News & Events
Upcoming Events
- Special Event with Paul Rice, Founder of Fair Trade USA What it Takes to Scale the Social Venture
Wednesday, February 15, 2012, 6:30-8:30pm
At the Skydeck, 2150 Shattuck Avenue (top floor)
Berkeley, CA. (near BART and parking)
Register for the event:
http://path-bending-leadership.eventbrite.com/
Join Paul Rice (MBA 96), Founder of FairTrade USA, for a discussion on “what it takes” to scale the social venture. Paul Rice continues to challenge the status quos, now asking – should fair trade be restricted to small farmers alone? While Fair Trade begin in the 1940s, it accelerated in the U.S. when Haas alum, Paul Rice, founded Fair Trade USA (originally known as TransFair USA) in 1998, and launched Fair Trade Certified coffee at the Speciality Coffee Association of America exposition.
- Vator Spark is a full-day, high-energy, master class designed to give entrepreneurs the right knowledge, best practices and tools to succeed. The first Vator Spark event, Get Game: How Start-ups can Gamify their Business, scheduled for May 1, 2012, is on how startups can use different gaming strategies to disrupt their industries and increase engagement. The kick-off event, co-sponsored by the Lester Center for Entrepreneurship, will be held at the Berkeley Skydeck. The agenda includes: the origins of gaming mechanics, success stories from industry thought leaders, and workshops, ranging from how to make gamification a business strategy to what venture capitalists are looking for and how to use gaming mechanics as a growth tool. For more information click here.
- The 2011-12 season of the Berkeley Entrepreneurs Forum is underway. The next event is
Making Money - What Every Entrepreneur Needs To Know About IPOs on February 23, 2012.
- The 2011-12 season of the Entrepreneurial Best Practices Series is underway. Next up on February 15, 2012 is Financial Modeling/Management.
- The Lester Center will sponsor mentorship opportunities each semester.
Availability of appointments with mentors is announced by e-mail ONLY. If you'd like to sign up for e-mail announcements, you can do so on our Contact page. Click here for information on our mentoring program.
News
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Haas startup TubeMogul wins Award
Bplan 2007 First Place Winner TubeMogul is named the seventh fastest growing private company in the Bay Area. Read more >
- Winners of the Intel Global Challenge at UC Berkeley
The Intel Global Challenge at UC Berkeley is a global business plan competition that encourages student entrepreneurs and rewards innovative ideas that have the potential to have a positive impact on society. The Intel Foundation will award a total of $100,000 in cash prizes, $50,000 of which went to Forward.
Second place and $20,000 was awarded to Maxygen-mobile DNA of Russia for inventing a low-cost, portable DNA test solution that can be used at the point of care to quickly identify thousands of infectious diseases, genetic predispositions and hereditary conditions. The $10,000 third-place prize went to NanoDiagX of Egypt, which used gold nanoparticles to develop a virus test that can detect Hepatitis C in less than an hour, and at one-tenth the cost of current commercial tests.
Read the Full Press Release
See the Full Challenge Program (pdf)
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Hybrid Wisdom Labs Launches at the Web 2.0 Summit!
Hybrid Wisdom Labs is a new company emerging from more than a decade of robotics and social media research at UC Berkeley. Hybrid Wisdom’s patented, lab-refined technology has been used by General Motors, Unilever, Humana, and the US Department of State. The company is co-founded by David Wong (EECS MS '11) and Professor Ken Goldberg (EECS, IEOR, iSchool). Hybrid Wisdom offers the Social Enterprise a next generation approach to online brainstorming and generating insightful solutions: Collaborative Discovery. Collaborative Discovery has two key benefits over existing social innovation tools: scale and speed. It elegantly scales to support thousands of participants without sacrificing speed in finding the best solutions.
Read the Full Press Release
See the Full Challenge Program (pdf)
- Hacking Health: UC Berkeley’s First Health IT Innovation Workshop. On October 1, UC Berkeley held its first hackathon focused entirely on health information technology. Supported by the Lester Center for Entrepreneurship and Morgenthaler Ventures, Hacking Health was launched by Stuart Kamin (MBA/MPH 12), Liz Rockett, Cal MBA/MPH alum and Director at Imprint Capital Advisors, and Emily Barabas, a health information guru studying at the Cal School of Information. The $2000 grand prize went to Future Me, a diverse team led by Elise Singer, Cal MBA alum, practicing MD and Chief Medical Officer of CalHIPSO. Elise recruited MBAs, designers and developers to mine Practice Fusion research data in order to give patients a personalized forecast of how partnering on better clinical and behavioral choices could lower their risk for chronic disease (not to mention health system costs). Read more.
- Imprint Energy Takes Global Entrepreneurship Competition Prize at Biz Barcelona 2011. The 2011 Biz Barcelona Entrepreneurship Conference was held June 14-16 in Barcelona, Spain. Imprint Energy, a UC Berkeley Business Plan Competition Energy Track and People’s Choice Award Winner that is developing a printed battery technology, was invited to participate in the Global Entrepreneurship Competition (GEC), a business plan competition for early stage companies and the marquis event at the Conference. Brooks Kincaid, a 2011 Haas MBA graduate, represented the United States and competed against entrants from 25 other countries. Brooks gave a winning pitch and Imprint Energy took home First Prize, receiving an award of 20,000 Euros. The Completion was chaired by our own Jerry Engel, Founding Executive Director of the Lester Center. For more on the award and event, click here.
- The 13th Annual UC Berkeley Business Plan Competition Finalist Presentations and Awards Ceremony was held on Thursday, April 28, 2011. The UC Berkeley Entrepreneurs Forum and the student organizers of the 2011 UC Berkeley Business Plan Competition showcased the finalists of this year's Competition and awarded prizes to the winners. Videos of the event are available at: http://bplan.berkeley.edu/Learn/video_index.html.
- The Lester Center hosted the Global Finals for the 2011 Global Social Venture Competition and 15 finalist teams from around the world came to the Berkeley-Haas campus to present innovative, market-based solutions to pressing social issues, such as access to clean water, sanitation, and reforestation. This year, GSVC received roughly 850 entries worldwide. Thus the Global Finalists rose to the top of the largest and most competitive competition in GSVC’s history. The grand prize winner, NextDrop (UC Berkeley and Stanford University) has developed a mobile platform and web interface that prevents community members, particularly women, in Indian cities from wasting hours each day waiting for water to arrive via truck or communal tap. Videos of the event are available by clicking here.
- In its March 24th online edition, the Wall Street Journal featured Berkeley and Stanford MBA students being courted by tech and venture capital firms. The mixer was sponsored by Morgenthaler Ventures, a VC firm and strong supporter of the Lester Center. The article quotes Brandon Yahn, co-president of the Haas Entrepeneurs Association, who said the group plans eight or nine events this year, up from five previously, driven by interest from venture firms and start-ups. Venture firms also have invited Berkeley students to mixers and have ponied up more sponsorship dollars to the group, he said.
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In Memory of W. Howard Lester
August 14, 1935 - November 15, 2010
The Lester Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation regrets to announce the passing of our Founding Benefactor, W. Howard Lester.
A quintessential entrepreneur, W. Howard Lester died Monday, November 15, 2010 at his home surrounded by his loved ones in Indian Wells, California after a 13-year long battle with cancer. He was a business icon, who for over 32 years guided the development and success of the Williams-Sonoma, Inc. portfolio of brands. Howard strove to improve the lives of others through his philanthropy. With his wife Mary, they supported education, medical research, youth programs and the arts. In 1991, he founded the Lester Center which now carries on his legacy of business enterprise. [read the full obituary] [read more]
- Magoosh, founded by Haas 2010 graduates Bhavin Parikh, Hansoo Lee, and Pejman Pour-Moezzi, came in second place November 18, 2010 in the 6th Annual Intel+UC Berkeley Technology Entrepreneurship Challenge, a partnership between the Lester Center and Intel Corporation. They competed against 26 other teams from 19 countries to win the $10,000 second prize. Magoosh gives aspiring graduate school students a more affordable, convenient, and effective way to prep for the GMAT, GRE, and LSAT. OsComp Systems of Pontificia Universidad Católica Madre y Maestra in the Dominican Republic took first place in the Challenge. The team of entrepreneurs won $25,000 from the Intel Foundation for inventing a breakthrough, patent-pending technology that could reduce operating and capital costs for natural gas compression by more than 30 percent. The $5,000 third-place prize went to ADTELLIGENCE of the University of Mannheim in Germany for its advertising targeting platform for the social web. The People’s Choice Award Winner was Bio-Oil from Tsinghua University in China, who aims to promote an alternative energy source while reducing pressure on the environment by producing biodiesel using various kinds of waste oil as raw materials. [read more]
- The Lester Center is proud to participate in the 2010 Global Entrepreneurship Week founded by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, the world’s largest foundation devoted exclusively to entrepreneurship. More than 7 million people and 18,000 organizations in 88 countries planned 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. 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. From November 16-18, 2010, 27 teams from around the globe presented pitches on everything from bio-oil to breast cancer detection as they vies for $45,000 in prize money.
[read more]
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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. 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. [read more]
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Lester Center execuitive director Andre Marquis headed a panel on M&A and Innovation at the 4th annual 2010 Berkeley Finance Conference - Creating Value Through Mergers & Acquisitions, on Friday, November 19, 2010. Conference web site: http://www.berkeleyfinanceconference.com
- John Woolard (MBA 97) is making an impact in energy. His latest venture, BrightSource Energy, “develops utility-scale solar power projects that utilize its unique proprietary solar technology...to convert sunlight to electricity.” The venture has raised $160M in venture investments, and has contracted with PG&E and SCE to deliver more than 2,600 megawatts of electric power from fourteen solar power plants. In September and early October, 2010, BrightSource reached new landmarks, as the California Energy Commission and the Bureau of Land Management approved the construction of BrightSource's Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System, a 370 nominal (392 gross) megawatt project. When constructed, Ivanpah will nearly double the amount of solar thermal electricity produced in the United States today.
During his weekly national address on October 2, President Obama lauded the economic benefits of the Ivanpah project.
[read more]
- The Lester Center is pleased to announce the appointment of technology entrepreneur André Marquis (MBA 96) as our new executive director effective August 9th. André graduated from Haas in 1996. While getting his MBA he helped create the entrepreneurial venture Cybergold, an internet advertising company that later went public and ultimately was acquired by MyPoints. He subsequently started and served in executive positions for several more successful technology ventures including three in information technology and two in pharmaceuticals. Most recently he served as the senior vice president of sales and marketing at the neuromarketing company Innerscope Research in Boston, Mass.
[read more]
- Lester Center Advisory Board member Jack Larson BS 73 (Business Administration) was recently honored with the Imagine America Foundation’s 2010 Pioneer Award. Larson, a 36-year veteran of the postsecondary education industry, was recognized for his innovative leadership and outstanding contributions to the field. [read more]
- See more news from 2010
- Archived News.
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