Congratulations to MBA student Alexandra Gramatikas for winning the Annual Joust Business Plan Tournament. Gramatikas, the only female to make it to the finals, faced some fierce competition, but managed to impress the judges by presenting her business plan for ALTR LLC, a company that creates button covers. The cleverly-designed button covers can alter an existing blazer, polo, cardigan or anything else with buttons into a trendy garment. For her efforts, Gramatikas was awarded $10,000 and one free year at the award-winning UCF Incubator (valued at $5,000).

Other winners included:

Second Place: Tyler Salem was awarded $5,000 for his company PlatForm which allows businesses to create custom electronic signable forms.

Third Place: Malic Dekkar won $3,000 for his company PHIDIAS3D, an emerging construction intelligence company that specializes in providing engineering-grade, millimeter-accurate 3D data of any existing building structure.

Fourth Place: Michael Irene received $2,000 for his company Greek Guide, a mobile application implementing cognitive learning techniques that uses push notification technology.

The four final groups presented their business plans to a panel of judges that included:

  • Tom Bland, ’75, and ’79, CEO AquaFiber Technologies
  • Carol Ann Dykes, Site Manager, UCF Business Incubation – Central Florida Research Park
  • Paul Gregg, ’74 and ’76, Senior Vice President and CFO, CNG Producing Company and instructor, UCF College of Business Administration
  • Roy Reid, ’88, Partner, Consensus Communications
  • Rick Walsh, ’77 and ’83, President, Knob Hill Group

    • The event is sponsored by Steven Felkowitz, ’79, CEO of Atico International.

    The Joust is an annual event in which entrepreneurial UCF students from across disciplines develop business proposals and then compete against one another in the hopes of being judged as having the most promising plan. Visit the Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation website for more information.