PROVO — How's that New Year's resolution going? You know — the one to finally lose that 15 pounds gained during freshman year.
For those who swear the scale continues to lie, four Brigham Young University students have made a gadget that they say can help you shed those unwanted pounds.
The students, who won $50,000 in cash and in-kind prizes recently at the university's 13th annual Business Plan Competition, created the KAM Coach through their company, KAM Accelerometer Inc.
The product, according to the students' sales pitch, is "for anyone who desires to live a more active lifestyle but has been unable to develop or maintain the long-term motivation, guidance and sense of accountability necessary to accomplish personal fitness goals."
For a sign-up cost of $39.99 and a monthly fee of $7, users' expended calories are counted by a silver dollar-size wearable device. The KAM Coach measures pulses created by movement, then factors in age, weight, height and gender to determine the amount of calories that person was able to burn.
What makes the KAM Coach stand out against other weight-loss programs, said company's business developer Jake Tanner, is instead of calculating the caloric intake, the Coach measures caloric output.
At the end of the day, the user plugs the device into the docking station, which immediately launches an Internet browser and logs onto the KAM Web site — www.KAMcoach.com — where charts, graphs and point totals appear. This allows the user to see trends and reach weight-loss goals.
So how did they muscle out the competition for the first-place prize?
"For one thing, we have amazing service offering, the product we're selling is extremely good," said Nathan Pratt, marketing director for KAM Accelerometer Inc.
In 10 years, Pratt said he sees the team making millions of dollars in revenue, as well as providing a product that largely benefits the consumers. Already, the company doubled their sales production for the month of February.
The KAM team next month will compete at the national competition at the University of Texas.
Second prize in the Business Plan Competition, $35,000 in cash and in-kind services, went to the team behind Precision Surveying Solutions, a company touting a data collector that controls and collects measurements from high-precision surveying instruments.
Their product — the DC49 — is said to increase daily productivity for surveyors and civil engineers 20 percent to 40 percent over competing devices.
Teton Recreation Cabins won third place with $20,000 in cash and in-kind services, as well as the audience-choice ugliest logo, giving them $1,500 in services from local logo company LogoWorks.
Teton Recreation Cabins is a cabin-kit manufacturer that sells pre-fabricated cabin kits.
In all, $100,000 in cash and in-kind services were won at the contest.
Students from 30 different majors on campus submitted 79 different plans. Judges analyzed each team's understanding of the market, detailed evidence of potential success, experience and dedication to winnow it to three finalists.
The three then went head-to-head in a competition that culminated Friday afternoon. Each finalist was judged by a panel of venture capitalists, private equity professionals, angel investors, CEO's and other entrepreneurs.
Several big companies were launched as a result of the business-plan competition. For example, the students who founded 1-800-Contacts won the contest in 1995.
E-mail: jelder@desnews.com