{"id":11114,"date":"2018-06-18T12:32:36","date_gmt":"2018-06-18T16:32:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/chronicle.hvcc.edu\/wpdev\/entrepreneurship-alumnus-thriving-in-rpi-business-program\/"},"modified":"2018-06-18T12:32:36","modified_gmt":"2018-06-18T16:32:36","slug":"entrepreneurship-alumnus-thriving-in-rpi-business-program","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chronicle.hvcc.edu\/wpdev\/entrepreneurship-alumnus-thriving-in-rpi-business-program\/","title":{"rendered":"Entrepreneurship alumnus thriving in RPI business program"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Entrepreneurship graduate Tony Chedrawee, center, recently won the prestigious RPI Business Model Competition.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Tony Chedrawee comes from a family of internationally-based entrepreneurs \u2013 his father runs a mozzarella cheese factory for the growing number of pizza shops in Accra, Ghana – so it\u2019s not surprising that he has more than a little innovative spirit.<\/p>\n

A 2015 graduate of the college\u2019s Entrepreneurship program, Tony is continuing his business education at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and he recently won the prestigious RPI Business Model Competition for a product he developed called AnyWeight, a modular weight system.<\/p>\n

Tony came up with a seed of the idea while a student here at Hudson Valley and by the time he was at RPI, the idea had begun to blossom into a business plan. AnyWeight deals with the inconvenience of using big, bulky metal weight plates for exercise. They have to be re-racked on barbells and then there\u2019s the problem of them falling on your toes.\u00a0 What if someone could design a system where a single weight could take on a range of resistance? The business model pitch worked, he said, in part, because of the presentation skills he learned as an Entrepreneurship student here.<\/p>\n

\u201cI pitched the business model we had and the market we were aiming at \u2013 gyms, hotels. There were a lot of great ideas in the competition but I noticed that a lot of the people that presented had only the technical engineering background and not the entrepreneurial education and that\u2019s one thing that may have given me the advantage,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The competition comes with a small amount of prize money that Tony will be able to reinvest in developing the idea as well as some free legal services that he\u2019s utilizing to do patent searches.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it was really good that I started at Hudson Valley because it prepared me not just academically but mentally, in a sense,\u201d he said. \u201cOne of the major things I took away from the program here is the entrepreneurial mindset.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tony and several other RPI students also finished second in another recent business competition \u2013 the Startup RPI competition, sponsored by Deloitte. In that competition, he and a friend presented the concept of a campus-wide energy micro-grid system. Not only would RPI be more energy independent but, he argued in the presentation, building an academic program based on micro-grid energy would place the college at the forefront of designing that technology.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe got a lot of validation and support from the faculty and administration after the presentation, and we are working on building a more detailed proposal and seeking some grants. Part of what I learned between RPI and here was learning how to break down concepts and present them in a clear and structured way. That\u2019s a lot of what we did at Hudson Valley. All of those classes I took here prepared me for presentations like this.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Published:<\/strong>\u00a0Mon, 18 Jun 2018 12:32:36 +0000 by\u00a0e.bryant<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  Tony Chedrawee comes from a family of internationally-based entrepreneurs \u2013 his father runs a mozzarella cheese factory for the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2086,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11114","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-accolades"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chronicle.hvcc.edu\/wpdev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11114","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chronicle.hvcc.edu\/wpdev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chronicle.hvcc.edu\/wpdev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chronicle.hvcc.edu\/wpdev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2086"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chronicle.hvcc.edu\/wpdev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11114"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/chronicle.hvcc.edu\/wpdev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11114\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chronicle.hvcc.edu\/wpdev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chronicle.hvcc.edu\/wpdev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chronicle.hvcc.edu\/wpdev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}