My Elevator Pitch Idea and Redemptive Entrepreneurship

As a first semester freshman in Entrepreneurial Mind, I was tasked with coming up with a product to pitch for the Elevator Pitch Competition. I searched my life for pains and passions. At that time, I was struggling a lot with homesickness and missing my family, so that was one of my pains. I started brainstorming ways that college kids and their families could stay connected. My original idea was based on a product I’d seen before, which was a screen built into a picture frame that played a video. I wanted to further innovate this product by creating something similar that would play videos sent in at a certain point rather than the device only playing a single video programmed into it. This way, college kids and their families could each have one of these frames, and they’d keep them out and send and watch the videos whenever they had free time. I know what you’re thinking…that’s just a phone. Welp, pretty much. Plus, I don’t think people need more screens in their lives. This is where I pivoted.

I began thinking about how one of my passions is note-taking (yeah, nerd, I know). This sparked the idea for a pen-paling subscription box. I’ll spare you the details, but I thought it was pretty cool. Professor Sweet suggested adding value to the business by making it redemptive in some way, so I started thinking, “what’s a larger problem in the world that I care about?” What I came to was elders in assisted living. They are not always treated well and they often lack good human connection. I’ve always had a passion for serving/taking care of elders, so I decided to incorporate this into my pitch. I wanted some of the proceeds to go towards setting up high school students with seniors from an assisted living home in their area. They would be provided with free Pen Pal Prompt boxes and connect with each other. While this was not explicitly redemptive in the sense that it pointed others to God, but God created us for care and connection, which is what my business looked to foster.