From Student Business Pitch to Thriving Business Success

Syndi: Hey, y'all. I'm Syndi Nelson.

Dennis: Hey, guys. I'm Dennis Hoang.

Syndi: And this is Help! I'm an Entrepreneur, a podcast for those who have taken on the challenge of entrepreneurship and who love tips and advice from successful entrepreneurs who have overcome tricky obstacles along the way. Today, I have Dennis Hoang, a co-founder of Patturn, a business that completely changed the dynamic between how retailers like Amazon and Walmart handle returns - turning products that ended up in landfills into a sustainable low-cost experience for shoppers, also known as green purchasing. Welcome to the podcast Dennis, and I have to say I am so interested in your story because we first met in an interesting way when we were both judges for the MavsPitch competition at the University of Texas at Arlington.

Now that program didn't exist when I was in college at UTA, but you were actually a previous winner. What is that program and what was it like for preparing to pitch for it? Was it difficult?

Dennis: What was the program like? I'd say it was definitely an interesting experience. The only reason why I applied to the program is because it was one of the requirements of the class I took. I was studying my MBA at UTA with Dr. McGee, and Dr. McGee was like, "Hey, in this entrepreneurship class, as an assignment, everyone has to submit a pitch to MavsPitch." And I didn't know about it at the time, but I realized, I was like, hey, I can win some money with not a lot of work.

And what I did was I drafted a pitch. And turned out, I moved on to the grand final. And, yeah, and that's kind of how that started. And I'd say my experience from MavsPitch was an interesting one just because that was my real first experience pitching the company that that me and my brother's co-founded.

One of the things that I found out is that the money's one thing. Right? But another thing is that because they chose me, it kind of validates what I'm working on could work. Right? Just because in total, I received fifty thousand dollars from the MavsPitch competition.

And that's way more money than you'll ever find from any grant, from any university, from any kind of funding that you'll ever get from anyone in the whole world. And they essentially wrote me a check, with absolutely no strings attached.

Syndi: Wow. That's amazing.

Dennis: Crazy.

Syndi: No strings.

Dennis: No strings attached. I don't have to pay them back. They wrote it in my name and I just paid more tax. I just paid more taxes because, yeah, it increased my wage by fifty thousand. It was crazy. But I think it was the very first time where I saw that, hey, what we're doing might work.

Syndi: So what is the program? How do you apply? How do you get involved?

Dennis: Sure. Sure. It's really simple. Every semester, they essentially have a pitch competition. You can be in any major.

You don't have to be in the college business. You don't have to be in the college of engineering. I believe it's simply a three-minute pitch of whatever idea you have. And then from there, Dr. McGee and just essentially a board of advisors choose maybe six to ten pitches they like the best. And then from there, you move on to the finals.

The nice thing is that everyone has a chance to win, there's not a limit in to how much like people get. All the finalists couldn't and there you walk away with fifteen to twenty thousand dollars. If everyone does fantastic job, then everyone gets more money. If everyone does an okay job, then you'll still get money either way.

Speaker 2: Well, that's really generous!

Dennis: Yeah. It's crazy generous, and a lot of times for pitch competitions. There's all there's always, like, first, second, and third place. Right? But there's not and this pitch competition, there's not really a first, second, and third place.

You're not really competing against each other. You're competing...

Syndi: -- With each other. --

Dennis: ...with each other. Right? For the most amount of money.

Syndi: Looking back, is there anything that you would have done differently?

Dennis: I don't think so. I think what we did was great just because I didn't know what I was doing. Mhmm. Right? Like, especially when you first start pitching your company for the very first time, most people are very nervous.

Yeah. I mean, I remember I was, like, sweating bullets. I was just sweating the whole time. It was like crazy cold in the room. But in my opinion, I think having that very first experience really helped show me what I'm doing wrong.

And that's kind of like that I'm happy that I was able to find out there. Right? Just because with that pitch conversation, there's no strings attached, absolutely no strings attached. Even if you don't walk away with money, you're not really burning any bridges. Right?

It's good practice. Right? However, let's say if you're pitching in front of, like, actual, like, venture capitalists or banks or anything on those lines, the stakes are a little higher because if you essentially do not do well with a bank or VC, then they're probably not gonna fund you. Right? But with this pitch competition, it was a good practice and I ended up getting the most amount. Basically, any company could get.

Syndi: Yeah. That's an amazing opportunity for a student.

Dennis: It is. And I tell UTA students all the time about it, like, it's honestly a simple three-minute pitch. No strings attached. There's a lot more to learn with not a lot of drawbacks.

Syndi: Getting funding is always really difficult as an entrepreneur. And with this program, you finally were able to get it and that had to have been so amazing. One of the next hardest pieces of the puzzle is figuring out how to divide that funding between operations, marketing, sales, etcetera. How did you decide what to do with your funding once you won? What was your process?

Dennis: Sure. So it took me a while to figure out, but The biggest thing that I found at work the best is you have to figure out how to get customers. And that's what we spend our money on. Everything from the software piece and everything to the actual website itself all revolved around getting customers. I didn't focus too much on branding.

I didn't focus too much on marketing. I was just trying to figure out how do I get in front of customers to talk to them. And that's where we spent most of the money on. Just because at the time, the software was still in development, and we were trying to get people excited and hyped about it. That's where me and my brothers divvied up most of the expenses into trying to figure out how to get in front of customers to see if this is something that they would want.

Because at the end of the day, right, like your company, you have to figure out how you're gonna make money. Mhmm. If you're too bogged down with creating a logo, focusing on, the website design or just the marketing or something like that, especially from the get-go, I find that you're not focusing on the important thing. Like making those phone calls, making those customers. Who do you talk to? How do I find these customers? And that's kind of like what we spend the most money on.

Syndi: The ability to have the opportunity to pitch his idea for viability and turn that successful pitch into a fast-growing company that works with respected national brands is nothing short of astounding. We've learned the importance of taking advantage of programs as an entrepreneurial student and how they can impact you significantly.

Dennis has also gained valuable experience in dividing his winnings which also helped him along the way. And for his brand, market research, website development, and software development were the winning ticket for growth. In the next episode, we talk about challenge of getting your first client and shifting from the B2B space into B2C.

What does it like for a startup in a well-established space with so many challenges ahead? Find out more on the next episode. You can find out more about Dennis Hoang on LinkedIn and learn more about his company at patturn.io. That's p a t t u r n "dot" i o.

And don't forget to subscribe to our podcast at helpimantnrepreneur.com, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify for the opportunity to get early access to episodes and to get answers to your entrepreneurial questions from our guests and more. See you next time!