Peddie Student Tops Business Competition

Daniel Fine, a senior at the in Hightstown and a West Windsor resident, was recently one of three regional winners selected out of 650 entries for a business model he entered in the eighth annual N.J. Business Idea Competition.

The competition was coordinated by the Rothman Institute of Entrepreneurship at Fairleigh Dickinson University.

Daniel accepted his award at a reception on March 25.

Daniel’s winning business model was for what the 17-year-old calls “LifeWatch,” a portable and wearable heart-monitoring device that will let off an audible alarm and notify emergency personnel in the event that any irregularities of the heart (signaling a potential heart attack) are detected. Unlike other products on the market, the wearer would not need to push a button to set off the alarm.

“Often in [such emergency situations], people aren’t capable of pushing a button,” Daniel explained. The quickness in which emergency personnel can be alerted in a heart-attack situation is critical, he continued, adding that LifeWatch, by speeding up that process, could save lives. Every year, about 1.2 million Americans have heart attacks, according to the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute.

In his N.J. Business Idea Competition application, Daniel described the feasibility of his product idea, the product’s usefulness and societal benefit, what LifeWatch’s customer base would be, potential product competition and the product’s possible competitive advantage in the marketplace.

For his winning business idea, Daniel was given a cash prize, scholarship gifts, two plaques and a signed football from the New York Jets.

This is the second year in a row that Daniel has taken home a top award from the N.J. Business Competition – last year, he was one of three regional winners among 400 entries for two winning business models. His business models were called “DigiText and “DiabetesMenu.”

Daniel described his DigiText business model as a digital textbook device with two 8.5- by 11-inch multi-touch screens, so a student can view his reading and notes and his homework or paper he’s working on at the same time. The proposed DigiText would support page-shifting and other features and would work as a full computer.

DiabetesMenu is a software idea with a built-in GPS to assist diabetes patients. The GPS would identify the closest restaurants, and once the user selects one, a menu would pop up on the DiabetesMenu screen. After the user selects a menu item, DiabetesMenu will use the software-provided info about the food choice, its carbohydrate levels and its digestion times to provide the person with the correct dosage of insulin based on what he’s eating.

DiabetesMenu would take much of the guesswork out of figuring out proper insulin dosages, according to Daniel, whose brother Jake was diagnosed at age 7 with Type I Juvenile Diabetes. Daniel said he has dedicated more than 2,000 hours of community service to fundraising and finding a cure for Type I Juvenile Diabetes in honor of his younger brother. He said he has raised more than $1 million dollars for diabetes for diabetes research.

A member of the Peddie School Varsity Swim Team, Daniel was actively recruited by college athletics and will attend the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in the fall. His intended fields of study include finance, entrepreneurialism, computer software and hardware and civil engineering.