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November 2010

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Headlines:


Lester Center Celebrates Global Entrepreneurship Week
in Partnership with Intel Corporation

Calling All Competitors!

 

Haas Entrepreneurs Launch Their Next Stages

Physic Ventures Founder Honored with Oslo Business for Peace Award


Upcoming Events:   



Entrepreneurial Best Practices Series:
Getting Your Story Straight
Tuesday, November 16, 2010

 

Berkeley Entrepreneurs Forum:
Technology Entrepreneurship on the Global Stage:
6th Annual Intel+UC Berkeley Technology Entrepreneurship Challenge
Thursday, November 18, 2010


Venture Capital Executive Program

offered in collaboration with the Center for Executive Education
December 6-10, 2010




Lester Center Celebrates Global Entrepreneurship Week
in Partnership with Intel Corporation



The Lester Center is proud to participate in the 2010 Global Entrepreneurship Week (GEW) founded by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, the world’s largest foundation devoted exclusively to entrepreneurship by hosting the 6th Annual Intel+UC Berkeley Technology Entrepreneurship Challenge.


GEW   Kauffman Foundation

More than 7 million people and 18,000 organizations in 88 countries are planning entrepreneurial activities in their local communities to celebrate. From 2008 to 2009, GEW doubled the number of participants and partner organizations, and increased its registered activities from 25,000 to almost 33,000 across the globe. GEW 2010 is expected to continue this growth.

 

The Lester Center will highlight its own Global Entrepreneurship Education Initiative during GEW with a program sponsored by Intel Corporation: the 6th Annual Intel+UC Berkeley Technology Entrepreneurship Challenge (IBTEC). From November 16-18, 2010, 27 teams from around the globe will present pitches on everything from bio-oil to breast cancer detection as they vie for $45,000 in prize money.



IBTECIBTEC

Eight finalists will present their business plans at the Berkeley Entrepreneurs Forum on Thursday, November 18, from 5:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. in Andersen Auditorium at the Haas School of Business. All of the teams will showcase their ideas and plans in a poster session during a reception at the Forum from 5:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. The event also will feature a keynote talk by Ajay Bhatt, chief platform architect of Intel’s PC Client Group, who is widely recognized as an instrumental player in the development of the USB. Registration information can be found on the Forum website.

 

The competition brings together winning teams from ten business plan competitions worldwide. Along with the UC Berkeley Business Plan Competition, these include Intel Challenge Europe, with entrants from 13 nations; the Intel Latin American Challenge, representing South American countries; the Arab Technology Business Plan Competition; and the “Intel Cup” China, which drew more than 600 business plans entries from more than 200 universities.

 

Some of this year’s competitors are highlighted below. For a full list of 2010 teams, please visit the IBTEC website.

 

Representing UC Berkeley, BrightSense, a personalized, pain-free tooth-whitening system, won both first place in the products and services track and the people’s choice award in the UC Berkeley Business Plan Competition in April 2010.

 

Fumajet Motofog from the University Veiga de Almeida, Brazil- MOTOFOG is innovative equipment for fighting urban vectors as well as agricultural pests. The system was designed to be installed on a motorcycle, using its own engine to generate the heat needed for a thermo fogger. MOTOFOG is an innovative technology to help health care worldwide against deadly diseases.

 

Bio-oil from Tsinghua University, China- Bio-oil aims at promoting new alternative energy and reducing pressure on the environment by producing biodiesel with all kinds of waste oil as raw materials. Bio-oil not only solves the settlement problem of waste oil, but also provides clean and sustainable development energy, which has tremendous social benefits.

 

For the first time, a People’s Choice Award will be open to the public for online voting, from 6:00 p.m. November 18 to December 6. The People's Choice Award is designed to extend the reach of the Competition beyond the walls of UC Berkeley and invite the public, to vote for the team they feel is most creative, innovative, and has the most potential to succeed as a business venture. While the People’s Choice Award has no bearing on the Challenge, the winner of the award will receive a $5,000 prize.  Voting will be hosted by InspiredbyEducation.com.  

 

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Calling All Competitors!



Do you have a competitive spirit? Are you interested in starting a business? Do you have curiosity about the life of a venture capitalist? If you answered yes to any of the questions above, the Lester Center has a competition for you.


Along with our first year MBA student organizing committees, the Lester Center will host three upcoming business plan competitions to suit competitors across many interests and disciplines.

The UC Berkeley Business Plan Competition (Bplan) now in its 13th year, is one of the area’s foremost events for budding entrepreneurs: a year-round forum providing entrepreneurs with the best possible resources – including education, networking, team creation, mentorship and new venture financing – to help turn innovative ideas into real businesses.

 

Bplan   Bplan

 


Bplan works across four broad industry tracks – IT & Web, Life Sciences, Energy & Cleantech, and Products & Services – to help entrepreneurs:

 

There is ample time to get your team and ideas ready for the first round of the Competition – the 2-3 page executive summary is due on Wednesday, January 26, 2011. Learn more about Bplan on our website or by joining us at one of our upcoming mixer events, noted below, where you can also network with other interested entrepreneurs and join teams.

 

Follow Bplan via social media!
Twitter: www.twitter.com/UCBerkeleyBplan
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=6567719446

 

The Global Social Venture Competition (GSVC) focuses on somewhat less traditional businesses- ones with a double-bottom line. GSVC is off to a great start this fall after a record-breaking 2010 competition, with submissions from over 500 teams from 30 different countries. This year, GSVC expects to further grow the Competition by emphasizing GSVC’s unique role in the social venture space.   While many business plan competitions are restricted to only student teams, "GSVC is unique because entrant teams often combine MBAs with real-life aspiring social entrepreneurs, with the goal of actually launching their ideas," according to Brian Busch, Haas MBA candidate and 2011 GSVC co-chair.  

 

GSVC   GSVC


If you are an aspiring social entrepreneur, a current MBA, or recent alum, we invite you to join GSVC at one of several upcoming events to learn more about the Competition, generate ideas, and form teams in advance of the executive summary submission deadline of January 19, 2011.

 

Check out the GSVC website for more information on upcoming events, team qualifications, and entry deadlines for other regions.

Turning to the other side of the table, the Venture Capital Investment Competition (VCIC) is, in essence, a "reverse business plan competition." Compared to a traditional business plan competition where teams participate as entrepreneurs seeking venture capital funding, student teams in the VCIC assume the role of venture capitalists and evaluate and "fund" investment opportunities.  Competing teams evaluate real business opportunities presented by entrepreneurs currently seeking funding, while being judged by experienced venture capitalists.

 

VCIC   VCIC


VCIC is off to a strong start this fall. Team formation is underway with more than 40 people mingling at Henry’s last week to meet, discuss VC and entrepreneurship, and form teams. Check out this Google spreadsheet which the organizing committee has created to help facilitate team formation as they work to find the right diversity and get to work on the business case required for the application. “We hope that this new application will get students thinking in the shoes of a VC and focus on getting a great diverse team,” said Sarah Friedman, VCIC Chair. The organizing committee is working hard to incorporate feedback to evolve the Competition and the workshops to make this year the best yet. The VCIC committee is focused on education for the student teams, as well as putting on a great competition. Pre-Competition workshops will be made available to those applicants that are not selected to compete in order to keep the educational focus of the Competition open to as many people as possible.

VCIC is open to all UC Berkeley graduate students. Application requirements can be found on the VCIC website. Completed applications are due on Tuesday, November 23rd by 9am. The Competition will take place at the Haas School of Business on Friday, February 4, 2011.


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Haas Entrepreneurs Launch Their Next Stages



Haas entrepreneurs continue to make the news and stake out their next stages. Let's follow Yardbarker and TubeMogul as they grow and succeed.


TubeMogul, an Internet ad analytics company founded at Haas, is growing its business and attracting new capital.  Founded by Brett Wilson, John Hughes, and Mark Rotblat, all MBA 07 and all still at the company, TubeMogul recently received $10 million in Series B funding from Foundation Capital, Trinity Ventures and Knight’s Bridge Capital Partners. So equipped, TubeMogul is looking to fill six more Bay Area positions in engineering and sales. It has exhausted its office space in Emeryville, and is searching for a new space in Emeryville, or possibly in San Francisco. The company recently opened an office in London, in addition to those in New York and Toronto, and has employees worldwide.

TubeMogul   Brett Wilson   John Hughes  Mark Rotblat

The company grew 271 percent from 2008 to 2009, and expects to exceed that growth in 2010, with projected revenue of $10 million. TubeMogul’s growth mirrors the Internet ad industry, which rose to a new high of $12.1 billion in the first half of 2010.

The company offers free web video analytics, similar to Nielsen numbers for TV, making it attractive to users. Like TV, Internet ads must be placed in the right channels to be effective. Based on a client’s target audience, TubeMogul recommends the best websites or social media sites for reaching consumers as well as the best types of ad placement, such as a clip that plays before another video or a banner on a page.

TubeMogul originally charged for analytics, then realized that it could expand by offering the analytics for free and charging for value-added services. The move to free products won clients such as Symantec. For Symantec’s “7 Steps to Windows 7” video campaign, TubeMogul targeted the tech audience. With two blasts last spring, the Western-themed ad made the rounds of tech blogs and reached No. 8 for YouTube’s Science and Technology video category. The video garnered an 8.55 percent click through rate of viewers who visited Symantec’s website after watching the video — four times the industry standard.

Says Brett: “The Lester Center is the ultimate launch pad for entrepreneurs.  Our initial team met in Entrepreneurship class, honed our idea in the 2007 UC Berkeley Business Plan Competition (and tied for first place), raised initial seed money from classmates and spent our first-year in the Berkeley Entrepreneurship Lab.  There would no TubeMogul without Haas and in particular the Lester Center.”

 

 

Pete Vlastelica and Jack Kloster, both MBA 06, also founded Yardbarker while at Haas, made the news recently when their company was acquired by Fox Sports. Founded in 2006, San Francisco-based Yardbarker is home to over 800 sports blogs, including 70 penned by professional athletes, which draw an average of 7.5 million monthly visitors.

Pete Vlastelica Jack Kloster  


Pete wrote about the sale on October 20, 2010, in the Yardbarker blog:

“Yardbarker has had a great relationship with FOX Sports that started two years ago as a low-key content-sharing partnership and evolved last year into a more formal editorial and sales collaboration…We’ve determined that the best way to continue growing Yardbarker’s presence in sports media is to team up permanently with the FOX Sports team. The acquisition closed today…Yardbarker will continue to operate as a standalone organization based in San Francisco. Everyone on the team will still have a job, and the four founders will all be sticking around after the deal closes – none of us has any plans to leave. We all still have a lot of work to do.”

Pete also has encouraging words for current student entrepreneurs: “The Lester Center helped me make my two years at Haas the perfect environment for starting a company. It was startup paradise. Great resources like the Berkeley Entrepreneurship Lab, outstanding people who became co-founders, advisors, and investors; and a culture of innovation and sharing. Real entrepreneurs won’t find a better place to incubate their big idea.”

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Physic Ventures Founder Honored with Oslo Business for Peace Award



Former Haas Lecturer Will Rosenzweig, co-founder of Physic Ventures and an active supporter of the Lester Center, has been honored with the 2010 Oslo Business for Peace Award for his leadership and innovative approach to creating successful businesses focused on personal health and sustainable living.

William Rosenzweig   Physic Ventures


Rosenzweig, the only American among seven winners this year, was presented the award last month by the Business for Peace Foundation and International Chamber of Commerce in Oslo, Norway. Winners are selected by a committee of Nobel Laureates, including Professor Muhammad Yunus, winner of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize for his pioneering work in microfinance and his leadership of the Grameen Bank.

The Oslo Business for Peace Award recognizes individuals who represent the ideals of social responsibility and ethics in business. Physic Ventures provides financial and strategic resources to entrepreneurs using innovative science and technology to address some of the world's most pressing challenges: escalating health care costs due to rising chronic disease and an aging global population, natural resource depletion, and global warming.

"Receiving the Oslo Business for Peace Award is a truly humbling experience and an indication that Physic Ventures' approach of investing in keeping people healthy is a critical and effective platform for enabling transformational solutions to global challenges," says Rosenzweig. "An honor such as this is a gratifying confirmation that we're supporting some of the most impactful portfolio companies in the world."

Rosenzweig has spent more than 20 years integrating the practices and perspectives of an entrepreneur, venture investor, and educator. He served on the Haas faculty for a decade, teaching MBA courses in social entrepreneurship and social venture development and advising many students on their social venture enterprises.

Rosenzweig also has been a member of the Global Social Venture Competition Advisory Board since the Competition's inception at Haas back in 1999. Physic Ventures is also a sponsor of the Berkeley Entrepreneurs Forum.

"I have known Will for over 20 years. Whether he was serving on the advisory board of then-startup Leapfrog Toys, founding the Republic of Tea, working as a venture capitalist, or teaching as a lecturer here at Haas, Will has consistently demonstrated a keen understanding of how to use private enterprise and entrepreneurship to further education, health, and wellness," says Jerry Engel, the Lester Center faculty director. "We celebrate his recognition."

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