Anthony Sherman and Max McNally always had an interest in business. Growing up in New Lenox, Illinois, the duo found several different ways to make an extra buck during the summer. One method involved sneaking onto local golf courses after hours, collecting lost golf balls, cleaning them, and reselling them on eBay.
It wasn’t glamorous, but it set them on their entrepreneurial path.
Years later, that same spark helped the lifelong best friends, now University of Alabama students, win the grand prize in the Edward K. Aldag Jr. Student Business Plan Competition. The grand prize comes with a $50,000 check for their company, Boost, a healthy chewing gum brand infused with antioxidants. See complete list of winners.
For Sherman and McNally, the win was the culmination of three years of persistence, growth, and countless refinements to both their business and their pitch.
They came to Alabama together with help from scholarship opportunities through the STEM MBA program. They both majored in engineering, but a business mindset was always in the background.
“I knew I wanted to do business or start a business my entire life,” McNally said.
That ambition found direction when they joined the Bama IP Commercialization Academy, an extracurricular program where students build businesses around university-owned patents.
Initially, Sherman and McNally planned to pitch an idea based on electrical current technology for hospitals. But on the first day of the academy, another patent caught their attention.
“The lady was talking about her patent and the formula for gum and antioxidants,” McNally said. “I did a quick search on antioxidants, and I I was like, ‘I think we should do this. (Sherman) said, ‘OK, let’s just go for it.’”
With almost no preparation, they abandoned their original plan on the spot and built a pitch around the gum.
As they researched the gum industry, they became convinced there was room for a better product. Many traditional gums, Sherman said, use synthetic ingredients and artificial sweeteners while marketing themselves as “sugar free.”
Boost was their answer. It was a gum made with cleaner ingredients, less sugar and greater transparency.
“It seemed like companies were finding loopholes to make a more addictive product,” Sherman said. “We wanted to build something that would benefit the chewer.”
Sherman and McNally licensed the gum technology from the University, becoming the exclusive licensees, then used money from early pitch competitions to find a manufacturer in Kansas and bring the first product to life.
Their cinnamon flavor is already on the market with spearmint and raspberry lemonade set to launch soon. The Aldag competition became a proving ground for the young entrepreneurs.
In their first year, they won Best New Idea. In year two, they finished fourth overall and won Best Teamwork award. This spring, in their third attempt, they finally claimed the grand prize along with Crowd Favorite.
McNally said the progression reflected both the growth of the company and the growth of the founders themselves.
“In the first year, we were two kids with an idea,” McNally said. “By the third year, we had a patent, a product and sales. Learning how to pitch is a skill that you get over time. By the third year, we knew what we were saying, and we knew how to say it.”
That clarity paid off in a big way.
The $50,000 prize will help Boost expand manufacturing for its new flavors and invest in social media, which is where they see the biggest growth opportunity.
“Right now, it’s just Anthony and me,” McNally said. “We do all the editing, posting, content creation and everything else. This money allows us to scale.”
The duo also sees opportunity in their partnership with the university. Because University of Alabama receives a share of Boost’s sales through the licensing agreement, Sherman believes the brand and the university can grow together.
“The more successful we become, the better marketing story it is for the university,” Sherman said.
