From Ideas to Income: First Side Hustle Challenge Awards $9,000 to Student Entrepreneurs
A side hustle is any way students turn skills, interests, or creativity into income. Alongside their primary focus as students, side hustles provide a way to practice entrepreneurial skills!
Over 100 Iowa State students registered for the first-ever Side Hustle Challenge, which is huge! There was excellent cross-campus representation, with students from six of the seven colleges in attendance. More than 60 of these students were brand new to Pappajohn Center programming, allowing us to reach new students just in time for the upcoming College-by-College Pitch Off, which begins next week. Registration is still open, with only a limited number of spots remaining, so register today!
Students collaborate during the Side Hustle Challenge on Friday, February 6, 2026.
On Friday night, students participated in a Customer Discovery 101 activity that helped them determine their side hustle’s target audience. For this activity, students created questions and then turned to their peers to discover who their ideal customers were. During the exercise, Kaitlyn Busky, a sophomore in accounting and marketing (Ivy College of Business), was prompted to shift marketing for her golf-lesson business to a new age group.
“My target market at first was parents, and I was able to learn through talking and networking with everybody that I needed to change that to college students, so that was really helpful,” Kaitlyn said.
Students returned on Saturday for a day full of Side Hustle educational sessions. Topics included product refinement and marketing channels, touching on the pros and cons of selling channels and ways to speak directly to customer needs. A pitch workshop and open practice time allowed students to prepare for the final event of the weekend, a 90-second pitch.
Participants presented their ideas to a panel of judges. There were two judging categories for this competition: new business (concepts that are in the idea stage, with no revenue, prototype, or product) and existing business (concepts that are beyond the idea stage, with revenue, prototypes, or products).
Initially, there was an award pool of $6,000, but there were so many great pitches that we ended up awarding $9,000 to nine winners. Because of the high attendance of this event and having more new ideas than existing businesses in the challenge, students with new ideas pitched from one of two rooms.
2026 Side Hustle Challenge Award Recipients:
FIRST PLACE- $1,500
SECOND PLACE- $1,000
THIRD PLACE- $500
Many students left on Saturday afternoon commenting that the Side Hustle Challenge was one of the most supportive events they had attended. Students, such as Wilnuse Riphin, a junior in industrial design and a double minor in entrepreneurship and world film studies, College of Design, shared that they were happy with the opportunity to meet new people and share new entrepreneurial ideas.
“I met some new people and heard some cool ideas, and it made me sit back and think about my own ideas and grow in that aspect. It was a really good experience,” Wilnuse said.
Wilnuse Riphin, designer of Eco Cradle, a lightweight, foldable, plant carrier, was awarded $500 for winning third place New Idea category at the Side Hustle Challenge on February 6, 2026.
Wilnuse designed Eco Cradle, a lightweight, foldable, plant carrier that makes carrying plants and transporting plants easier and more comfortable. She said she registered for the Side Hustle Challenge to push herself out of her comfort zone and learn something new.
“I knew that if I came here, I was going to leave with something regardless of whether I won or lost the competition,” Wilnuse said.
Wilnuse learned that entrepreneurship is diverse, and that no idea is worth giving up on or shutting down because you may not think it’s “good enough.”
“It may get critiqued, it may get holes poked into it, but [I learned] not to take that negatively, and to be innovative as much as you can to morph it into something new.”
This open-minded approach is something Wilnuse plans to take with her, as she is registered for the College-by-College Pitch Off next week.
The first-ever Side Hustle Challenge was an engaging experience for both new and returning Iowa State students. Through creative brainstorming, collaboration, and customer discovery, participants showed how entrepreneurial skills can be applied to all ideas, both big and small. The two-day hands-on event proved to be an excellent opportunity for students to learn how managing a side hustle makes them entrepreneurs. As the participating individuals and teams move forward with their ideas, for some, the Side Hustle Challenge marks just the beginning of their entrepreneurial journeys.
