Three five minute presentations, each with ten minutes of Q & A. We’ve been invited, six of us adults, to create a panel of judges. Other faculty members have been joining other classes, or giving input online. We are seated in the front row, on two couches that make a V, the round red carpet from a TEDx event long ago is at our feet, a coffee table has a tin of Danish cookies. It’s the last day of the semester, these presentations are the summative assessment for the students of the class Introduction to Entrepreneurship. The room is abuzz.

“We’ve had a stock market this semester,” the teacher explains, and he shows us the final net worth and current stock price of the companies the students created. I’m not sure what the guiding hand behind the market was, but pretty cool, I think to myself. Just the fact that the market ran for weeks, based on how the companies were developing along the way. It’s a long term simulation that supports the innovative nature of being an entrepreneur.

Each of three companies has prepared a short video pitch. The members of the company will come to the front and take questions after the video. The teacher nods at us judges and starts the first video. I’m ready to take notes, and in fact, here they are.

Aquaquest

“Water scarcity is a huge problem globally.” Aquaquest, the speaker explains, has a mission of supplying clean water to everyone on the planet. Solar powered machines will pull water from air across the world. 

One of the student voices is hard to hear, she’s a little embarrassed and laughs as she talks. I’m not sure if I need to keep that in mind or not. Is this about the presentation or the product? I see pictures of their products: two models of solar-powered water-from-air machines. They call what they do AWH (Atmospheric Water Harvesting). The video shows the company website toward the end of the presentation – impressive! – and the girls finish by running through the company financials. Their stock price increased 150% over the course of their work so far. 

Professional presentation, obviously lots of work here, but how feasible is this, really? They mentioned focusing on Malawi and Kenya. I’m having a hard time imagining the AWH machines installed in East Africa. And is there something like this already in place, anywhere in the world, if not in Africa? And what about the impact on the environment? 

John, the teacher, stops the video, exasperated. “We talked about this all semester. Yet you have a wall of text on each slide and you are reading it.” He restarts the video, shaking his head, but then when it finishes, he tells them that it wasn’t so bad, their presentation.

We move into the Q & A. My panelists and I don’t pull any punches, the questions are direct and probing. The students acquit themselves well.

IgniteX

“What are we and what do we do?” They answer their own question, in the introduction of the video. They are going to create sustainable airplane fuel. The EU is going to require a minimum of 20% usage of sustainable fuel by 2035, these boys are creating the company that’s going to be ready for that demand, so their video tells us.

Their company grew more quickly than all of the other companies in the class. They demonstrate with a graph how their company will provide a better return for investors than the other companies. They want us as judges to vote for them.

On the screen we see large metal tanks, with the IgniteX logo. This group, as well as the others, were instructed to use AI to make their images look real. The tanks are two-meters tall, square receptacles for collecting waste oil, for example from restaurants. They explain that two liters of used oil (e.g. from restaurants, from cars) are required to produce one liter of sustainable airplane fuel, or SAF as they call it. They tell us individuals can tap the used oil and bring it to their company for refining, it’s a crowdsourced transportation model. 

Their video is surprisingly short, but the teacher explains to the panel that these two boys started this company just a few weeks ago. They might have left their original group, I’m not sure what happened. This is apparently why they had the fastest growth in stock price; they started with a very low initial price, playing catchup. 

A student asks a question from behind me. She’s been looking online while the boys have been answering questions. She tells them there are lots of companies already doing this – these guys are late to the party. She also tells them the SAF will cost about four times as much as current aviation fuel. The boys have ready answers, though it’s hard to say how accurate they might be.

We panelists are warmed up now. Questions come fast and furious. I have the impression the boys are a scant on specific facts, but they sure can think on their feet well. If their business doesn’t work out, they might want to consider politics …

Terra Sanitas

“Fighting Deforestation with Logging Leases and Drones.”

This video is of all five team members, standing by a screen with their slides. The boys have dressed professionally, everyone has a role. Their voices are a little hard to hear but they have subtitles, a good move. They pick the statistics that make their company look better than the other two companies – students behind me groan at their audacity. What is truth in a good pitch? They are trying to make a fast impression, and they did.

It looks like drones are the delivery mechanism for reforesting land with Paulownia seeds. I’ve never heard of Paulownia seeds. 

I don’t understand their financial results, but that is entirely on me, not on them. I’m not sure if having the highest market cap and the highest share price, as well as the most shares sold, is something that should excite me as an investor (and panelist member). Their marketing is easier to understand: a website, TikTok, Instagram. That’s their finish, we clap and the boys come up in front of us for questions. Now they are wearing school uniforms, they don’t look like businessmen anymore. Funny how that makes such a different impression.

The panelist next to me is a science teacher and he asks them about their projected success rate with those Paulownia seeds. He knows that saplings have a higher success rate because seeds tend to get attacked by all sorts of organisms. Another panelist asks about the projection of harvesting lumber after only three years of growth. What is this Paulownia tree? It must be an invasive species. Should we be dropping the seeds in areas where these trees haven’t been before? Will it be like dandelions? Like rabies? Is it a bit of a Pandora’s box, maybe.

The student on the far left has answered most of the questions. He was also introduced in the video as the CEO. Sometime in the future, he may be on a different stage, answering questions like he is now, real colleagues from the C-suite standing next to him, and with real money on the line.

John invites us to scan a QR code at the end of the packet of information that we have about each company. This is our time to be judgy. As we respond our opinions are added with those of the judging panels that have gone before, in earlier classes. Today is the last class, the final meeting of entrepreneurship this semester. When our votes are all in, the students will know what companies have come out on top.

I spread my votes around to show support for all three companies. But I can’t resist nudging one company’s results a little higher than the other two. They were just a bit … well, if I were putting my money into one stock, I guess I believe in them just a little more. That company was … 

Nah. You shouldn’t have favorites in class. At least not publicly.