Innovation Newsletter May 2010 - Lester Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation

Complete Program Directory

May 2010

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Headlines:

The Power of Our Network: the Lester Center Brings 300 Experts to Haas

Lester Center Celebrates Another Outstanding Year

Business Plan Competitions Reach a Climax

Launchpad Success Stories Grow and Diversify

Danae Ringelmann, MBA 08, Named Among
Most Influential Women in Technology

The Power of Our Network: the Lester Center Brings 300 Experts to Haas

There is nothing like the power of a network - particularly for entrepreneurs in search of funding, business partners, marketing opportunities, and legal advice.

As another academic year comes to a close, we celebrate the Lester Center’s network of over 300 top-flight professionals who gave their time and expertise to provide Berkeley entrepreneurs with the critical knowledge and contacts to increase their chance of success, now and in their future lives.

“Students and faculty who are creating ventures require a rich array of resources that can accelerate the venture creation process,” said the Lester Center’s Executive Director David Charron. That rich array is expressed in the over 300 guests that the Lester Center's entrepreneurship and innovation program brings to campus each year. These visitors inspire, inform, mentor and invest across the broad range of activities we offer and make themselves available to our community, thereby accelerating the venture creation process.”

During the 2009-2010 academic year, we welcomed another cadre of impressive individuals, including:

Over 100 entrepreneurs and corporate executives
Over 100 venture capitalists
Nearly 30 lawyers
Nearly 20 accountants and banking professionals

who provided our community with:

Hundreds of hours of free mentorship in classes and during Entrepreneurs Corner office hours
Over 200 guest lectures in the classroom
Feedback and judging at competitions including the UC Berkeley Business Plan Competition, Global Social Venture Competition, and the Venture Capital Investment Competition
Expert presentations by 60 practitioners to combined UC Berkeley and public audiences
Countless connections to the broader network of Bay Area investors, executives, professionals and corporations
Funding and support for the companies emerging from UC Berkeley

The Lester Center’s networks are what make the entrepreneurship and innovation program strong and vital. Let us introduce some of the people “inside the network”:


Andy Donner, Director, Physic Ventures		"The team of professionals at Physic Ventures regularly commit time and energies to the Haas School of Business and UC Berkeley at large to help nurture the next generation of entrepreneurs and identify opportunities for venture investment. The Lester Center is Physic’s partner in this process, with the Center functioning as the hub which connects students, faculty, various UC Berkeley departments, business leaders, and venture investors. As just one example, Physic Ventures collaborated with the Lester Center to organize and facilitate the March 2010 Berkeley Entrepreneurs Forum on the topic “The Greening of Health” which drew an audience of several hundred from Berkeley and the greater Bay Area. This event helped Physic Ventures connect with potential co-investors, entrepreneurs and other professionals. Perhaps more important, the event enabled Physic to share our insights and innovation concerning the convergence of personal health and planetary sustainability."

Hansoo Lee (MBA 10), Founder, Magoosh		"The Lester Center serves as a hub for current students, alumni, and faculty who are interested in entrepreneurship. With the Lester Center, I’ve learned it’s not only about breadth, but strength, of the network. For Magoosh, being a part of the Lester Center network has proven invaluable. For example, we have been able to get startup advice from recent alums who went through the same growing pains we are currently experiencing; their insights have so much depth and relevance. The depth of information shared showed me how strong the ties with the Lester Center really are."

Timothy Harris, Partner, Morrison & Foerster LLP		"My livelihood as a lawyer to entrepreneurs and the investors that finance their businesses depends upon surrounding myself with business and technology leaders. Participating in Lester Center and Haas School of Business programs gives me concentrated exposure to the brightest, most motivated and most talented group of future leaders that can be assembled in any one place at any one time. A welcome side benefit is that participating in these programs has allowed me to network with other like-minded professionals, thereby increasing the connectivity within the entrepreneurial community that I can offer my clients."

Sean Foote, Venture Partner, Labrador Ventures & LC Faculty		“Teaching venture capital has given me time to think about and reflect on the industry that I'm a part of - It's a blessing that few VCs get. When I added teaching microfinance, I really pushed the limit of my ability to get things done. The Lester Center has always been so helpful and supportive, though. All I have to do is focus on the content in the classroom and the Center provides all the support I need complete my teaching responsibilities. Now that the microfinance class is simulcast to 50 campuses around the country, including 12 of the top 20 business schools in the country, we're pushing the Berkeley-Haas brand across the country.”

We sincerely thank all of the members of our network and look forward to continuing our partnerships with these individuals and companies and expanding our outreach to new friends of the Lester Center in the upcoming school year.

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Lester Center Celebrates Another Outstanding Year

Each May, supporters and friends of the Lester Center gather to celebrate the accomplishments of the previous year and to recognize those who make Entrepreneurship@Berkeley great.

2010 Launchpad Fellowship recipients with Jerry Engel, faculty director and David Charron, executive director

This year’s Lester Center Annual Awards Dinner took place last week at the Haas School of Business to a capacity crowd. View the dinner slideshow as a pdf.

The evening included remarks by Lester Center Executive Director David Charron and Haas Dean Rich Lyons, along with presentations of the 2010 Turner Fellowship, a fellowship established by former EWMBA student Daniel K. Turner III of Montreux Equity Partners, to support MBA students in their entrepreneurial efforts, and the 2010 Gloria W. Appel Award for Outstanding Leadership in Entrepreneurship. We were also proud to present the Richard H. Holton Teaching Fellowship to members of our community who have consistently participated in the classroom by enriching the educational experience of our students.

For the second year in a row, we presented the Jack Larson Scholarship to six outstanding undergraduates at Haas interested in entrepreneurship, with Jack Larson, a UC Berkeley alum and Lester Center Advisory Board Member, in attendance. Finally, new this year was the Launchpad Fellowship, an honor given to eight Haas and UC Berkeley undergraduate and graduate students who have shown involvement in the Lester Center’s Launchpad program offerings and who were engaged in launching a business while in school or have made significant steps toward launch as they prepare to graduate this week.

Our 2010 awardees were:

Turner Fellowship
Brent Locks (MBA 2011)
Laura Englert (EWMBA 2012)

Gloria W. Appel Award for Outstanding Leadership in Entrepreneurship
Angus Hildreth (MBA 2010)
Richard Mordini (MBA 2010)
Christy Martell (MBA 2010)

Richard H. Holton Teaching Fellowship
Todd Morrill
George Willman

Jack Larson Scholarship
Bryan Mao (MBA 2011)
Bez Reyhan (Haas Undergraduate)
Raimundo Silva (MBA 2010)
Ryan Theimer (Haas Undergraduate Business Administration 2010)
Laura Grandbois (Haas Undergraduate Business Administration 2010)
Sandy Lin (Haas Undergraduate Business Administration 2010)
Amanda Walker Murnane (MBA 2010)

Launchpad Fellowship
Hansoo Lee, Magoosh (MBA 2010)
Elise Singer, 3MD (MBA 2010)
Adam Lorimer, Alphabet Energy (MBA 2010)
Claire Mitchell (Undergraduate 2010)
Tienray “Ray” Lin, Duffel (Undergraduate Business Administration 2010)
David Fefferman, GameGrub (Undergraduate Business Administration 2010)
Lawrence Ji, VizArtGlass (Undergraduate Business Administration 2010)
Rei Kasai, Drop In Media (EWMA 2010)

Congratulations to all of those who were recognized. We wish you the best of luck in your future ventures!

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Business Plan Competitions Reach a Climax

May marks the end of another great Competition season here at the Lester Center. Both the Global Social Venture Competition (GSVC) and the UC Berkeley Business Plan Competition (Bplan) held their final events late last month.

In the UC Berkeley Business Plan Competition, Orpheus Medical was awarded the $20,000 grand prize plus a $5,000 first-place prize in the life sciences track. Orpheus Medical has created the first medical device that can painlessly cure hemorrhoids in a single procedure that can be performed by gastroenterologists without general anesthesia in their endoscopy suites. For the second year in a row, the grand prize winner will head to Spain to participate in 22@Barcelona’s HIT Barcelona World Innovation Summit in June for a chance to win up to 20,000 Euros.

For more information about the Competition and all of the other winners, review our recent press release here.

Bplan winners and chairs

The Grand Prize Winning Team of Orpheus Medical
is congratulated by Lester Center Executive Director David Charron and Competition Co-Chairs Richard Kenny and Parkin Kent

Of the record number of 500 Global Social Venture Competition plans received this year, sixteen teams with plans to produce both revenue and social change competed in the finals at the 11th Annual event. Re:Motion Designs, a Stanford University venture providing high performance, affordable prosthetics for amputees in the developing world, won the $25,000 first prize. The team’s JaipurKnee is a polymer-based polycentric knee joint that can be manufactured for less than $20 and has been featured by Time Magazine and BusinessWeek as a major innovation of 2009.

Re:Motion founders demonstrate the JaipurKnee,
a polymer-based polycentric knee joint that can be manufactured for less than $20 USD, featured by Time Magazine, CNN, BusinessWeek and Fast Company as a major innovation of 2009

Haas’ WE CARE Solar beat out four other finalists vying for the Social Impact Assessment Prize, winning $5,000. The venture’s “solar suitcase” provides a plug-and-play system to obstetric health facilities in developing regions that powers lighting, mobile communication, and essential medical devices.

GSVC SIA Winners

SIA Winners from Haas: WE CARE Solar team members Abhay Nihalani and Laura Stachel, with GSVC co-chairs Long Lam (left) and Joyce Chung (right) and Jill Erbland of the Lester Center (2nd from right)

In addition to the global finals, the two-day event included the GSVC Conference, which featured keynotes by Wilford Welch, author of Tactics of Hope: How Social Entrepreneurs Are Changing Our World, and Neal Keny-Guyer, CEO of Mercy Corps. Participants also heard panel talks on topics ranging from social impact assessment to innovative business models to private sector partnerships.

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Launchpad Success Stories Grow and Diversify

The Lester Center's New Venture Launchpad continues its string of high-profile successes and recognition with recent news coverage. The Launchpad is a diverse set of programs for aspiring entrepreneurs at UC Berkeley and the wider Bay Area innovation ecosystem. Well known are its highly visible business plan competitions, Entrepreneurial Best Practices Series, and the Berkeley Entrepreneurs Forum, which is entering its twentieth year. Behind the scenes, many other programs tailored directly to entrepreneurs-in-process maximize the chances for successful launch. Our Entrepreneurs Corner mentoring program brings professionals from many fields - successful entrepreneurs, lawyers, and venture capitalists specializing in a wide variety of industry verticals - to Berkeley for one-on-one support for entrepreneurs at all phases of the launch process. We have expanded this concept to provide a shadow board of directors for qualifying startups - the Startup Board of Mentors. The Berkeley Entrepreneurship Laboratory provides office space for the critical first few months of a venture. Earlier this month, Alphabet Energy 'graduated' from BEL thanks to $1 million in seed financing from Claremont Creek Ventures and the California Clean Energy Fund.

The Lester Center’s programs' strengths are reflected year after year in "top-10" national rankings of MBA entrepreneurship programs. US News & World Report just announced its 2010 rankings, with the Berkeley entrepreneurship program ranked 7th, same as the school's overall ranking. In the Financial Times, the Berkeley entrepreneurship program ranked 5th, with the school's overall rank was pegged at number 30. In 2008, our program was ranked #3 by The Wall Street Journal, and in the top 5 by BusinessWeek.

Recent news coverage of our successful entrepreneurs includes a signal honor: Danae Ringelmann, MBA 08 and co-founder of IndieGoGo, was named among the Most Influential Women in Technology by Fast Company magazine. For more, see our feature story in this issue.

Revolution Foods, co-founded by Kirsten Tobey and Kristen Richmond-Groos, both MBA 06, and 2007 grand prize winner of the Global Social Venture Competition, was recently featured in a Time magazine story titled "The War Over America's Lunch." The mission of Revolution Foods is as simple as it is essential: “Building healthy bodies and minds, one healthy meal at a time.” They built a key partnership with Whole Foods, who believed in their mission of getting as much fresh, healthy food as they could to as many students as possible. From their original launch in three schools three years ago, their venture now serves over 100 education programs nationwide. The article suggests that Revolution Foods' healthy school lunches are part of a solution to the childhood obesity epidemic, and illustrates their success in serving healthy foods even on the small per-meal budgets that schools can afford.

Launchpad continues to grow and evolve as fast as its environment, developing and embracing new approaches, like "lean startups": the application of lean thinking to the process of innovation in startup companies. Steve Blank, long-time lecturer at the Lester Center, and Eric Ries, author of the blog Lessons Learned, were recently featured in a New York Times article titled "The Rise of the Fleet-Footed Start-Up." Instead of investing millions of dollars and years of time into fixed product concepts, lean startup methodology tests new ideas early and cheaply, with early and frequent customer feedback. Technology animates the lean start-up process: free open-source programming tools and easily distributed Web-based software drive down the cost of developing new products and services. The early companies embracing the principles live largely on the Web, which makes it possible to measure and track customer behavior constantly and to invite suggestions and criticism.

Launchpad will also serve the new strategic plan for the Haas School of Business, including Berkeley Innovative Leader Development (BILD), an enhancement to the MBA curriculum developing critical skill sets required of the innovative leader. Our flagship Entrepreneurship course is one of the team-based experiential learning options, allowing students to practice their innovative leader skills in teams addressing the business challenges of real clients.

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Danae Ringelmann, MBA 08, Named Among Most Influential Women in Technology

Recent news coverage of our successful entrepreneurs includes a signal honor: Danae Ringelmann, MBA 08 and co-founder of IndieGoGo, was named among the Most Influential Women in Technology by Fast Company magazine. Ringelmann, 32, was one of only eight women identified by Fast Company in the category of "The Entrepreneurs." The honor comes just more than a week after IndieGoGo was nominated for “best community site” for the 14th Annual Webby Awards. IndieGoGo is a crowd funding platform for all creative, cause, and entrepreneurial projects, from games and books to iPhone apps and charities. Anyone with an idea can raise money, offer perks and keep 100% ownership of their project. Since its launch, IndieGoGo has helped thousands of projects raise money across 114 countries. IndieGoGo honed their business model, website design and functionality and customer development while a resident of the Lester Center’s Berkeley Entrepreneurship Laboratory.

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