Fitzgerald Institute Entrepreneurship students compete in nationwide business plan competition

SPIRIT OF ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND ENTERPRISE DEVELOPMENT COLLEGIATE BUSINESS PLAN COMPETITION

National Press Release

Santa Barbara, CA ( March 9, 2005 ) – TechKnowledge Point Corporation is proud to announce the results of the 2 nd Annual Spirit of Entrepreneurship and Enterprise Development (S.E.E.D.) Collegiate Business Plan Competition. This year’s first place award went to uShip, Inc., a business conceived and launched by three MBA students from the University of Texas at Austin. The second place venture was TeleEMGCorporation from Boston University, and Autonomx, LLC from the University of Arizona took third place.

The event took place Monday and Tuesday, March 7-8, at Fess Parker’s Doubletree Resort on world-famous East Beach in Santa Barbara . Forty-five business plans from undergraduate and graduate student ventures were submitted in December 2004 and screened to a second-round pool of 17 firms. After additional screening, 8 national semifinalists were invited to attend and make presentations to a prestigious panel of venture capitalists, angel investors, investment bankers, corporate CFO’s, and successful entrepreneurs. Other student ventures included: Observer Systems (Univ. of Florida), PaletteView (Westmont College), XGem Microgenerators (Univ. of Akron) DataStream (Washington State), and SiMan Systems (Univ. of San Francisco).

The opening luncheon on Monday featured a keynote address from Ed Lee, founder of Wahoos Fish Tacos, which now boasts over $45 million in sales and over 40 locations throughout California and the west. The afternoon saw semifinal presentations in three separate pools, and the “Final-4” teams were announced at a networking mixer that evening (Texas, Boston, Arizona, and Florida). The final presentations covered all Tuesday morning, and the awards were announced at a closing luncheon, after a keynote address from David Cremin, Managing Director of DFJ-Frontier, an early-stage private venture capital fund on California ’s Central Tech-Coast.

SEED boasts some of the most experienced panel of judges in the country, including this year’s team of:

David Cremin (DFJ-Frontier)
Eli Eisenberg (Founder, StraightLine Management)
Barry Fay (President, Aquaflo)
David Goldmuntz (former Mg. Dir. UBS-London)
Dick Hale (Founder, Hale-Estrada)
Susan Block (Founder, Block-Bowman & Assoc.)
Sam Renwick (Mg. Dir. SLR Capital)
Kevin Mills (Founder, Allume)
John Wigle (Chairman, AGIA, Inc.)
Christi Sulzbach (Partner, Allen & Kimball, LLP)
Jeff Edwards (Founder, TEG, Inc.)
Mark Palmer (President, InRoads Technology)

Award winners received offers for direct seed-capital equity investments into their ventures, and introductions to additional potential funding from several angel investors and VC funds. At last year’s inaugural SEED competition, the winners were Univ. of Georgia – 1st, Univ. of Florida – 2nd, and Univ. of Iowa – 3rd, and also included venture teams from Univ. of Colorado, Columbia (NY), Univ. of Arizona, Louisville, and Wake Forest.

The vision of SEED is to put top collegiate entrepreneurship business plans in front of a world-class panel of evaluators, create high-level dialogue about all aspects of venture feasibility and long-term viability, and reward the best teams with access to seed capital and introductions to private, early-stage investors. This year’s financial sponsors included: TechKnowledge Point, J. Slevcove & Associates, AGIA and Insurance-Central.com, Tynan Group, Caliber Advisors, SLR Capital, The Westmont Board of Advisors, Vision Launchers, and Strathmore Advisors.

The competition was launched by Dr. David Newton, founder and President of TechKnowledge Point Corporation, the world’s first and only online, 24-7, entrepreneurship research and referral exchange (www.TechKnowledgePoint.com). Dr. Newton is also Professor of Entrepreneurial Finance, and founder (since 1990) of the entrepreneurship program at Westmont College in Santa Barbara (a highly-selective “national” liberal arts college, as ranked by the Carnegie Foundation and US-News). TechKnowledge Point also operates EntrePoint.com – “The Doorway to Collegiate Entrepreneurship” (www.EntrePoint.com) which categorizes and ranks over 425 collegiate entrepreneurship programs nationwide, and publishes the Top-100 programs every year in the April edition of Entrepreneur magazine (the 2005 listing is the 3 rd annual).

Back to News