Stetson student entrepreneur makes TV debut
Stetson University junior Kendall Buck, an entrepreneurship and management major, was featured on a new TV show — Fox Business Network’s “Billion Dollar Idea,” according to a university media release. On the show, Buck and other contestants compete for $1 million in startup funding from billionaire entrepreneur Ben Weiss, creator of the beverage company Bai, which was sold for $1.7 billion.
Buck is one of 15 elite entrepreneurs from 15 different cities who will go head-to-head, testing their ideas with the hopes of being the big winner. The show airs on Tuesday nights at 9.
“I’ll put 15 entrepreneurs to the test to see who will win my investment,” Weiss said, in the release. “What an amazing experience filming the show and working with these entrepreneurs — I can’t wait for everyone to tune in!”
Buck has already made news with her product, Herbtastic™, a kitchen tool that strips leaves from the stems of many types of herbs and spices. She has won several product competitions as part of Stetson’s Prince Entrepreneurship Leaders Program.
As a sophomore, Buck created her product under the guidance of Lou Paris, professor and director of Stetson’s Joseph C. Prince Entrepreneurship Program, which houses the Prince Entrepreneurship Leaders program. The product was built at Stetson’s Innovation Lab.
“Kendall had a spark in her eye,” Paris said in the release. “She was very articulate and animated, and most importantly, she had a deep desire to do it. You never know what you’re going to get as you start developing these ideas. Students can understandably get frustrated and fizzle out on it, but Kendall never did.”
Buck said the university’s entrepreneurship program gave her the opportunity to be creative.
“It never occurred to me that I could be doing this while I was in college,” she said in the release, “The fact that Stetson encourages student entrepreneurship is amazing and opened up a lot of doors for me.”