Entrepreneurship only begins at Haas. Numerous students have
graduated from Haas with their own start-up companies which
have grown into successful businesses. The Lester Center has had the honor to
foster the growth of ideas among Haas MBA students through
the administration of their programs. Here is
just a small list of successful alumni and their businesses
which have had Lester Center contributions:
Zach Gentry
MBA '05 |
|
Berkeley Entrepreneurship Laboratory (BEL) Tenant |
Priya Haji
MBA '03
Siddharth Sanghvi
MBA '03 |
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GSVC 2005 Grand Prize Winner; BEL Tenant |
Sarah Takesh
MBA '03 |
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NSVC 2003- Best Blended Prize |
Peter Fiske
MBA '02 |
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B-Plan Comp 2001 Grand Prize Winner. Later
received an $8M contract from
US Dep't of Defense. |
Matt Campbell
MBA '02
|
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B-Plan Competition 2002 Grand Prize |
Scott Kucirek
MBA '99
Juan Mini
MBA '99 |
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B-Plan Comp. 1999 Finalist; BEL Tenant; Over $27M in venture
capital funding. |
David Hehman
MBA '98
Alex Chang
MBA '98
Stephen Scales
MBA '98 |
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Was a BEL tenant. Sold to Expedia in 1998. David Hehman started
the GetAwayZone Student Mentorship Endowment at the Lester
Center in order to further encourage student entrepreneurs.
|
John Woolard
MBA '97 |
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Partnered with Jon Blankmeyer of the Berkeley Entrepreneurs'
Forum Advisory Council to start it; Price Fellow 96-97;
Sold to Itron for $71.2M in March 2003 |
John Hanke
MBA '96
|
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John's third startup; Sold to Google in 2004 |
Kevin Brown
MBA '96
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Inktomi |
Founded with Eric Brewer and Paul Gauthier.
Acquired by Yahoo in 2002. |
Steve Markowitz
MBA '96Noah Doyle
MBA '96
Mark Smith
MBA '96
Layton Han
MBA '96
Dan Kihanya
MBA '96 |
My
Points |
This business plan was originally
developed in one of Haas's entrepreneurship classes! The
company's annual revenue grew to $64m in 2000 from $0 in
1996, and had over 16 million consumers (or 15% of all
online customers). It acquired 3 of its competitors and
spread into international markets. It was sold to United Airlines in 2001 for
$112.5M. |
|
Andre Marquis
MBA '96 |
iPIX
CyberGold
Accept.com
|
Andre successfully started these three
companies during and right after completing his MBA. He
was very involved in PEL while at Haas. He started his
first company CyberGold right out of Haas, which soon
became one of the twenty fastest growing sites on the
internet. His second company, Emptor, which became
Accept.com, a Kleiner Perkins, Benchmark Capital backed
e-commerce company, was acquired by Amazon.com. His third
company, Bamboo.com was acquired by iPIX for $1.2 billion.
iPIX is now the world's largest manager of Internet visual
content with partners including Microsoft, Yahoo!, and
eBay. |
Tod Dykstra
MBA '91 |
|
$7M Series A funding from Foundational Capital and Institutional
Venture Partners in December of 2004. |
Gerry Pesavento
MBA '89 |
|
B-Plan Comp 1999- 2nd Place Prize; Gerry led Alloptic
to $50M in funding. |
