SCVNGR captures first prize in business plan competition

Prince­ton Engi­neer­ing fresh­man Seth Priebatsch’s scheme for a text-messaging scav­enger hunt has won first prize in the Tiger­launch Busi­ness Plan Com­pe­ti­tion. Priebatsch may be a fresh­man but he is by no means a green­horn when it comes to start­ing busi­nesses. His Post­cardTech spe­cial­izes in pro­duc­ing inter­ac­tive post­cards con­tain­ing mini CDs. Among his clients: Boston City Hall and Google.

The Daily Prince­ton­ian describes Preibatsch’s SCVNGR sys­tem this way: “SCVNGR uses cell phones to send out clues and receive responses via SMS for dig­i­tal scav­enger hunts. The scav­enger hunts would invite vis­i­tors and locals to spend time seek­ing out and win­ning prizes in major tourist des­ti­na­tions, such as New York City or Boston. To enter a scav­enger hunt, team mem­bers would sign up online or text SCVNGR to a short code.”

Preibatsch is major­ing in oper­a­tions research and finan­cial engi­neer­ing, which in this inter­view he rightly calls “a pro­gram for entrepreneurs.”

Indeed ORFE has pro­duced its share of entre­pre­neurs. Among them: Robert J. Moore ’06, who did his senior the­sis on poker, well before Har­vard Law School Pro­fes­sor Charles Nesson’s recent appear­ance on “The Col­bert Report” dis­cussing the value of poker as a tool for teach­ing strate­gic thinking.

Moore’s lat­est entre­pre­neur­ial adven­ture is SmartRaise.com, an affil­i­ate mar­ket­ing play that is heav­ily rooted in rela­tion­ships with e-commerce com­pa­nies. “The basic idea is that school, char­ity, and com­mu­nity groups can join SmartRaise.com for free and do their fundrais­ing by refer­ring friends and sup­port­ers to shop through the site’s part­ner stores,” Moore tells EQN. “A per­cent­age of every pur­chase those sup­port­ers make at the 200-plus stores in the Smar­tRaise part­ner net­work goes toward their cause.”

On April 9, Prince­ton Engineering’s inno­v­a­tive fac­ulty will be show­ing off tech­nolo­gies that are ripe for com­mer­cial­iza­tion at a forum spon­sored by the Cen­ter for Inno­va­tion in Engi­neer­ing Edu­ca­tion and the Jump­start New Jer­sey Angel Net­work. Details can be found here.