The Dakota Student

UND students Nick Cox and Marko Jukic may be studying two different areas, but the two have seamlessly blended Nick's background in entrepreneurship and Marko's background in chemical engineering to form a business plan for a biojet fuel for GreenFlight, LLC.

The pair won Friday's championship round in the Sustainable Venturing Business Plan Competition at the University of Colorado at Boulder. The two UND students formed one of the eight teams chosen to compete in the competition.

The teams came from Vanderbilt, Dartmouth, Colorado State University, the University of Colorado-Boulder, York University (Canada) and UND. The University of Michigan had two teams representing it as well.

"We were the smallest school in the bunch," said Jeffrey Stamp, chair of Entrepreneurship and Innovation, and adviser to the team.

"The competition was really stiff," Cox, a senior majoring in entrepreneurship, added.

The team had to give a presentation followed by a question-and-answer round in both the first round and the championship round. The pair said they'd had a little bit of practice with an in-class presentation, but the competition was a significant learning experience for them.

They began working on the project on Dec. 17. Marko Jukic, a master's student in chemical engineering, is a native of Croatia. Although he went home for winter break, he two felt that his trip home was an advantage, not a hindrance.

"Our team's day has 31 hours," Jukic said of the seven-hour time difference between Croatia and Grand Forks. They estimated that they spent about 250 hours working on the project between Dec. 17 and the Jan. 3 deadline, and many more hours working on their final proposal once they were accepted for the competition.

Their advisers also put in countless hours of work on the project. In fact, Jukic's adviser, Wayne Seames, was a co-inventor of the biojet fuel the two created their business plan for.

"There was no chance we could have been (at the competition) without our advisors," Jukic said. He got involved with the biojet fuel program when he enrolled in the combined engineering program.

He was given a choice of several different projects to work on, but this seemed most interesting to him.

Last fall, Jukic and long-time friend Cox took an entrepreneurship class from Jeffrey Stamp together to help develop their business plans. The two have known each other since they began college, having known each other while living in the residence halls and through Alpha Tau Omega, the fraternity to which they both belong.

The two were extremely excited when they won first place.

"We kept our calm for the pictures plus about five seconds," Jukic said. He and Cox added that they were presented with an oversize fake check to represent their prize money of $12,500. The two brought it home with them from Boulder, carrying it through security and X-rays at the Denver Airport.

"We basically paraded it around for a day and a half," Jukic said.

In addition to the prize money, they were invited to speak at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory's Industry Growth Forum in November. The two plan to continue attending business plan competition with the hopes of making it to Moot Corps, the "Super Bowl" of business plan competition according to Cox.

Much of their prize money will go toward their business, but some will also go to those who helped the two along the way to their competition. They hope to hire additional employees once their business is up and running one day.

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