05/02/2025
A business startup created by SUNY Cortland students to help college athletes secure money-making opportunities, placed among the elite at this year's New York Business Plan Competition (NYBPC).
One of six teams to make the final round, Michael Echevarria, Kyle Germain and Cris Judge's business plan for NIL Finder took first in their category of earn, Work, Live, and won $10,000, before coming up just short against the overall $25,000 winner from Columbia University.
Cortland’s trio of student entrepreneurs was the only team from a comprehensive SUNY school to make its way through regional competitions to last week’s state finals at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., where they went against other business concepts from Columbia, Clarkson University, Cornell University, Skidmore College and Binghamton University, one of SUNY’s four big research universities.
The idea behind NIL Finder is to provide the services of a manager, agent and advisor to more easily secure name, image and likeness (NIL) deals for collegiate athletes while boosting their profiles on social media.
"(NIL Finder) worked hard to create an exciting start-up business in the area of collegiate athletics, focusing on the Name, Image, and Likeness deal space,” said James Wilson, a lecturer in the Economics Department who worked with the students behind mentored NIL Finder and other startup projects in his entrepreneurship class this semester.
Name, image, likeness has become a significant term in college sports, as students have recently been allowed to profit from deals that use their high profiles commercially.
The pitches student teams made to the judges included business rationale, market opportunity and financial considerations.
“This has been a great experience for all involved and evidence that great things are happening in entrepreneurship study at SUNY Cortland,” Wilson said.
He noted that the competition began with 370 teams at the regional level and said that the experience gained through participating in the contest was valuable for Echevarria, Germain and Judge.
“The team was also able to network with venture capital investors and other teams at the competition, landing several important contacts and an invitation to attend an exclusive Entrepreneurship Bootcamp sponsored by NYSTAR in May.”
The New York State Foundation for Science, Technology and Innovation (NSTAR) is a state agency that supports economic development through innovation, research and technology.
NIL Finder hopes to begin full business operations this summer.