BYU Entrepreneurs Place Second in Fortune Small Business Competition

PROVO, Utah — Dec 01, 2006 — Brigham Young University students Tim Wessman and Adam Robertson took second place in the recent Fortune Small Business Student Showdown in New York City with their surveying company, Precision Surveying Solutions.

The competition admitted 38 student entrepreneur teams from universities across the country who presented their unique business ideas to a nine-judge panel. After deliberations, ten teams were selected as finalists, including Wessman and Robertson, whose company also placed second in the 2006 BYU Business Plan Competition.

Precision Surveying Solutions markets a cutting-edge surveying tool called the DC50 that allows surveyors to run programs and perform calculations faster and easier than conventional surveying tools. Co-developed with land surveyor John Evers, the DC50 is essentially a modified Hewlett-Packard calculator encased in a hard shell whose software simplifies the data-gathering process to provide faster results. Wessman and Robertson plan to begin marketing the product in the coming weeks, and project sales to reach the million-dollar mark.

According to a Fortune Small Business story, the contest’s nine judges were particularly impressed with the uniqueness of Precision Surveying Solutions’ product and the strength of their team.

First place in the competition went to a Wharton School of Business team that markets a new innovation in the field of prosthetics. Other finalists included an independent record label from New York University and a team from UCLA that markets a new procedure for in vitro fertilization.

The Marriott School is located at Brigham Young University, the largest privately owned, church-sponsored university in the United States. The school has nationally recognized programs in accounting, business management, public management, information systems, organizational behavior and entrepreneurship. The school’s mission is to prepare men and women of faith, character and professional ability for positions of leadership throughout the world. Approximately 3,000 students are enrolled in the Marriott School’s graduate and undergraduate programs.