Students awarded 40k for Mototrax business plan
Three University of Idaho students who developed MotoTrax, a system to convert dirt bikes into snowmobiles for winter riding, walked away from the annual Idaho Entrepreneur Challenge with the grand prize of $40,000.
Students Randy Gentry, Tallie Gentry and Zak Garrett developed the system and business model over the course of several months and said they were glad to see their hard work pay off.
“We are the only company that makes them that actually feels like a dirt bike when you turn it into this single-skied snowmobile,” Randy Gentry said.
The Idaho Entrepreneur Challenge is a series of workshops and events culminating into a statewide business planning competition. Its purpose is to encourage Idaho students to engage in entrepreneurship. The challenge is open to teams from all Idaho colleges and universities and is sponsored by Zions Bank and is administrated by the Boise State University Center for Entrepreneurship.
The MotoTrax team received $40,000 in cash for winning first place in the business plan competition. They also received $30,000 in in-kind prizes, $5,000 of which is for trademark and branding purposes and the other $25,000 is for business consultation, Randy Gentry said.
Randy Gentry said the team plans to use the prize money to build the first units and start the company.
“The prototypes are really expensive and building the first few production units is going to cost quite a bit, they’re pretty expensive,” he said. “They cost a lot to build, and so we’re using it all for startup costs.”
Randy Gentry said he is the primary engineer and designer of the MotoTrax system and handles much of the administrative part of the business. Tallie Gentry said she takes care of the operations management and shop work aspect of the business and Garrett said he handles almost all of the sales and marketing.
Another UI team won the $10,000 third-place award for its development of Time Stage, an automated medical testing device that increases speed and accuracy of medical testing.
George Tanner, director of the UI entrepreneurship program, informed both the MotoTrax and Time Sage teams of the challenge, according to Randy Gentry.
Time Stage developers included UI students Shuai Li, Jacob Stevens, Michael Marsh and Verity Lectka.
Li is the president of Time Stage, Stevens is the chief operating officer, Marsh is the lead engineer and Leckta specializes on the science of how to test for cancer and research related to the system’s functions.
Time Sage is a fully automated device that tests for diseases in samples. The diseases the device tests require a trained technician to test for manually, Li said. The team said its purpose in developing Time Stage is to provide faster diagnoses so people don’t have to be put on testing wait lists as they wait for a technician to be available.
Li said the team plans to spend the prize money on improving the prototype. Li said the team plans to use part of the prize money to buy the micro pump used in real medical procedures and they plan to look for an electrical engineer to help make the hardware smaller.
“We can scale it down with $10,000 and make it more realistic approach to a more production-ready prototype,” Li said.
Corey Bowes can be reached at [email protected]