University of Missouri graduate student Chris Eckhardt and business partner Reynolds Fellow Peter Meng, won the 2011 Collaboration, Leadership and Innovation for Missouri Business (CLIMB) Pitch Competition for early stage start-ups. Pitching AdFreeq, a classified ad service integrated with social media for news organizations, the company won $4,000 in seed money.
"Our goal with AdFreeq is to help newspapers claim money left on the table each year by Craiglist and other online classifieds," said Meng. " We are thankful to CLIMB for helping us continue our mission."
Meng is currently spending his fellowship year at RJI examining ways to monetize online classifieds by using social media to deliver individually tailored ads to consumers. He hopes that AdFreeq will help media organizations win back lost revenues in classified advertising from online services, like Craigslist, which has cost them $6 billion annually.
The pair will pitch their business idea again next week at the 2011 Rice Alliance Information Technology and Web Venture Forum at Rice University in Texas.
Following presentations by the eight finalist teams, judges selected Haute Couture Shoes, for the top undergraduate prize, with Parallel taking second prize in the category. AdFreeq took the graduate student top honors. All eight finals teams were rewarded with funding commitments.
The competition, hosted at RJI, drew participants from 22 departments across the MU campus, from both graduate and undergraduate students. The preliminary round of presentations was held on October 19th in the Trulaske School of Business, where six undergraduate and two graduate teams were selected as finalists.
The judges for the competition included: Michael Nichols, VP of Research & Economic Development, University of Missouri System, Sam Devaram, Business Counselor, SBTDC, Tim Hayden, Center for Entrepreneurship Director, SLU, Gene Gerke, Centennial Investor, Gerke & Associates, Inc., and Clint Matthews, representative, Student Angel Capital Fund.
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