April 18, 2003
Eclectic ideas abound for UW’s sixth annual Business Plan Competition
Students aspiring to secure seed money to grow future ventures will put their brightest ideas forward during the investment round of the University of Washington Business School’s Center for Technology Entrepreneurship (CTE) Business Plan Competition. Teams from local universities will pitch their concepts to a bevy of investment bankers, entrepreneurs, lawyers, and venture capitalists acting as judges and armed with faux dollars to invest.
The investment round will be from 2 to 5 p.m., Tuesday, April 22 in the ballroom of the Husky Union Building on the UW campus.
Competitors are hoping that innovative concepts in engineering, retail, biotechnology and food services industries will garner the attention — and greenbacks — of the competition’s 130 judges, who are each given $1,000 in “CTE dollars” to invest in the most viable ideas.
The 16 teams accumulating the most CTE dollars will advance in the competition and have a chance to win the $25,000 grand prize. An additional seven prizes will be given out in such categories as best ideas in high growth, lifestyle and social enterprise. With $80,000 to be distributed among this year’s winners, the competition awards one of the largest amounts in seed funding of any similar event in the country.
Proposed business concepts range from producing coffee beans that can be fresh roasted in microwaves to furthering advances in genomic discovery and developing rear-vision safety systems for motorcycles.
“Our team knows how vital the investment round is to helping make our business become a reality,” said Manot Xu, a UW master’s of business administration student. “We’ve got such a short amount of time to make a good impression so we’ll have to get creative.”
“About half of the ideas presented this year involve technology-driven businesses while the remaining business plans represent brick-and-mortar start-ups,” said Suresh Kotha, faculty director of CTE. “Our competition is a microcosm of the local economy and the return to traditional business models by would-be CEOs indicates the prevailing desire to go back to basics,” he said.
The 16 teams that earn the most faux funding move on to the long presentation round on May 20, where four finalists will be chosen to compete for top honors later that evening. In the finals the judges consider each of the four finalists’ plans in terms of the viability of the idea, the strength of the management team and the details of the business plan.
Past winners include CyberCamps, providers of college computer camps for kids, and Cogelix, engineers of a less-invasive radiation cancer treatment that doesn’t damage healthy surrounding tissue.
The competition includes students from Gonzaga University, Seattle University, Seattle Pacific University and the University of Washington.
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For more information, contact Suresh Kotha, faculty director for academic programs, Center for Technology and Entrepreneurship, (206) 543-446 or skotha@u.washington.edu; student co-chair Alison Winfield, (206) 352-1998 or avw@u.washington.edu; Quinn Read, program coordinator, (206) 685-9868 or qread@u.washington.edu. For more information about the UW Business School’s Center for Technology Entrepreneurship visit http://depts.washington.edu/cte/CTE_BPC_Overview_Short.shtml
