World’s Richest and Largest Business Plan Competition

Teams Announced for 2009 Rice Business Plan Competition

Forty-two teams selected to compete in the world’s richest and largest business plan competition.

HOUSTON – March XX, 2009 – The Rice Business Plan Competition would like to congratulate the 42 teams selected for the 2009 competition. Nearly 340 entries, a 45% increase from 2008, were submitted from around the globe. Teams were chosen based on their executive summaries to compete in the April 16-18 event.

Thirty-six of the teams will contend in four categories: life sciences, information technology, energy, and sustainability. Winners of each grouping will go on to compete for the grand prize which is valued up to $325,000. In all, $170,000 in additional investment and cash prizes were added this year, including three, new $20,000 Earth/Space Engineering Innovation awards sponsored by NASA and one $100,000 tech transfer investment prize offered by DFJ Mercury, an early-stage venture capital firm.

The supplemental six teams were added this year to compete in the area of Social Entrepreneurship with the introduction of the $10,000 cash Sheafor-Lindsay Social Venture Award. The purpose of this award is to encourage business leaders to develop enterprises which contribute to the social good and positively impact society. All 42 teams will compete in the elevator pitch competition and each will take home a prize and receive valuable feedback from more than 200 judges, who themselves are successful venture capital investors, entrepreneurs, and business leaders.

Past competitors have a track record of success:  84 past competitors have successfully launched their business after competing at Rice, raising more than $145 million in early stage funding.  Some of the many promising teams in 2009 include:

  
• Improved x-ray imaging technology using less than 1% of the current radiation dose
  
• Treatment for blindness using advanced contact lens design vs. cornea transplant
  
• Hybrid battery technology that s 67% cheaper and 3x longer life
  
• Next gen solar cells which generate 27% more energy with a 30-year life
  
• New oil & gas well pumping technology to increase production by 36%

Five international teams will be represented this year, hailing from the United Kingdom, Canada, India, and Thailand.

2009 Rice Business Plan Competition Teams                                                                                                                                                                              

College	Company name	Category
Babson College	Perfuzia Medical, Inc.	Life Science
Brown University	Solar Cycle	Social Venture
Carnegie Mellon University	Dynamics	IT
Colorado State	PowerMundo	Social Venture
Cornell University	Bombyx Technologies	Life Science
Dartmouth	MPedigree Logistics	Social Venture
Harvard	iShoe	Life Science
Illinois Institute of Technology	eMotion	IT
India SP Jain (India)	Green Oil	Social Venture
Iowa State U of Science & Technology	Avello Bioenergy, Inc.	Sustainability
John Hopkins	Tendix Development, LLC	Sustainability
John Hopkins	Hydrangle Systems	Life Science
MIT	Simprint Nanotech	IT
MIT	High Definition Glass	Energy
North Dakota	Machine Visionaries	IT
Purdue University	Si Metal	Energy
Queen's University (Canada)	Epitherapeutics	Life Science
Rensselaer Polytechnic Insitute	Troy Research Corporation	Sustainability
Rensselaer Polytechnic Insitute	intellidemia	IT
Rice University	80legs	IT
Southern Methodist University	Skillman Downstroke	Energy
Southern Methodist University	Enterprise Theory	IT
Stanford University	Miret Surgical	Life Science
Stanford University	Econetix	IT
Thammasat University (Thailand)	EzyTex - Naked Tech	Energy
UC Berkeley	Integrated Diagnosis	Life Science
UC Berkeley	E&M Devices	Sustainability
UC San Francisco	Nano Precision Medical	Life Science
UNC ChapelHill	NextRay	Life Science
University Arkansas	Silicon Solar Solutions	Energy
University Cambridge (UK)	Inderm	Social Venture
University Chicago	In Context Solutions	IT
University Chicago	CaptainU, LLC	IT
University Michigan	Audiallo	Life Science
University Michigan	Ikanos Power	Sustainability
University South Florida	BNL Largo	IT
Univeristy of Texas- Dallas	PassPro-tech	IT
University Utah	Elutlnc	Life Science
University Virginia	Clean India	Sustainability
University Virginia	TeleMed Africa	Social Venture
University Washington	Impel Neuro Pharma	Life Science
University Waterloo (Canada)	Nalion Technologies	Energy

The three-day competition, hosted by the Rice Alliance for Technology & Entrepreneurship along with the Jones Graduate School of Management, Rice University, sustained tremendous growth this year, increasing prizes to $800,000 from $675,000 last year. The Rice Business Plan Competition will again be featured in FORTUNE Small Business and on CNNMoney.com, and the winning team will ring the closing bell at NASDAQ OMX on June 19, 2009.

THE COMPETITION

The Rice University Business Plan Competition is the world’s largest and richest graduate-level business plan competition. It is hosted and organized by the Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship which is Rice University's flagship initiative devoted to the support of entrepreneurship.

This is the ninth year for the competition. In that time, it has grown from nine teams competing for $10,000 in prize money in 2001, to 42 teams from around the world competing for more than $800,000 in cash and prizes.

In 2009, applications increased nearly 40% from the previous year.  More than 100 corporate and private sponsors support the business plan competition. Venture capitalists and other investors from around the country volunteer their time to judge the competition, with more than half of the 200+ judges coming from the investment sector. More than 80 past competitors have gone on to successfully launch their business and are still in business today, raising in excess of $145 million in funding. At least, twenty-five of the 36 teams who competed in 2008 are currently in business.

The competition is designed to give collegiate entrepreneurs a real-world experience to fine tune their business plans and elevator pitches to be able to generate funding to successfully commercialize their product. Judges will evaluate the teams as real-world entrepreneurs soliciting start-up funds from early stage investors and venture capital firms. The judges are asked to rank the presentations based on which company they would most likely invest.

“Great ideas are just that - great,” said Brad Burke, managing director of the Rice Alliance. “But, taking that novel idea ensuring it holds a competitive advantage in the market, conducting market research and identifying opportunities, demonstrating management capability, financial understanding and investment potential are what develop that great idea into a venture and hopefully a financially successful business.”

THE PRIZES

The Grand Prize winner of the business plan competition will receive a package valued at up to $325,000 in total prizes, including a $125,000 equity investment from The Goose Society of Texas, potentially one of two new $100,000 prizes given by the Greater Houston Partnership’s  Opportunity Houston^SM, $20,000 in cash sponsored by Shell and Kenda Capital, as well as $80,000 in incubation and other services.

The first of the $100,000 Opportunity Houston^SM prizes will be awarded to the company with the best life science technology business plan. The second $100,000 prize will go to the team with the top business plan in one of the following four industry sectors: energy and clean technology, information technology, aerospace, or nanotechnology. These awards will provide seed funding to launch these companies in the Houston region.

The new $100,000 DFJ Mercury Tech Transfer Investment Prize is looking for unique and marketable university spin-out technologies. The purpose of the award is to encourage the commercialization of university technologies, or those technologies developed by faculty, researchers, and/or students at universities. To be considered a university spin-out, the business plan can be based on a start-up company that licenses technology from a single or multiple universities, and/or a company led by a student team from a university.

Five other teams will receive $20,000 cash awards. The $20,000 Dow Sustainability Award is given to the best plan to address world challenges for affordable housing, food, clean water, health & safety, and alternative/sustainable energy. The $20,000 NASA Earth/Space Life Science Award and the three, $20,000 NASA Earth/Space Engineering Award acknowledges the best life science plan or engineering plan, respectively, with applications in earth and space. Winners will be announced at the Awards Banquet on Saturday night, April 18, 2009 at the Westin Galleria.

About the Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship
The Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship is Rice University's flagship initiative devoted to the support of entrepreneurship. The Rice Alliance's mission is to provide entrepreneurship education and to support the commercialization of technology innovations and the creation of new companies in the Texas and Houston region. Since its inception in 1999, the Rice Alliance has assisted in the launch of more than 230 new technology companies, which have raised more than half a billion dollars in early stage funding.  Of these, approximately 30 companies have been launched based on technology developed by Rice faculty and researchers and licensed from the Rice Office of Technology Transfer.

Unique among many entrepreneurship centers, the Rice Alliance was formed as a strategic alliance of three schools at Rice University: the George R. Brown School of Engineering, the Wiess School of Natural Sciences and the Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Management.

In 2009, the Rice Alliance was named the Outstanding Specialty Entrepreneurship Program for technology entrepreneurship in the U.S. by the United States Association for Small Business and Entrepreneurship and Houston’s Greatest Economic Development Ally by the Greater Houston Partnership.

In 2008 and 2007, Rice University was recognized as having one of the top 25 graduate entrepreneurship programs in the U.S. by The Princeton Review and Entrepreneur magazine (No. 16 in 2008). In 2007, the Rice Alliance was recognized as the No. 1 university entrepreneurship center in the U.S. for enterprise creation by the Global Consortium of Entrepreneurship Centers.