During this year’s New Venture Competition, Aiden Tahmazian, a 20-year-old junior mechanical engineering student, came out victorious, earning $30,000 in prize money with his company project management platform, Circlez.

The Rohrer New Venture Competition is an annual event that takes place every Spring semester, where five startups are chosen to pitch their ideas to judges to get a chance at winning the prize money to fund their business. 

The judges for this year’s panel included Steven Silverstein, the CEO of Spencer Spirit Holdings Inc., Wendy Verna, founder of Octo Design Group, Reuben Bell, Co-Founder and partner of Ematic Enterprises, and Mengyue (J.P.) Li, CEO of Meridian Universal Health Group.

The five finalists of the competition included Sammi’s Sandwiches and Sauce by Samantha Tamtama, Happy Referal by Karline Depass, Circlez by Aiden Tahmazian, Power Packs by Leah Fisher, and La Belle Vie Bakery by Danielle McManus. All finalists worked hard, but Tahmazian’s Circlez ultimately ended up being the victor.

Despite not being an entrepreneurship or business student, Tahmazian knew exactly what kind of idea he wanted to pitch this year for the venture. His pitch, Circlez, is a project management platform for manufacturing companies to keep progress on goals and other tasks happening within the company, aiming to have better tracking with separate teams within the organization as well as reinforcing better communication to allow milestones to be met.

“When it came out to why Circlez was created, it was because manufacturing companies are using an outdated system that wasn’t good with its intended purposes, so I thought, ‘Why not change it to be more straightforward?’ If no one else does it, why not we make it?” said Tahmazian.

Even though Tahmazian reached first place this time around, he did have to face some decisions to get there. A year ago, Tahmazian proposed a social productivity app made to help keep individuals on track of any personal task, but didn’t get the attention he was looking for. By going back to the drawing board, Tahmazian found something that could advance the project management sphere.

Now having earned the prize money, Tahmazian plans to put it back into sales and help spread the word about his product while also planning to create a personal AI system, specifically made for Circlez to solidify itself as its own entity.

Tahmazian looks forward to working full-time on his app after graduating from Rowan, keeping the app running and hopefully improving manufacturing management. Along with his engineering degree, it will give Tahmazian a better understanding of the working environment that his platform would be suited for.

“The whole experience was super exciting,” said Tahmazian. “I’ve competed for the last three years having family and friends support me along the way. It means a lot that someone not from an entrepreneurial background can win something like this.”

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