UNB Students Capture First Prize In APEX Competition, But Crash Course In Business Is The Real Win
FREDERICTON – When four University of New Brunswick (UNB) engineering students with limited business know-how wanted to turn their project into a business, they knew just the competition to join.
Xavier Hébert-Couturier, Maxime Dumont, Dominic Levesque and Zachary Anderson are the founders of Picketa Systems, a company that’s developing instant plant and soil nutrient sampling for farmers (a process that typically would take weeks).
They’re also the first prize winners of the 2021 Apex Business Plan Competition in the undergraduate category.
Hosted by the UNB Fredericton faculty of management’s International Business and Entrepreneurship Centre, the annual APEX Business Plan Competition is not just about pitching and winning. It’s an intense crash course in business that helps students gain confidence and develop leadership skills. Whether they win or not, students who participate will come out with stronger business skills than they had before.
And for the Picketa Systems team, that’s exactly what they were looking for.
“Being four engineers, I think our weakest point was the communication of the technology. We had just finished our first semester doing a technical audit, which was very dry,” says Hébert-Couturier. “Going off from that to APEX we had to shift strategy and really focus on communicating the value that we can bring and less the technical aspects.”
Participants get the chance to participate in workshops, mentoring, and practice rounds, where they receive feedback from business experts and professionals across the Atlantic region before pitching for the judges.
“The workshops helped us refine it even more and of course, we practiced for weeks and months before,” says Hébert-Couturier. “It was really getting it perfected and really starting that skill from scratch, being engineers.”
Unlike previous years, Covid-19 regulations meant that the competition had to be held virtually this year using Microsoft Teams. Workshops and mentorship were delivered through livestream, interactive panel sessions, keynotes and webinars on YouTube, Microsoft Teams and REMO. Speakers included Adam Peabody, Director of Planet Hatch; Krista Ross, CEO of the Fredericton Chamber of Commerce; Stephanie Fox, Vice President of Saint John Regional Hospital Foundation; and Adrienne O’Pray, Vice President of Client Success with MESH/diversity.
This year’s APEX smashed all previous records, attracting 163 students in 70 teams, representing 45 universities from nine Canadian provinces and 15 other countries.
Though the in-person networking and interaction were missed, the online format turned out to have lots of advantages, including having the competition opened to students around the world.
“The neat part of it is they had students from all over the world,” says Kathy Malley of Malley Industries, one of the APEX judges. “One of my teams was from Nigeria, a couple more were from Singapore.”
Malley recalls a particular pitch from a team in Indonesia, that demonstrated how the competition truly had a global reach.
“At one time, there was some background noise … and the young lady said ‘well, they’ve been called to prayer.’ And you realize ‘ok, it’s a Muslim country,’ and obviously the time that our interview was booked, was at a time when the faithful are called to prayer,” says Malley.
“While she probably didn’t want to say no to the time for the booking, she just did what she had to do. I found that so interesting. That’s what you’re dealing with when it’s a virtual trade show.”
Being an APEX judge for about 15 years along with her husband and business partner, Terry, Malley, has seen how the competition has evolved over time. She says the addition of workshops and practice rounds gives the competition a strong educational component most other business plan competitions don’t have.
“When Terry and I were interested in getting involved in business, there was nobody out there to mentor you to understand what the obligations are of a businessperson,” she says.
“You’re always pitching. If you’re a business owner or even an employee of a business, you’re always selling or advancing the cause of the company. Trying to explain in layman’s terms who, what, why and where, how and how much. Those basics need to be covered.”
Even for first-prize winner Picketa Systems, the mentorship and feedback the competition provides are more valuable than any monetary prize.
“Coming out of this, it gives you some confidence that you’re doing some things right. Even if you don’t win anything, you get some good feedback from the judges. And the judges are very good at pointing out what you’re doing right and what you’re doing wrong,” says Dumont, Picketa System’s chief operations officer.
“Not coming from business, we don’t really know if you’re doing things right. Just to get the judges and everybody’s feedback, it means more than just a cash prize.”
Whether students are like Picketa Systems and are serious about starting a business, or if they want to just test the waters of entrepreneurship, the APEX Competition has something to offer everyone.
“People have conceptions about business. That they’re easy and they’re a sure and fast way to money, and they’re not,” says Malley. “I think anything, going through this process gets these young people to think, ‘do I really want to go down with road?’ It gives them a good chance to test the waters and determine are you really entrepreneurial or not.”
Banner photo, from left to right: Xavier Hébert-Couturier, Maxime Dumont, Dominic Levesque and Zachary Anderson are the founders of Picketa Systems. Image: submitted.
This article was sponsored by UNB Fredericton’s faculty of management.