Furman University’s Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship wrapped its inaugural GVL Starts, an an eight-week program where participants learn the ropes to launching a business venture. It culminated in a “Shark Tank”-style competition on Oct. 7 in which businesses competed for a total of $15,000 in grants. Out of a cohort of 25 entrepreneurs, six finalists competed for technology and product-service grants, and the others contended for crowd favorite.<\/p>\n
In the technology category, Eric Cooperman won for his business Bottle Titan, a beverage monitoring product to curb beer and wine spoilage. Dionne Standiford won in the product\/service category for Comfort Cover, a blanket with an integrated pillow for daycares, disaster relief kits and childcare. Winning the crowd favorite award was Jennifer Spears\u2019 The African Violet, a self-care and stress relief company in the business of herbal teas, bath products and massage therapy. The Post and Courier<\/a><\/strong> covered the event.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Furman University’s Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship wrapped its inaugural GVL Starts, an an eight-week program where participants learn the ropes to launching a business venture. It culminated in a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":257,"featured_media":9602,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26,17,6,81],"tags":[1135,166,152,1136],"class_list":["post-9601","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-administrative","category-centers-and-institutes","category-in-the-news","category-innovation-and-entrepreneurship","tag-business-start-up","tag-entrepreneurship","tag-innovation","tag-new-business-ventures"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9601","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/257"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9601"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9601\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9602"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9601"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9601"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9601"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}