The BizInnovator Competition has selected four business proposals by City High students in their 2015 competition. Kyle Swenning, Sy Butler, Adam Zabner, and duo Izzi Teduits and Autumn Moen submitted their innovative business ideas and have become four of twelve finalists from across the state of Iowa.

“Izzi and I entered an idea for an app called Safe Driver,” Moen ‘16 said. “We want to create an app that rewards drivers for not using their phones while driving.”

The competition is put on by the Jacobson Institute at the University of Iowa. To enter in the competition students submitted an executive summary, which is a business plan describing what the product is, who it’s marketed to, and how the company will make money.

In the next phase of the competition, finalists get an allotted time to give judges an elevator pitch, a condensed version of their business plan. Afterwards, the students will be asked to defend their pitch as judges bring up questions and concerns.

Judges use this pitch to select the top three proposals, which are awarded monetary prizes. The hope of the Jacobson Institute is that the money will be used by students to get their proposals off the ground.

“I now know how to give an elevator pitch, which I never would’ve learned otherwise, Moen said. “I learned that having confidence in your ideas can go a long way in the business world.