A graduate student at the Naveen Jindal School of Management placed first in the recent Global Student Entrepreneur Awards pitch competition in Houston for a food-truck focused mobile app business.
“The app is double-sided. It has a food truck side and a foodie side,” said Mercedes Johnson, who is in the Professional MBA Evening Cohort program at the Jindal School and is pursuing a double degree — an MBA with a focus on entrepreneurship and innovation and an MS in Marketing. “Our food truck side allows operators to easily schedule themselves at events. The foodie side allows people to find out where a food truck is going to be.”
The program is presented by the Entrepreneurs’ Organization, a support network with a membership of more than 15,500 diverse business leaders from 60-plus countries. The next level of competition for Johnson will be March 3 in San Diego.
During the contests, students are given 10 minutes to pitch their businesses to a panel of three judges, followed by a five-minute Q&A. Johnson received $5,000 for her win in Houston, which she plans to put into her business, Food Magnet.
Johnson particularly likes the GSEA program because of its diversity, bringing in students from diverse backgrounds and ethnicities from around the world. “I’ve competed in other national programs where all of the participants were from the same demographic,” she said.
In addition to launching her business and attending school, Johnson works full-time as a senior digital product designer for Dialexa, an IBM company. She received a BA in design from UT Dallas in 2019 and a BS from Texas State University in mass communications in 2018.
“Mercedes is ambitious and focused, and I love her business,” said Pamela Foster Brady, former EMBA director, who has mentored Johnson for almost three years. “When she first explained Food Magnet to me she had a clear vision of what she wanted. She also had a bigger vision to start locally and expand. Watching her chip away at things to make her vision happen has been amazing.”
The concept for Food Magnet came to Johnson in fall 2020 during her first semester as a graduate student in JSOM’s eight-week CometX Accelerator program. It puts students into an environment that allows them to incubate business ideas and engage with prospective customers to prepare for the launch of a new business.
At the time, the app was only something Johnson used in class. “I didn’t expect the idea I was testing my knowledge on would turn into a business,” she said.
Johnson’s current victory continues a competition streak. She took first in UT Dallas’ UTDesign competition and a second-place finish in student track of UT Dallas’ Big Idea Competition. She also won a scholar award from the Texas Business Hall of Fame Foundation for her entrepreneurial efforts.
The Food Magnet app was put into development in 2022 and will make its market debut in March. The company currently has a team of four plus an intern, but that number will likely increase as the company grows.
GSEA attracts students from around the world to participate in a series of local and national competitions that culminate in the global finals. If Johnson continues her success in the program, she has the opportunity to be awarded substantial funds that can be invested in her business. The first-place winner in the global finals will receive $50,000; the second place winner will receive $20,000, and a third-place finish comes with a $10,000 prize.
