A number of Northern Oklahoma College Enid students participated in the Enid Entrepreneurial Leadership Challenge sponsored by PapiPay, EELS, and NOC in April.The challenge was free and open to the public for anyone interested in practicing their entrepreneurship skills. Participants worked as three-to-four-member teams.The challenge was held over two in-person sessions and two virtual sessions in March and April. The challenge was that PapiPay mobile has two primary markets, consumers and gas station owners. Teams competed to turn brainstorming sessions and site visits into business strategies for a consumer mobile payment application that works at convenience stores.The purpose of this contest is to utilize the local markets of the competitors to develop a business plan for growing PapiPay mobile usage at gas stations and increase consumer downloads of the PapiPay application.PapiPay owner Mark Raftery, PapiPay Senion Project Manager Chris Woods and NOC Vice President for Enid Jeremy Hise served as judges of the competition.“We feel like PapiPay EELS Challenge was a huge success,” Woods said. “The students at NOC gave us a lot of different perspectives that were gauged towards a younger audience and that was exactly what we were hoping to gain from this challenge. We went into this challenge with no expectations of the outcome and were very pleased with everyone’s presentations.”The first prize team of Kimberly Boles, Enid; Keedan Allenbach, Shattuck; Camden Roberts, Enid and Edward Davis, Enid; won the $2500 prize. Second place went to the team of Danielle Buttrum, Garber; Ashleigh Miller, Cushing; Kirsten Maly, Cushing; and Jacob Arnold, Enid, winning $1500 amount. Third place prize winners were Grant Biggers, Enid; Jared Johnson, Enid; Molly Dolan, Kiefer; Faith Watts, Fairfax; and Ryan Doig, Australia. Third prize received $1,000.
