Business Design Competition Winner Announced

SANTA CRUZ - Only one team in UC Santa Cruz's Business Design Competition could take home the $10,000 top prize Friday, but all the teams left with a better appreciation of the work of business giants such as Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg.

"I think after going through this process they really understand how hard it is to make it look easy," Mary Flannery, one of the competition organizers and a UCSC economic lecturer, said.

In all, nine teams participated for the $10,000 to cover business development costs and assistance from the local nonprofit Startup Lab in launching the company.

After four judges from UCSC and Silicon Valley companies deliberated for close to an hour on the presentations that they saw at the University Inn, the panel came back with a winner: Quaest, a test grading system for teachers that uses image recognition technology.

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