Announcing the Winners of the     

13th Annual
UC Berkeley Business Plan Competition!

presented at the
Berkeley Entrepreneurs Forum
Thursday, April 28, 2011 

INTIMAL SOLUTIONS Takes Grand Prize
at the 13th Annual
UC Berkeley Business Plan Competition

April 29, 2011
Berkeley, California

The 13th Annual UC Berkeley Business Plan Competition Finals, hosted by the Lester Center for Entrepreneurship, took place last night in front of a standing room only crowd in the Andersen Auditorium at the Haas School of Business. The 300+ attendees watched the eight finalist teams compete for $50,000 in prizes. The audience selected the People’s Choice Award which carried a $5,000 cash prize. The $1,000 one-minute Elevator Pitch Award, now in its second year, allowed the audience to choose their favorite pitch from the twenty-seven semi-finalists who did not advance to the final round.

The Grand Prize winner, Intimal Solutions, originated in an interdisciplinary entrepreneurial program called the Stanford Biodesign Fellowship in which professionals with business, engineering, clinical, and scientific backgrounds are grouped together for a 10-month process to discover and solve un-met clinical needs. Before settling on a project, the team spent two-months “living” in hospitals and wound care clinics, and talking to patients, nurses and doctors to insure that the chosen project would address a true clinical need. It was a sizable group of miserable patients suffering from painful ulcers due to venous insufficiency of the deep leg veins that caught the team’s attention.

"This is a record year for the Competition with over 200 teams participating in four tracks -- IT and Web, Life Sciences, Products & Services and Energy & Cleantech. It is tremendous to see such high-quality ventures and diverse teams. There are deep collaborations here between students, faculty and alumni at the Haas School of Business, College of Engineering, School of Information, College of Letters and Science, UCSF, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and more. Entrepreneurship is cross-disciplinary and the student organizers have worked very hard to bring the best together from across our campuses,” said Lester Center Executive Director, Andre Marquis.

Lester Center executive director Andre Marquis gives the thumbs up	Bplan chairs Brandon Piper & Jonathan Stull kick off the proceedings	Judge and sponsor Kevin Warnock chats with Kelly Karns, 2009 bplan winner

Last night’s event was the culmination of a week of activities including semi-finalist team presentations to panels of venture capital judges who judged the plans in an all-day event and selected the eight finalist teams from the four Competition tracks. Those eight teams then presented in private later in the week to another panel of venture capital judges from firms including Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers, the Mayfield Fund and Claremont Creek Ventures, who selected the winners from each track, as well as the Grand Prize Winner. Last night’s public presentation featured the unveiling of the winners and the announcement of the People’s Choice and the Elevator Pitch Awards. Video of the event will be available in approximately two weeks on the April Berkeley Entrepreneurs Forum web page.

“It was an inspirational night for innovation at UC Berkeley. We heard such a range of amazing concepts from printable batteries to software-as-a-service in sub-Saharan Africa to body armor for athletes to something as simple as a better way to find parking," said Brandon Piper & Jonathan Stull, 2011 Bplan Co-Chairs. "It’s clear that the entrepreneurial spirit at the University is quite strong. Congratulations and good luck to Grand Prize Winner Intimal Solutions and to all of the 201 other teams that participated in the Competition this year.”

Grand Prize Winner

Intimal Solutions

Intimal Solutions is developing a catheter-based technology to treat the valvular pathophysiology of chronic deep venous insufficiency, a disease that causes painful ulcers. Currently, the standard of care is strictly palliative (compression therapy and wound care), which costs the US health care system roughly $12,000 per ulcer and $1.4B annually. Intimal Solutions’ therapeutic technology has the potential to be the standard of care for this patient population in desperate need of a better solution.

Fletcher Wilson, Project Architect / Technical Lead
Fletcher has a Biomechanical Engineering Master’s degree from Stanford and has worked at both Boston Scientific and J&J. His prior entrepreneurial experience includes being the technical lead at a medical device start-up and completion of the Stanford Biodesign Fellowship.

Huzefa Neemuchwala, Business Development
Huzefa is an MBA candidate at UC Berkeley – Haas. He has 12 years of scientific and upstream marketing experience. Huzefa has a PhD in Biomedical Engineering.

James Yu, MD, Clinical Lead
James has a B.S. in bioengineering and is currently completing his surgical residency at Stanford. He has been working in various roles in the medical device industry for the past 10 years. He has patient interactions that are applicable to this project, and has completed the Stanford Biodesign Fellowship.

First Place Track Winners

IT & Web Track (sponsored by DCM):

Kopo Kopo

Mobile phones are more accessible in emerging markets than clean water or electricity. With mobile money services like M-Pesa in Kenya becoming more prominent by the day, it’s now possible to extend robust financial services to the poor via simple text messages. To do so, however, institutions that serve the poor need an affordable way to integrate with mobile money systems. Our mission is to make that integration as simple and accessible as possible.  

Dylan Higgins, Chairman & CEO
Dylan has over 10 years experience in technology management. In his seven years at Accenture, he worked for high-tech clients including Microsoft, AT&T, and Qpass. Dylan is the former CEO and co-founder of SaveTogether (now operated by CFED), which has been featured in the Washington Post, Slate the Seattle Times. He is a recipient of the Seattle University Red-Winged Leadership Award and was a recognized innovator at the innovation@CFED summit. He received his J.D. and B.A. with Honors in International Studies and Economics at the University of Washington.

Ben Lyon, Co-Founder & Vice President of Business Development
Ben is founder of FrontlineSMS:Credit and co-founder of Kopo Kopo. Ben has extensive
experience in Sub-Saharan Africa and is a respected thought leader in mobile money. He is an Unreasonable Institute Fellow, Ashoka/Staples Youth Social Enterprise Award Winner and 2010 PopTech Fellow. He received a B.A. in Economics & International Studies from Rhodes College.

Tom Bostelmann, Co-Founder & CTO
Tom is an innovative technologist with over 15 years of software development experience. He cofounded SaveTogether and has served as Director of Product Development for FrontlineSMS:Credit, Lead Developer for the Grameen Foundation Microfinance Open Source (Mifos) project and for the mobile bill payment processor Qpass (Acquired: AMDOCS).

Zach Friedman, Business Development Associate – East Africa
Zach is an MBA student at the Haas School of Business with extensive experience in East Africa. A former Strategy Consultant at Deloitte, Zach spent the last three years founding Tomorrow’s Leaders, a nonprofit that provides wide-scale entrepreneurship training for Kenyan youth. Zach graduated Summa Cum Laude from Washington University in St. Louis with a B.A. in Economics.

Life Sciences Track:

Intimal Solutions

Energy and Cleantech Track:

Imprint Energy

Imprint Energy is a UC Berkeley spin-out that aims to enable new forms of high performance energy storage using conventional printing equipment. Imprint Energy’s battery is the first entirely printed rechargeable battery and offers the highest energy density at the lowest cost of any thin-format battery technology. Imprint Energy’s proprietary electrochemical inks and novel manufacturing approach enable batteries that are thin, flexible, lightweight, and require minimal packaging. With these batteries, Imprint Energy can revolutionize the flexible media (including flexible displays and circuits, smart cards, e-clothing and e-packaging) and flexible solar markets.

Brooks Kincaid, Head of Business
Brooks Kincaid is a second year MBA candidate at the Haas School of Business and holds a BS in Management Science and Engineering from Stanford University.
Previously, Brooks served as Corporate Strategy intern for LightSail Energy, a Khosla Ventures compressed air energy storage startup, and completed a comprehensive assessment of grid-scale energy market storage opportunities.

Dr. Christine C. Ho, Head of Technology
Dr. Ho holds a B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. in Mateirals Science and Engineering from UC Berkeley. She was the lead inventor of the battery chemistry and printing process leveraged by Imprint Energy during her Ph.D. She has had extensive experience working with battery chemistries (from lithium to zinc) and has built batteries in a variety of form factors (from coin cells to then film to 3D micro-batteries).

Products and Services Track:

Axis

Axis is a sports safety equipment corporation that has developed a proprietary spinal safety vest that protects the spine of participants in high risk sports. Our innovative vest addresses the shortfalls of the current market, namely comprehensive spinal safety, blunt force trauma prevention, and flexibility for the wearer. Axis vests are made with intelligent polymer gels, which move freely with the body as it moves, but upon impact instantaneously lock together to absorb shock.

Amanda Vinson, JD, MBA
Amanda Vinson is an MBA candidate at the Haas School of Business. Prior to Haas she was a Corporate and Venture Capital attorney at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati where she worked with pre-IPO tech companies. Amanda is a lifelong equestrian, Western Coach of the Stanford Equestrian team and holds five world championship equestrian titles. Amanda received her J.D. Order of the Coif from the USC and received her BA with Highest Honors from Stanford.

Cindy Lin, MD
Cindy Lin is Chief Resident of Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation at Stanford Hospital. Cindy has conducted research on spinal cord injury in sports. Cindy is also an avid equestrian and competed for the Stanford Equestrian Team during college. She received her MD from Harvard and a BA in Human Biology with Highest Honors from Stanford.<

Manoj Duggirala
Manoj Duggirala is a materials science engineer with a background in mechanical engineering and medical devices. He graduated from Stanford University in 2008 with a master’s degree in materials science and engineering. Manoj has worked at various companies including IBM ARC, Intrapace, Biomimedica and TLI and authored patents for devices such as a shoulder joint prosthetic device and a pressure ulcer prevention device.

John Norris
John Norris graduated from Stanford University in 2008 with a degree in Biomechanical Engineering. While at Stanford, he focused heavily on human performance and medical device coursework and projects, and is a sports/health/fitness fan. As a student he designed several medical and sports devices of his own, including creating his own sports equipment.

People's Choice Award Winner

Imprint Energy

Elevator Pitch Award Winner

Inserogen

Inserogen is a biotech company that aims to commercialize SwiftVax, a technology that enables the use of non-transgenic tobacco plants as protein biofactories. This proprietary technology platform is a disruptive innovation that can revolutionize biomanufacturing. Our capabilities of high-volume, cost-efficient, and accelerated manufacturing would enable the production of live saving vaccines in response to outbreaks, such as the H1N1 pandemic. The SwiftVax manufacturing platform can be customized for production of any high-value recombinant protein, and it would enable new markets in both developed and developing countries.

Lucas E. Arzola
University of California, Davis: Ph.D., Chemical Engineering with a Designated Emphasis in Biotechnology Expected graduation date: June 2012
M.S. in Chemical Engineering

Pankaj Sahai-Hernández
University of California, San Francisco
Biomedical Sciences Graduate Program

Ying Ng
University of California, Davis
Candidate for Bachelors of Science in Managerial Economics

Gabriel Paulino, PhD
Regulatory Affairs and Business Development Analyst, PIPRA – Davis, CA

Acknowledgements

The UC Berkeley Business Plan Competition appreciates the generous support of its sponsors:

Thanks to our 2011 Final Round Judges:

Carl Amdahl, DCM
Jed Katz, Javelin Venture Partners
Todd Kimmel, Mayfield Fund
Brian Monahan, IPG Media Lab - Universal McCann
Bob Pavey, Morgenthaler Ventures
Brook Porter, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers
Jim Smith, Mohr Davidow Ventures
John Steuart, Claremont Creek Ventures

Finally, thanks to the many semi-final round judges, executive summary round judges, mentors, workshop presenters, executive committee members, organizers, and other supporters who are too numerous to list. For a full list of these contributors, we invite you to view the Finals program book.