Prepaid Internet credit card for teens captures CU business plan contest

The team from the College of Business and Administration’s Business Plan preparation course, taught by professor Steve Lawrence, won $33,000 in prize money. The team won the first-place $3,000 prize from Bank One, the $20,000 Cornerstone Equities Seed Capital Award and the Integer Group’s Excellence in Marketing Award worth $10,000.

In addition to the prize money, Cornerstone Equities will invest between $25,000 and $250,000 of venture capital in Wally.com.

Wally.com focuses a heavily targeted group of consumers – teens. The Web site allows teens who cannot access credit cards or commercial bank accounts to purchase a pre-paid Internet “credit” card for shopping online. The pre-paid card will be sold for cash at retail stores.

Interestingly, Wally.com plans to hire teens 16 and older as direct sales representatives, who will communicate the value of the card to other teen users.

The CU-Boulder Business Plan Competition’s $45,000 prize money is second in the nation behind the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s $50,000 prize total. Stanford and Harvard universities follow with $25,000 and $20,000 respectively.

Other winners of the competition include Power Trip Inc., a developer and publisher of multi-player, online strategy games. The group won the Bank One prize of $1,250. Medilink, the third place Bank One prizewinner, netted $750.

The Wally.com team will travel to San Diego State University next March to participate in the Venture Challenge 2000 International Student Business Plan competition.

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