The idea came to Vincent Porpiglia while lying awake at 2 a.m., unable to fall asleep.

Porpiglia thought up a new business, Dream Water, a chain of all-natural beverages people drink before bed to help them go to sleep.

Porpiglia teamed up with his brother, Gregory Porpiglia, a senior finance and management major at Syracuse University, and Michael Gursha, a senior entrepreneurship and emerging enterprises major, to enter Dream Water in SU’s Panasci Business Plan Competition in 2008.

The trio won first place in the competition that year, securing $25,000 to start up their business. Now Dream Water has become an emerging beverage company. It will hit the shelves in the Duane Reade convenience stores this year, primarily located in New York City. It has also been featured on ABC’s ‘Shark Tank,’ a show where entrepreneurs pitch ideas to potential investors. In the past six months, the trio has partnered with investors to develop flavors, labels and different beverage sizes.

‘The competition was a great experience, plus we got the $25,000 toward the business. It played a key role in the development of all of this,’ Gregory Porpiglia said.

Students with an innovative business idea are invited to enter the seventh annual Panasci Business Plan Competition run through SU’s Martin J. Whitman School of Management.

The competition invites undergraduate and graduate students at SU and the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry to form teams and pitch business plans to area professionals.

Lindsay Wickham works closely with the competition as events coordinator at the Whitman’s Falcone Center for Entrepreneurship.

‘It’s to promote students thinking about starting a business, and to help give them start up capital to finance their dream,’ Wickham said.

Teams work throughout the semester to develop their business plan. The top three teams receive $25,000, $10,000 and $5,000, respectively, to start up their businesses. All money comes from the Panasci Foundation set up by Henry A. Panasci, the founder of Fay’s Drugs and a Syracuse venture capitalist.

This year the competition will add a fourth prize, the $5,000 Fetner Prize, to recognize sustainable enterprises. The Panasci Business Plan entry that reaches the final round of competition and has the greatest potential for aiding the environment will receive the award.

The deadline for all submissions is Jan. 1, and winners will be chosen at the end of April.

While the competition is run through Whitman, Wickham said that it is open to all majors.

‘It kind of, I think, scares some people who maybe aren’t business students,’ Wickham said. ‘But in order to enter, all you have to have is an idea for a business. So it could be anything fashion related to eco-friendly ideas.’

The competition also offers mentors and a class that students can take detailing how to form a business plan step by step.

Last year, then-seniors Greg Ackerman and Peter King won first place and the $25,000 to launch their idea to streamline the graduate business school application process.

Second place last year went to Brandyourself.com, a self-marketing Web site, whose founders, Wickham said, are working full-time to market their business.

‘A lot of students have great ideas,’ he said. ‘Young people especially have great ideas and it’s important to start thinking about that now, even though it seems like it’s a lot of work. It’s really worth it in the end because who knows? It could be your future business. It could be your career after you leave school.’

jmterrus@syr.edu

Published on December 9, 2009 at 12:00 pm