CBU student entrepreneurs win thousands in business plan competition

Riverside, Calif. (March 31, 2025) – Six teams of students at California Baptist University pitched innovative ideas for products and services at the eighth annual Bob Goodrich Business Plan Competition on March 17.   

The participants presented five-minute pitches to a panel of three judges and a room full of students, guests, parents and live stream watchers.   

Business proposals ranged from a truck logistics service to a greeting card creation kit. The top three ideas in the competition were awarded prize money to help the teams start their businesses; first received $7,500; second received $5,000; and third received $2,500.    

The panel of judges was composed of three entrepreneurs with expertise in different fields: Vanessa Perez, MBA, executive director of Time for Change Foundation; Rodney Couch, founder and CEO of Preferred Hospitality Inc.; and Brian L. Shields, acquisition entrepreneur of Buying Business + Beating Burnout.   

Team InVision received first place with its educational platform designed to support Deaf and hard-of-hearing students by combining augmented reality with real-time captioning and AI-powered summarization. The team was composed of friends Vanessa Roaché, Marta Shitaye, ShaRena Steeple and Will Henry.   

Steeple, an architecture junior, shared that they learned key business skills such as management, research, interviewing and collaboration.   

"In the process, we have thoroughly learned the roles of finance, marketing, development, design and project management," Steeple said.  "Creating a business plan gave us valuable experience in the scalability and projected impact of a product as well as what it takes to launch successfully."    

Second place was awarded to team Stove Safe, which presented a device that alerts the user when a stove is left unattended. Titus Rehard and Rose Davidson made up the team.   

Rehard, a computer science junior, shared that any good solution starts by specifically identifying a great problem.  

“After the LA fires earlier this year, residential fires stuck out as a massive problem,” Rehard said.  “We learned that around half of residential fires are started when  the stove is left unattended while cooking.”  

Third place went to Cards for Change. The product provides 50 precut cards ready to decorate along with markers, stickers and suggested scripts. Buyers can also get information on finding local retirement homes to send the cards to. Friends Rebecca Marie Perrington and Alyson Nishimura made up the team.   

Perrington, an accounting senior, said that she came up with the idea from an opportunity she had just a month before the competition.   

"I had friends come over in February when we all decorated Valentine's Day cards for the elderly," Perrington said.    

The experience of buying supplies was not pleasant, and she lacked information on how to contact retirement homes, she said. 

Nishimura, an accounting junior, said that she and Perrington were united around the idea of making cards with a purpose.  

"Rebecca and I wanted to make cards to share with the nearby retirement homes as we saw an underserved community that we could help," Nishimura said.  

Shields was inspired to be a judge of the competition as he himself has been a beneficiary of mentorship.    

"I was really excited that so many teams had the courage to take the risk and try," Shields said. "Good mentorship requires hard feedback, but it also requires taking a risk from the person asking for feedback."   

Dr. Tim Gramling, vice president for diversity and dean of the Dr. Robert K. Jabs School of Business, said that what he enjoys seeing is the process of students' raw ideas becoming viable and becoming a business.   

"I hope students can take the process into their careers," Gramling said. "What the students have been through in the last several months with us is exactly the same thing that happens across industries."   

The annual Bob Goodrich Business Plan competition is open to CBU undergraduate students from any academic background. The competition typically launches in January, giving students eight weeks to develop their business concept and prepare for presentation. Faculty from the School of Business serve as mentors for the competition.