BYU student startup takes away $125,000 and audience choice.
For a company with the word simple in its name, one Brigham Young University startup is addressing an issue—gaining U.S. citizenship—that is anything but easy.
Yet SimpleCitizen’s business plan to help future Americans is getting noticed. Earlier this month, the company capped off weeks of hard work to finish on top at the Start Madness competition, a first-year event held by Beehive Startups in Provo. Winning first place and the audience choice award, the team took home $125,000.
SimpleCitizen, which provides an online solution to streamlining and reducing the costs of the U.S. citizenship process and green card application, is no stranger to winning. This is the third time in the last six months that the company has been the top awardee in a major competition.
“We worked hard and wanted to win, but the field was very tough,” says Sam Stoddard, a recent BYU MAcc graduate from Portland, Ore., and SimpleCitizen CEO. “There were incredible startups participating which made it that much sweeter. It was great validation on the hard work that our team has done.”
The past five months of the competition involved more than 100 startups pitching their ideas in preliminary rounds that all came to a head with the awards night on Sept. 3. The closing evening included a narrowed field of 10 finalists presenting in front of a live audience and panel of judges from Utah venture capital firms.
Stoddard says working with BYU’s Rollins Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology helped give SimpleCitizen the boost and confidence they needed to make the winning pitch.
“There are so many resources available at BYU,” Stoddard says. “The CET is amazing. In my last year at BYU I took advantage of the many clubs, mentors and programs. It’s all just there waiting for students to take advantage of it and we definitely did early on.”
Steven Fox, CET associate director, believes SimpleCitizen’s latest accomplishment says a lot about the team’s capabilities now and its success in the future.
“I think their win is terrific,” Fox says. “It means they have a valid business idea that a lot of folks are interested in. These students are creative. They’re entrepreneurial. They know how to network and interest investors and make a business out of it.”
The Marriott School is located at Brigham Young University, the largest privately owned, church-sponsored university in the United States. The school has nationally recognized programs in accounting, business management, entrepreneurship, finance, information systems and public management. The school’s mission is to prepare men and women of faith, character and professional ability for positions of leadership throughout the world. Approximately 3,300 students are enrolled in the Marriott School’s graduate and undergraduate programs.
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Writer: Brooke Porter