News & Features for 2008

The Lester Center celebrated Global Entrepreneurship Week, November 15-23, with the 4th annual Intel+UC Berkeley Technology Entrepreneurship Challenge, and other events.
The UC Berkeley Business Plan and Global Social Venture Competition held their Annual Mixer, November 24, 2008, from 6-8 PM in the BofA Forum.
The special edition of the Berkeley Entrepreneurs Forum, November 20, on the 4th Annual Intel+UC Berkeley Technology Entrepreneurship Challenge was covered by Andy Ross in the San Francisco Chronicle.
Jerry Engel, executive director of the Lester Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, spoke on "Sustaining innovation and entrepreneurship in difficult times" at the Future of Europe Summit in Andorra on November 28, 2008.
Life360, a startup company created by Chris Hulls, BS 06, and located in the Lester Center's Berkeley Entrepreneurship laboratory, has won a $275,000 Google software challenge award for a mobile application that will help families stay connected during emergencies.
The special edition of the Berkeley Entrepreneurs Forum, October 23, on The Current Economic Turmoil and the Entrepreneur: the Impact on New Venture Financing and Survival was covered by Andy Ross in the San Francisco Chronicle.
Jerry Engel, executive director of the Lester Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, was quoted about the impact of the financial crisis on Silicon Valley in an October 1 Les Echos article titled "La crise rattrape la Silicon Valley."
http://www.lesechos.fr/info/finance/4780426-la-crise-rattrape-la-silicon-valley.htm (registration required)
The startup venture of Haas graduates Priya Haji and Siddharth Sanghvi, MBA '03, World of Good, made a big splash in fall 2008 with news of their partnership with EBay, including coverage by the Newshour with Jim Lehrer on PBS and CNBC, and also by CBS News and Oakland Magazine. Worldofgood.ebay.com is the world's first online marketplace to convene thousands of People Positive and Eco Positive sellers and products all in one place. Grand Prize Winners of the 2005 Global Social Venture Competition, Priya and Siddharth crafted their business plan in the Berkeley Entrepreneurs Laboratory, a business incubator for start-ups created by current Haas School students and recent graduates.
One of the Lester Center's partner schools, the Technische Universität Munich, is collaborating on an International Summer School focused on Entrepreneurial Impact. More information.
Student Fall 2008 Student Leadership Opportunities
The Lester Center maintains a list of available student leadership opportunities. More information.

A plan to make clean energy affordable around the world to poor, rural households without access to electricity won the grand prize at the 2008 Global Social Venture Competition April 18 at the Haas School. The winning team, MicroEnergy Credits Corporation (MECC) from Columbia Business School in New York, received the $25,000 cash prize. This year's Global Social Venture Competition celebrated the preliminary round entry of a record 245 teams from 23 countries, up from 160 teams last year. See the full story here.
Berkeley's Venture Capital Investment Competition (VCIC) team won the Entrepreneurs' Choice award in the Western Regional Competition on March 7, 2008 at USC. The Haas team, called San Andreas Capital, consisted of Kevin Kopczynski, Michael Pearce, Tony Mak, and Kaiann Drance, all MBA 08; and Kaan Ersun, MBA 09. The team also placed third in the competition.

Undergraduate Entrepreneur wins Google Software Challenge

A startup company created by Chris Hulls, BS 06, has won a $275,000 Google software challenge award for a mobile application that will help families stay connected during emergencies.

Life360 is one of ten first-place winners in Google's $10 million Android Developer Challenge, created to encourage third parties to build applications for the search giant's new smart-phone platform. Life360's application solves the problem of voice channels becoming overloaded during earthquakes and other disasters by transferring voice information to data channels.

Hulls' idea for the company grew out of the widespread chaos that followed Hurricane Katrina. He first wrote his business plan for a web-based system to allow families to prepare for emergencies -- both big and small -- during a Haas entrepreneurship class. Hulls then developed the idea at the Lester Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation's Berkeley Entrepreneurship Laboratory, a business incubator for startups created by Haas students and recent graduates. The program, which is run by David Charron, a lecturer in entrepreneurship at Haas, allows eight to 10 start-ups to headquarter in Haas itself and tap into the resources of the campus.

"What it did for Chris (Hull) and Life360 was it gave them a home where they could get access to the resources of the university, and that is really the students and the collective resources of the institution," Charron said. "It's really been a big help for us," Hull said. "They've really been pushing this whole entrepreneurship program."

Life360 now has seven full-time employees, including Chief Technology Officer Dilpreet Singh, MBA 09, a student in the Evening & Weekend MBA Program. Hulls hopes to launch the company in early 2009. He says Google award will help convince potential investors that the company technically viable.

For more information on the company, see http://www.life360.com.

WorldofGood.com To Sell Goods Produced With Social And Environmental Goals In Mind

The startup venture of Haas graduates Priya Haji and Siddharth Sanghvi, MBA '03, World of Good, made a big splash with news of their partnership with EBay, including coverage by the Newshour with Jim Lehrer on PBS and CNBC, and also by CBS News and Oakland Magazine. Worldofgood.ebay.com is the world's first online marketplace to convene thousands of People Positive and Eco Positive sellers and products all in one place. Grand Prize Winners of the 2005 Global Social Venture Competition, Priya and Siddharth crafted their business plan in the Berkeley Entrepreneurs Laboratory, a business incubator for start-ups created by current Haas School students and recent graduates.

Detailed coverage from CBS News:

(AP) Most consumers probably associate eBay Inc. more with vintage lunch boxes and low-priced electronics than with laptop bags made from recycled plastic by women in New Delhi.

The online auction operator is trying to change that perception with WorldofGood.com, a Web site due to launch Wednesday to sell goods produced with social and environmental goals in mind.

EBay developed the site with World of Good Inc., a startup focused on "ethical supply chains" behind consumer products, and licensed the group's name for the marketplace. World of Good will get a share of the revenue from the site, which had been operating for the past six months as an online community focused on the social impact of business.

The site will sell fixed-price goods that purportedly have some positive effect on people and the planet. The goal is to help consumers align their social values with their shopping decisions, WorldofGood.com general manager Robert Chatwani said.

Shoppers will be able to search for products by certain social or environmental categories, revealing, for example, a photo of the man who produced the fair-trade coffee you're interested in buying, details of its origins and whether some of the proceeds support a charitable cause.

Independent third-party organizations like Rainforest Alliance and Co-op America will screen sellers and verify the items listed on the site.

"We really want consumers to drill down into the detail of what's behind that product," Chatwani said.

Already the market for products that emphasize social and environmental awareness is growing. Chatwani cited the Natural Marketing Institute's estimate that the U.S. market for such goods was $209 billion in 2005, and the group projects that will rise to $420 billion in 2010.

And while there are plenty of places to buy such items already, eBay and its 84.5 million active users might dramatically increase awareness for artisans. WorldofGood.com items will also be cross-listed on eBay proper, blended into standard search results.

The arrangement drew praise from Roberto Milk, chief executive of Novica, which works with artisans around the world to sell their home decor items on eBay. The National Geographic Society owns a stake in the company.

Novica has sold things on eBay since 1999, but given the enormous nature of the site, "nobody knows we're on eBay," he said. This could change with additional sales on WorldofGood.com, where Novica will sell items it has either bought or taken on consignment.

"All our artisans really need is exposure," he said.

As on eBay, sellers on Worldofgood.ebay.com will pay fees to list items and give eBay a commission on successful sales. All transactions will be made through eBay's electronic payment system, PayPal. At launch, the site will have several hundred sellers, including many merchants who are also current eBay sellers.

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