“My head’s just full of ideas, dad,” Zach Linn told his father over the phone one night when he was five. He’s been inventing ever since. One of his most recent ideas has landed him a lot of attention around campus. Zach placed first in this semesters Vol Court competition.
Vol Court is an undergraduate competition hosted by The College of Business Administration’s Anderson Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at UT. The competition is held once each semester. Students attend a series of lectures leading up to their own business pitches.
Zach, a retailing major, has been entering (and winning!) business competitions since his freshman year at UTK. “I’ve got this inventor mind, this entrepreneurial mind about everything that I do and how it can be done better,” Linn said. The idea that won it for him this semester was a proposal for a “squishable” water bottle called The Squish.
The idea developed from an earlier idea of Zach’s for a water bag. After some research, he turned the bag idea into the Squish. And it turns out he wasn’t the only one that thought it was a winning idea. “I couldn’t believe all the PR that I got,” Linn admitted.
Along with the media attention, Zach was awarded $500 to invest in his business. He plans to continue entering the Squish in local competitions as well as another idea that he hopes to see some success with. His next competition is the Fairview Technology Center’s Start-Up Business Plan Competition. Along with money to invest in the business, the winning idea will earn the creator free rent for a year at Fairview Technology Center.
Zach is appreciative of the help and experience that the competitions have provided for him. “If I achieve some success, I’m going to attribute it to the competitions. They definitely helped me out.”
Zach is constantly thinking about how to do things in a new and better way and challenging himself to bring those ideas to life. “I don’t want to graduate and go to work for anybody. I like to create. Any time that I’ve worked I’ve seen things that other people are doing wrong, and I want to change them. If I think I have the best way of doing something, I want to be in a position where I can try what I want.”
Zach’s confidence and passion in his entrepreneurial pursuits are a great example to UT students of what you can achieve if you set your mind to it. I have no doubt that Zach will succeed in his pursuits, and we’ll all be buying his products some day. “I don’t see it as a possibility. I’m going to do it. I think that’s the way that you have to look at it.”
Zach is showing students that you can achieve your goals when you set your mind to them. Her Campus UTK congratulates Zach on his win and is happy to be on a campus with great minds like his. And if the Squish bottle takes off, we want to be hooked up with one!