports management startup, has won the annual University of Hawaii Venture Competition.
The company focuses on watersports athletes and is run by five UH students — Juliana Rogers, Joane Yu, Heather Jung, Richard Jegers and Devon Baldwin — who are all majoring in entrepreneurship at UH Manoa. Their coach was Masato Itoh of Brookfield Properties.
The team was declared the winner over the weekend, following pitch presentations held on Saturday at American Savings Bank’s Campus Branch.
It marked the final stage in a competition that began in January with more than 40 companies participating in earlier rounds.
During its final presentation, Motion Management explained that it helps athletes with personal branding through social media, merchandising, and monetization via YouTube, as well as assisting with other areas such as contract negotiations and general career planning.
“Whether you’re a professional or an aspiring amateur, being able to make sustainable, substantive income in the field is very difficult,” Rogers said during the presentation. “Through personal branding and social media, you don’t have to be dependent on sponsorship contracts to make a living [being an athlete].”
Motion Management already has two locally based clients — a surfer and a freediver. The students said they have helped both clients generate thousands of dollars in income. Plus, they said they have a list of prospective clients who have expressed interested in working with them.
Run by the Pacific Asian Center for Entrepreneurship at UH’s Shidler College of Business, the UH Venture Competition is an experiential program that takes students through the process of starting a business — from developing a business plan to pitching investors. Along the way, student teams participate in workshops and work with coaches as they compete against others from across the UH system in different rounds. It culminates in a final round of presentations in front of a panel of judges.
Motion Management went into the final round up against three other companies, including:
- LocaLinQs, a one-stop digital platform for students to find information about courses, faculty and campus life, run by UH Manoa students Stanislava “Stasha” Gardasevic and Colleen Milbury, along with Valerie Iinuma and Milan “Miki” Cvetic.
- Zingipop Sodaworks, a locally sourced craft soda company run by Amelia Stucker, a student at Kapiolani Community College, and Adam Sullivan
- The Anywhere Squeegee, run by UH Manoa students Alex Oshita and Eddie Shepherd-Johnson, which has created a compact squeegee designed to dry off tennis courts.
The competition had more than $68,000 in prizes, and as the first-place winner, Motion Management received $10,000 in cash from title sponsor American Savings Bank, along with $26,000 worth of in-kind prizes.
Zingipop Sodaworks took second place, earning $5,000 and $20,800 in in-kind prizes. In third place, LocaLinQs received $17,800, including a $2,500 cash prize. The Anywhere Squeegee came in fourth and received a package of in-kind prizes.
During their final presentation on Saturday, Motion Management shared revenue projections, estimating that they were on target to reach a net profit of $200,000 after two years — without outside investment. They also estimated that they would have a total of 43 clients within the first two years. They said that the funding from the Venture Competition would help expedite their timetable for onboarding new clients.
As for scalability, the team shared a three-tier plan for expansion — the first being the ability to branch into other extreme sports.
“After honing in on the water sports industry … we would be able to differentiate into other sports such as cliff-diving, sky diving, martial arts or skateboarding,” Rogers said.
Within 5-7 years, Rogers said, they aim to “generate enough revenue to create a production and training facility” that will enable in-house production. From there, she said they envision expanding into sports in other locales, such as skiing and snowboarding.
Toward the end of the presentation, Rogers noted that athletes in extreme sports are pushing the boundaries of what is possible for human beings to accomplish. Motion Management’s goals are similar. “What we want to be able to do is to make the seemingly impossible, possible: being able to turn your passion into a career,” Rogers said.
