Rohit Mittal is a junior in the Stern School of Business. He is CEO and co-founder of Mitley, an RA at Founders Hall, and a Finance intern with JPMorgan Chase & Co.

The NYU Entrepreneurs Festival was one of the first opportunities the Mitley team had to showcase our company to the NYU
community. Over the course of several bustling hours, festival attendees interacted with the participating startups and selected their favorites. Mitley was chosen amongst the impressive lineup to pitch their idea in front judges in the Pitch Competition. At first, our team was extremely nervous. After a few deep breaths behind stage and a quick two-way pep talk, we realized we were simply sharing our idea and company with an auditorium full of fellow enthusiastic entrepreneurs. Once we realized the audience was full of NYU community members ready to cheer us on, we were able to pitch confidently to the crowd and impressive judges.

After our five minute pitch and a string of tough but important questions from the judges, we were awarded second place and a $500 grant. When we signed up for the NYU Entrepreneurs Festival, we never expected to go home with a grant. We were just excited to show the NYU community what we have been working on - winning a grant to help us keep going with our idea was like icing on the cake.

Our company, Mitley, allows musicians, venues, studios, and promoters to rent equipment for a flat monthly rate. Our clients gain access to a wide array of high-quality equipment without having to commit to purchasing it outright. Because we provide state of the art high-end equipment, our biggest capital expense is not our website, but our inventory. While expensive, maintaining a wealth of cutting-edge equipment is what helps separates us from our competition.

Because our equipment is such an important part of our business, we decided to use the grant to increase our inventory of unique equipment, such as the Akai Professional Pad Controller and the Pioneer DDJ-SB DJ Controller, that can potentially build our customer base in high-end niche markets. We project these two pieces alone to generate over $120 of new revenue per month.

The grant we received at the NYU Entrepreneurs Festival allowed us to invest capital in our most important assets and will provide exponential growth in the future as we reinvest proceeds from the equipment and take our business to the next level.