UW-Madison Suspends 18 Year Old Business Plan Competition #entreed

In surprising news, the G. Steven Burrill Business Plan Competition  at UW Madison has been called off for 2016.  From Judy Newman at the Wisconsin State Journal:

A highlight of the UW-Madison’s School of Business for the past 18 years, a notice on the contest’s website says “due to budgetary constraints,” the Burrill competition is being “suspended.”

“The impact of the Burrill Business Plan Competition on the local community is hard to understate,” said Joe Kirgues, co-founder of the gener8tor startup accelerator and a finalist judge for the Burrill the past two years.

“I was really surprised to hear they decided to cancel it,” said Chris Meyer, co-founder of the Sector67 maker space. “It was crucially important in terms of getting my business started.”

The Burrill contest has produced some noteworthy winners.

They include Virent Energy Systems, a Madison biofuel company collaborating on alternative fuels with Royal Dutch Shell and on recyclable, plant-based plastic bottles with The Coca-Cola Co., and EatStreet, formerly BadgerBites, a Madison company offering mobile restaurant food delivery.

“We are disappointed to learn there will not be more opportunities for companies like these to receive the resources and advantages made available to them through the Burrill (competition),” Kirgues said.

Little positive about this announcement: just not sure if this is about Wisconsin politics or the actual value of the competition? We will stayed tuned to see what happens next.

Winners Announced in Mass Challenge Business Plan Competition

Mass Challenge, a big money business plan competition, is coming up in the news quite a bit (saw a mention of it in a Harvard Business Review article recently). From NECN:

Four startup companies with Boston connections are now $100,000 closer to success, thanks to winning top prizes from the Mass Challenge, a new entrepreneurship competition.

Among them: Locately, a four-man startup (plus some part-timers), a technology company that makes an interesting offer: Give us some of your privacy, and we’ll give you stuff — free iTunes gift cards, or free merchandise, free text messages, even free cash.

With Locately’s system, consumers signing up through their website agree to let companies track their travels by monitoring the GPS location chips in their smartphones or GPS-enabled cellphones. CEO Thaddeus Fulford-Jones said Locately’s customers — who so far include a fast-casual restaurant chain and a cable television property — get very useful data: “What people do and where they go.”

By correlating their cellphone movements to the locations of places these customers pass by, a company can find out “who’s a nightlifer, or who’s sports-interested, if they sometimes go to the White Mountains over the weekends, or if they go to the gym regularly. Getting a better picture of who the consumer is can help businesses connect better,” Fulford-Jones said. Other examples: Helping chain stores see where, based on their customers’ travels, they might need to open a new store, or where their most popular competition is getting business. He said he could also envision transit agencies using data from his company’s system to better identify where commuters and travelers are coming from and heading to, to optimize bus, subway, or train service and transit expansions.

via Winners announced in Mass Challenge competition.

Draper Fisher Jurvetson & Cisco to Hold Second Global Business Plan Competition

Cisco and leading venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson have announced their second annual global business plan competition for college and university students. The two firms will award $250,000 to the firm that wins this years DFJ and Cisco Global Business Plan Competition.

This competition makes use of some Cisco technology so participants can interact while building and presenting their firms. From the press release:

Leading global early-stage venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson (DFJ) and Cisco today announced they will jointly hold the second annual global business plan competition for students aimed at fostering innovation and entrepreneurship. The competition will leverage Cisco TelePresence(TM), which enables collaboration through a live, face-to-face video network communications experience, to allow finalists from around the world to present their business plans in real time to a joint panel of DFJ and Cisco executives based in San Jose.

The competition is designed to elicit new technology-oriented ideas from aspiring college and university student entrepreneurs around the world. Fourteen finalists will be announced on June 22, 2010. The winner, who will be announced on June 29, 2010, will receive a minimum of $250,000 seed money. The winner will also receive professional feedback and mentorship from both DFJ and Cisco.

“I could travel to over a dozen countries, visit hundreds of universities, spend months meeting with thousands of companies, but instead I get to see the best of the best during one single day via the geographic reach of the DFJ Global Network and the magic of Cisco TelePresence(TM),” said Tim Draper, managing director, DFJ. “Last year we held our first global business plan competition, and we were absolutely blown away by the caliber of the teams. These are resilient, nimble, and resourceful young entrepreneurs who follow their passions and make things happen. I have been in the venture industry for 25 years, and it’s entrepreneurs like these that will continue to inspire me for the next 25.”

This is a great opportunity for student entrepreneurs to gain some more knowledge, get some feedback, and continue their journey. Check out the site and check out some of last years finalists and what they are up to now.

Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Cisco to Hold Second Annual Global Business Plan Competition via Cisco TelePresence(TM) – MarketWatch.

Moot Corp Lesson: Even the Best Plans Change

Tim Berry has a great post, Moot Corp Lesson: Even the Best Plans Change. It highlights the level of competence in some of the top business plan competitions and also makes clear the value in these exercises.

Tim writes,

One of the judges commented that what was on the slide was different from what he saw in the business plan. The entrepreneur immediately answered “no, of course not, that was an earlier iteration.”

That favorite moment wasn’t part of the flawless finals session of the winner. It was in the finals, though, as a Carnegie Mellon team presented a technology to monitor glucose levels using contact lenses. What I liked about that quick answer was the underlying assumption that plans change. New information matters. There was no reason to keep the numbers from last week after new information this week suggested they should change.

If the projections today don’t match those from two weeks ago, no apology is necessary.

The winner, BiologicsMD, also won the Rice University competition a few weeks ago. If you get a chance to see the video of their performance, both with their pitch and their business and their answers to judges’ question, take it. That’s the best I’ve ever seen. The company, one of two finalists from the University of Arkansas, has developed a new medicine to treat osteoporosis. It included a PhD researcher, an MD researcher, and two business executives. The panel of judges, three of the four of them with backgrounds related to medical technology and FDA approval and such, asked an amazing array of detailed industry-specific questions. And they were presented with an even more amazing array of straight-on answers. That was as good as it gets.

I recently read an article decrying business plans, their static nature, and business plan competitions. (Steve Blank is new to me, but I am reading some of his stuff). I will share some of his thoughts in a separate post later this week. Tim and others clearly articulate the importance of change in the business plan process.

But Tim’s example highlights that importance of the act of writing plans and defending them to those with critical lenses.  That even holds true for in-class  competitions where part-time undergrads are subjected to questions about their “used jean retailers” by judges of adjunct faculty members and local bankers.

Berry’s Moot Corp example and my undergrad retailer example exist at different points on the business plan and competition spectrum, but provide important value to society and the economy — from viable, potentially high-impact firms to a generation of college grads who understand the importance and role of small businesses and entrepreneurs.

GVSU Students | 10 minute pitch for $10,000 | – MLive.com

Grand Valley State University’s 3rd annual business plan competition has entered its final phase.

Check out what kind of student entrepreneurs and ideas come out for this contest. $10,000 is a great amount of money for testing a concept. This is true seed investing. Check out the business plan competition website to read about the 7 finalists.

GVSU students get 10 minutes to make business pitch and chance to win $10,000 | – MLive.com.

Drake Student Wins Business Plan Prize and Launches Tupperware of Baby Clothes

Great story out of Des Moines about Meg Fisher, a recent Drake University grad and founder of Lincoln & Lexi, a start-up that sells fashionable children and baby clothing via home-based parties and the internet.

Fisher came up with this idea in her entrepreneurship class at Drake and then won $5,000 in the Pappajohn’s New Venture Business Plan Competition at Drake University.

From the article by Jeff Eckhoff at the Des Moines Register:

Fisher, 21, hopes to corner the multilevel market in children’s fashions by offering an exclusive line of baby blankets, clothing and accessories for sale via a combination of the Internet and, mostly, home-based parties.

The award-winning idea, born out of a Drake entrepreneurship class and endorsed last month by judges for the Pappajohn New Venture Business Plan Competition, appears to be a unique version of the direct-sales method that’s been used for decades to sell things such as cosmetics and kitchen supplies.

Thomas Swartwood, the adjunct Drake professor who encouraged Fisher to investigate the idea as an alternative to traditional retail, said multilevel marketing is simply a cheaper way for new entrepreneurs to launch any kind of store. It lets entrepreneurs avoid many of the huge start-up costs, inventory and other overhead that can kill a business struggling to find its footing.

Sounds like some cool stuff — faculty, students, business plans, culture — taking place at Drake University. Congrats and I look forward to learning more about the players our there.

Drake grad launches business, snares a Pappajohn idea prize | desmoinesregister.com | The Des Moines Register.

New Student Note Sharing Venture from San Jose State University

Cool student entrepreneur story out of San Jose State University where students and recent alum use the school’s business plan competition to raise basic funding and launch a beta product for their student note sharing service.

The SJSU  students company offers have a  note sharing service for students and they seem to be communicating with both students and professors in building this out. It appears from a quick read of their site that student’s can get paid for uploading their notes. There also appear to be both monetary and non-monetary awards on the site.

From the article by Jasmine Duarte:

The idea of College Note Share started when SJSU alumnus Guerrettaz, while choosing his classes, could see the syllabus and the potential class load while registering, he said.

It was during one of his entrepreneur finance classes that he said he designed a business plan and model for the note-sharing idea and entered SJSU’s business plan competition.

The business plan took 10 days to create, and Guerrettaz took first prize at the competition and won $10,000 toward financing his idea, he said.

From there, Guerrettaz met Hoover and later, Gilbert Bagaoisan, an SJSU alumnus who earned an entrepreneurship degree. Bagaoisan is now chief marketing officer for the College Note Share Web site, he said.

After purchasing software and the necessities for creating the site, the prize money seemed to disappear quickly.

“We found out pretty quick $10,000 doesn’t cover a lot,” Guerrettaz said.

This is interesting, given that as a professor I share my PPT with my students. Now, if they upload those notes, should they get paid by College Note Share? There are references to ‘other people’s material’ on the FAQ page of College Note Share, but we wonder how this plays out.

The venture is currently working out of its own backyard (SJSU), but will clearly be expanding to other California schools.

While I find their statement  ‘We have talked to professors and they accept the fact that this is the future of education,’ almost comical, I am excited to see how this model works.

There is a huge marketplace for educational material and aggregating students notes is a classic segment that is expanding. When I attended University of Michigan in the 1990s you could buy ‘printed’ lecture notes from a company called Blue Notes. I was always in the attend and take my own notes camp on this debate. But there are always those willing to take the short cut. Digital technology only makes it easier to choose that route.

New Web site lets students share notes from SJSU classes – News.

Forbes Hypes Business Plan Competitions

Forbes has a nice online feature looking at 15 business plan competitions across the U.S. It looks like the Kauffman Foundation has some great data on these competitions and hopefully that is a database that is available to entrepreneurship researchers.

Last Thursday, during my introductory lecture in New Venture Creation, I discussed the great opportunities that University and College sponsored business plan contests offer to students interested in or determined to be entrepreneurs. From the article:

There’s more money than ever in these competitions. At last official count in 2006 the Kauffman Foundation identified 353 business plan contests at colleges and universities. The number may have doubled since then, says Fishback, based on early feedback gleaned from Kauffman’s recent purchase of a software company that helps facilitate and track these competitions.

Pitch to Under Armour CEO, Win $15K — U Maryland

“Calling all University of Maryland student entrepreneurs and recent graduates! Do you own and run your own business? Do you think YOU are one of the best UM entrepreneurs? Tell your story to the whole University and to one of UM’s most successful entrepreneurs, Kevin Plank, CEO of Under Armour. If you convince Kevin that you are the best, in addition to a great connection to Kevin and other prominent alums, you will take home the Cupid’s Cup, an annual award to the best UM student entrepreneur, and $15K in cash!” —  from UMD.

I am fortunate to live near UMD and visit their great b-school periodically. I recently attended one of their Pitch Dingman contests (a weekly event for students to pitch new ventures; the end of month session awards $2500) and will be posting on the event later this week. They have put a lot of thought and time into building an entrepreneurial eco-system and there is much to gain for campus entrepreneurs in College Park, MD.

Check out the Cupid’s Cup Website to see how an entrepreneurial business school puts it together.

What Happened @ Wharton’s BPlan Competition

There are some smart people at Wharton (and within the broader UPenn neighborhood) so its worth reading about their business plan competition. From Knowledge@Wharton:

Competing for more than $70,000 in cash and prizes, the eight teams that reached the BPC finals presented their plans on April 29 to a panel of judges and an audience of nearly 300 venture capitalists, business leaders, faculty and students. The competition is open to any University of Pennsylvania student and is managed by Wharton Entrepreneurial Programs.

Despite the challenges of starting a business during a down economy, interest in the BPC was higher this year than in the past two years. More than 160 teams entered the contest compared to 145 last year and 151 the year before. BPC 2009 launched last fall with the submission of students’ business concepts. The teams then competed throughout the year for a spot as one of the eight finalists.

The range of industries/firms is pretty fascinating: from open source toy robot teddy bears to online bill splitting services (think roommates paying rent/cable/etc.)… Good stuff. Good on you Wharton.