DePaul Student Wins Regional Idea to Product (I2P) Competition

Two DePaul student-entrepreneurs recently competed at the Regional Idea to Product (I2P) Competition hosted by Saint Louis University, with one of them winning first place.

Rania El-Sorrogy, senior in Commerce, and Justin Romo, sophomore in Commerce, are student-entrepreneurs who have been working on very different inventions. Justin has been working on a patent-pending virtual reality system that has a potential market in the high-tech and defense industries. Rania has a provisional patent for a bookbinding system for hardcover books, in which chapters can be removed and reinserted without affecting the overall strength.

Both students were pleased when their one-page summaries made the first cut of the competition, where twenty-six submissions were whittled down to twelve semifinalists. The next step was to prepare more detailed five-page summaries, along with ten-minute presentations, which would introduce the judges to the concept of their inventions. To help them prepare for this part of the competition, both students worked on their presentations with Raman Chadha and April Lane of the Coleman Center.

The semifinals were held on Friday, March 9, 2007. After they delivered their presentations, the judges’ scores came in and Rania made the finals, but Justin didn’t. Justin was disappointed, but realized that he had learned a lot from competing. “I learned that even a wonderful idea is not enough to win, you must have a detailed, realistic and easy-to-implement path to commercialization.” Justin’s invention is very complicated and intricate, and he felt that it was hard to describe to judges in the ten minutes. He also realized that as he moves on to competing and presenting this invention to others, he has to emphasize how he’s going to take his invention to the market.

The finals were held the next day, giving Rania a chance to take the feedback she received in the semifinals and revise her presentation. The next morning, she was too nervous to rehearse anymore and was concerned about her three competitors’ ideas being more “high tech”: a medical device that helps labs more efficiently collect blood, a language learning software program that runs on mobile devices, and a new design for an airplane wing. In fact, her concern about being too “low-tech” almost kept her from entering the competition in the first place.

On Saturday, Rania delivered her revised presentation and took the questions from the judges. Afterwards, the winners were announced from fourth-place to first-place. Rania kept waiting for her name to be called. When finally, the second-place winner was announced, she realized that she had won the entire competition. For her efforts, Rania earned the first-place prize of $5,000 in cash and an opportunity to compete in the Global I2P Competition later this year in Austin, Texas. For reaching the semi-finals, Justin earned $250 in cash.

Even though Rania considers her invention low-tech, the judges were impressed with its simplicity and how well she described the business applications of the product. She knew her market, her financials, and could quantify the impact her invention would have on the industry.

Rania said that competing in I2P forced her to think about what really matters about her invention. She was always aware that she was solving a market pain, but she said that having to do the one-page and five-page summaries, and then the ten-minute presentation, made her think about what investors would want to know about her product. “It helps you decide what you research, how you research it, and how you present it.”

“It’s a joy to work with such talented students as Rania and Justin,” said Raman Chadha, executive director of the Coleman Entrepreneurship Center. “While balancing their responsibilities as students, they dedicate themselves to bringing ideas to life, and are perfect examples of the entrepreneurial spirit DePaul students possess. Needless to say, their representation at I2P and Rania’s first-place award were proud moments for all of us in the Coleman Center and the Entrepreneurship Program.”