Financing tends to be at the top of the list of hurdles for entrepreneurs setting out to start their small business. But, when I started TerraCycle as a college freshman at Princeton University, our original business model of vermicomposting (converting garbage into worm poop fertilizer) came to me only after the Entrepreneurship Club’s annual Business Plan Competition caught my attention with a grand prize of $5,000. After placing fourth (just low enough to finish without prize money), we used the next year to scrape together the money to buy a worm gin and get started.