A pair of Mandeville brothers and luxury watchmakers took home a first place award and $8,250 at the LSU Student Incubator’s Venture Challenge on Wednesday.
Reed and Riley Stephens are the masterminds behind Ambici Wooden Watches, timepieces crafted from ebony, black and red sandalwood, zebra wood and maple. The Stephens brothers were excited about their win, the product of many long days of working and preparing.
“We collected watches for a while, and our grandfather was a carpenter and my dad worked as a carpenter to put himself through college. Some of our earliest memories in life were just making things in the garage with our dad out of wood,” Reed Stephens, an LSU sophomore says. “We just blended the two things that we love.”
The challenge works similarly to ABC’s Shark Tank, a television show in which budding entrepreneurs pitch their companies and business plans to investors in hopes of getting the financial backing needed to take their companies or products to the next level. Twenty-three companies originally competed in the first round of LSU’s Venture Challenge. The final round was narrowed to four finalists competing for a share of $23,500.
Tonal Innovation, which sells an instrument attachment that allows musicians to use smartphones and tablets during performances and rehearsals, received the second place award of $6,250. Tonal Innovation co-founders and LSU Tiger Marching Band members Daniel Wendt and Garrett Kessling took first place in the Fourth Annual LSU Elevator Pitch Night competition in November.
Louisiana Decoy Co., which sells waterfowl decoys used for hunting, received $5,500 while Lagniappe Onshore, a hydrocarbon prospecting and consulting firm placed fourth and took home $3,500. Sorority Inspired Sandals, which wasn’t a finalist, won $1,000 in the startup showcase.
Reed Stephens says he and brother Riley, a Mandeville High School senior, plan to use the money for marketing, to overhaul the Ambici website and to start a search engine optimization campaign among other things.
The brothers are equal partners in the company, which has existed for a little more than a year. They’ve been actively selling watches, which retail online for about $135 a piece, for the past eight months. Riley Stephens says the company has generated roughly $42,000 in revenue and has sold about 460 watches.
Noting all of the pitches were excellent, several of the challenge’s judges felt Ambici’s overall presentation stood out the most.
“They were a little bit more advanced in their stage of organization—any of the companies could have taken home first place,” says Louis Freeman, Innovation Catalyst CEO, who was one of the judges.
Anne Forte Trappey, CEO & President of Forte & Tablada, called the Ambici watches beautiful. “I think there’s potential for them as well as the other groups,” she says. “There’s significant potential. It’s going to hinge on, I think, how hard they work in the future.”
Bryan Greenwood, Louisiana Small Business Development Center associate state director, says the final decision was hard to make because all of the students had good presentations. Greenwood says part of the challenge’s mission is to get students who want to be entrepreneurs the resources and access to an environment that’s conducive to launching companies.
“I would say that on the surface they all have opportunities and they all have potential. There’s no such thing as a perfect pitch or perfect business plan because the marketplace will dictate those things,” Greenwood says. “There’s some more research that a couple of teams will need to do; but overall, I think they have the initial foundation of what’s needed to actually launch a business if that’s what they truly want to do.”
—Alexandria Burris
