Gabriela WeinsteinWork / Project 03
Building a company
from the ground up
What happens when a classroom starts operating like a real company?
The Whey Better booth on the competition floor — “Make it your way, get your protein today.”
The challenge
Not studying a business.
Running one.
Through Virtual Enterprise, my class created and operated a simulated company while competing against other student-run businesses.
Rather than simply studying how a business works, we were responsible for actually building one — developing the concept and the brand, marketing it, and presenting it in competition. Our company was Whey Better, a customizable protein powder brand built around a simple promise: make it your way.
Our goal was to turn an idea into a company that could stand out against every other Virtual Enterprise business in the room. That meant answering the questions a real organization has to answer. Who is our customer? What makes us different? How should we market ourselves? And how do we convince someone our idea has value?
My role
Marketing
& Sales
I worked on the Marketing and Sales team, which meant I owned pieces of the brand that customers and investors actually touched — the packaging, the promotion, and the pitch.
Packaging design
I designed the packaging for the whey protein itself — the piece of the brand that has to do the selling when nobody is standing next to it.
Seasonal flavors
One of my biggest contributions was creating and promoting the seasonal flavors, giving the brand a reason to come back into conversation throughout the year.
Promotion & social
Produced promotional flyers and social media posts, analyzed trends, and marketed the company to potential virtual investors.
The booth & the pitch
At competitions against other schools, I focused on making our booth engaging, aesthetic and well presented — then persuading investors to back us.
The result
Gold on the
competition floor
The booth work paid off in the two ways the competition measured: recognition for the experience we built, and money from the people we convinced.
- Won my company the Golden Booth Certificate
- Brought in the top investments for our brand
- Competed head-to-head against companies from other schools
Standing at a booth and asking a stranger to invest in something you made is a very direct education in what persuasion actually is. You find out immediately which parts of your story people care about.
Competition day — representing Whey Better against other student-run companies.
The experience
Four things it
actually taught me
This was my earliest experience of building, marketing and representing a company rather than just learning about one — and most of what I do now traces back to it.
Brand building
Turning a business idea into a recognizable brand with a clear identity and message.
Marketing
Developing strategies for reaching and engaging the customers we were actually built for.
Competition
Presenting against other companies, which forces you to communicate clearly and differentiate fast.
Collaboration
Working inside a student-run organization where separate departments had to pull toward one goal.
The takeaway
Virtual Enterprise gave me one of my earliest chances to build, market and represent a company rather than simply learn about one.
It strengthened my ability to collaborate, communicate ideas, solve problems and think creatively under competitive pressure. It is also the reason founding something from nothing felt possible later — when Wake Forest didn’t have a women’s flag football club, starting one didn’t feel like a leap.