Charles Soileau walked away from the LSU Student Incubator’s eighth annual Venture Challenge on Tuesday evening with the $10,000 top prize and plans to invest the winnings into his e-commerce company, International Pumps & Parts, which sells pumps and other accessories.
Soileau, a marketing and sales junior at LSU, sold a panel of judges with his pitch on the company’s web platform, which allows oil and gas drilling supply companies to easily shop for air-operated double diaphragm, or AODD, pumps at competitive prices. The so-called “trash pumps” are typically used for fracking, Soileau says, though they also have other uses.
The pitch competition was held at Tin Roof Brewery. Two other finalists—Thomas Smith, CEO of Trouble Circle, and Luke Simon, owner and operator of Freedom Fresh Farms—tied for the second place prize, each receiving $7,500 to help fund their ventures.
Trouble Circle, a fashionable bracelet that doubles as an emergency alert system to protect women from assaults, won the 2018 Baton Rouge Startup Weekend competition last month. Luke Simon, a U.S. military veteran, owns and operates the Prairieville-based Freedom Fresh Farms, an organic certified farm producing for local grocery stores.
At Tuesday evening’s Venture Challenge, the three student-run finalists—who advanced from a pool of 18 applying startups—were given 10 minutes or less to pitch the panel of judges.
Soileau plans to use his prize money for online marketing, a mailing campaign, business-related travel and web reinforcement. Since he invested $10,000 to launch International Pumps & Parts, the startup has generated more than $8,000 in sales, he adds.
“We’re in the oil and gas hub of the United States down here near the Gulf, and being a pump company, that’s huge,” Soileau says. “I’m kind of innovating here by starting an online company that sells these industrial products. We’re the only one in the South.”
With AODD pumps producing about $633 million in market revenue, Soileau says industrial executives are now seeing the need for an online marketplace. He expects breaking into the petrochemical industry to be his greatest challenge.
LSU Student Incubator Manager Kenny Anderson says eight of the event’s previous participants have gone on to raise some $760,000 in additional capital since 2015. Meanwhile, last year’s winner, Performance Mods, is currently seeing monthly sales of about $500,000, while Crawfish App, a 2017 contestant, has landed a partnership with Zatarain’s.
Charlie D’Agostino, executive director for LSU Innovation Park, said he believes the university’s new bachelor’s degree in entrepreneurship significantly benefits student-run startups and should help combat the “brain drain” of LSU students moving elsewhere to pursue their businesses.
“That program is really going to help students focus on those business ideas and funnel them to us. We’ll give them to the student incubator and they’ll compete in the challenge,” D’Agostin says. “It’s the whole package.”
