ABERDEEN, S.D.(HubCityRadio)- The 2023 Big Idea Competition was held on Wednesday at the Johnson Fine Art Center on the campus of Northern State University.

The feature speaker this year was John T. Meyer, Executive Director of Leadership South Dakota.

Meyer talked about how he got into entrepreneurship to begin with.

Meyer talks about getting the $15,000 grant needed to return to South Dakota.

Meyer discuss the rules to follow to succeed in entrepreneurship.

That grant led to Lemonly which was started back in 2011.  Lemonly is a design firm that has worked with such businesses as MLB, Netflix, Google, among others.

The winners of the Big Idea Competition broke down to those in state and out of state.  The winners received $1,000 and $1,000 scholarships to Northern State and South Dakota School of Mines.

The out of state or virtual winner was Nir Pechuk of Davidson Academy Online based in Nevada.  Here’s his elevator pitch for Extentek LLC.

The in state or in person winner was Dallas Stoltenberg of Mellete who attends Northwestern High School.  Here’s his pitch for Stoltenberg Tailgate Seating.

Stoltenberg in an interview talks about what motivated him to think of this product.(1:23)

365 entries were submitted for the competition this year.  You can check the results at www.facebook.com/BIGIdeaSD.