Rice University Business Plan Competition Awards $800,000 in Cash and Prizes.
Three teams win more than $125,000 at World’s Richest and Largest Business Plan Competition.
HOUSTON – April 19, 2009 – The 2009 Rice Business Plan Competition (RBPC) awarded more than $800,000 in cash and prizes at an awards banquet on Saturday, April 18. More than 700 people attended the banquet that marked the conclusion of the three-day RBPC. The world’s richest and largest business plan competition in the world brought 42 teams from across the globe to pitch their new technology business plans to more than 200 judges who themselves are successful venture capital investors, entrepreneurs, and business leaders.
FORTUNE Small Business co-sponsored the competition again this year and will feature the winners, teams and competition in the June 2009 issue of the magazine and on CNNMoney.com.
Thirty-six of the teams competed in four categories: life sciences, information technology, energy/clean technology, and sustainability. Winners of each group competed for the $325,000 grand prize. In all, $170,000 in additional investment and cash prizes were added this year, including three, $20,000 Earth/Space Engineering Innovation awards sponsored by NASA Johnson Space Center 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. SolarCycle of Brown University took home the prize. SolarCycle developed an innovative reflective material from recycling waste material that we will use to make solar cookers and water pasteurization systems for developing countries.
The competition’s Grand Prize was valued at over $325,000 and included a $225,000 equity investment, $20,000 cash and over $80,000 of business services including office space, marketing support, and business mentoring. Dynamics of Carnegie Mellon University won the Grand Prize and also won the Best I.T. Award sponsored by Gimmal Group. Dynamics produces next-generation interactive payment cards that utilize programmable magnetic stripes to communicate dynamic information to the 60 million 1970s era magnetic stripe readers that are used in our day to day payment card transactions.
The event, hosted by the Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship and Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Management at Rice University, marked the ninth installment of the RBPC.
The Grand Prize includes:
• $125,000 Investment Prize from The GOOSE Society of Texas TM, (the “Grand Order of Successful Entrepreneurs”) comprised of Bob Brockman, Rod Canion, Nancy Chang, M.D., Arthur A. Ciocca, Terry M. Giles, Jack M. Gill, PhD, Michael Holthouse, and Leo Linbeck, III.
• $100,000 Technology Award from Opportunity HoustonSM and Greater Houston Partnership
• $20,000 grand prize cash award provided by Kenda Capital and Shell
• Marketing and design services provided by BrandExtract and The Padgett Group
• Office space and facility services provided by the Houston Technology Center and 1-Service
• Treasury services provided by Bank of America
• Business mentoring provided by the Silver Fox Advisors
• Two Roundtrip airline tickets on Continental Airlines
• The development of a company Web site and hosting services for one year provided by ContentActive
• MS Office and Windows Server software package provided by Microsoft
• Business Plan Pro Premier software provided by Palo Alto Software
• Opportunity to give Venture Pitch to the Houston Angel Network
• Automatic entry into the 2008 MOOT CORP competition
• A feature story in FORTUNE Small Business
• Opportunity to ring the closing bell at the NASDAQ Stock Market in New York
All forty-two teams that took part in this year’s RBPC received cash prizes. Other top winners included:
NextRay from The University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill won the $100,000 Life Science Prize from Opportunity HoustonSM and Great Houston Partnership awarded. NextRay is developing a new medical imaging technology (DEI), which produces more detailed images than current x-ray absorption techniques with less than 1% of the radiation dosage. NextRay also won the NASA Earth/Space Engineering Innovation Award for $20,000, the $15,000 second place overall award sponsored by Finger Interests, the Palo Alto Best Written Business Pan Award, the Sante’ Ventures Best Medical Device Award and the Essex Woodlands Health Ventures Best Life Science Award prize for a total of $142,500.
Tendix Development from Johns Hopkins University won the $100,000 DJF Mercury Tech Transfer Investment Prize. Tendix has developed a unique internal combustion engine (ICE) expected to double the efficiency of current ICEs – reducing both fuel costs and greenhouse emissions. Tendix’s IP can also be used in pumps and compressors. It has received design awards from both NASA and ConocoPhillips. Tendix also won the third place overall award sponsored by Administaff, the $20,000 Dow Sustainability award and third place in the Austin Ventures elevator pitch contest. In total, Tendix took home $128,250.
The $20,000 NASA Earth/Life Science Innovation Award went to Integrated Diagnostics of The University of California – Berkeley. Integrated Diagnostics has applied digital integrated circuit technology to life sciences and encapsulated a clinical assay in the palm of the hand. Initially, this patent-pending platform technology will be aimed at Point-of-care HIV diagnosis, with more applications in the pipeline.
Integrated Diagnostics also won fourth place overall for a total cash prize of $25,000.
The other two NASA Earth/Space Engineering awards went to Troy Research from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and E&M Devices from The University of California – Berkeley. Troy Research has developed disruptive technology for compact, energy-efficient deep-UV LEDs that are eco-friendly replacements for mercury-vapor lamps, and enable new applications in healthcare, purification, homeland security, and manufacturing. TRC’s technology lowers cost, increases life, and is 10x more efficient. E&M Devices Developed the first commercially viable energy harvesting technology to power sensors without batteries by harnessing vibrations for use in automotive sensors, industrial automation, and HVAC systems. E&M Devices was one of four winners at the 2008 UC Berkeley venture lab competition.
The 2nd Place Sustainability Award was awarded to Ikanos Power, University of Michigan. This $5,000 cash award from HFBE Investment Bank was presented to Ikanos Power for developing a disruptive fuel reforming technology that enables the conversion of a wide variety of fuels for use in a fuel cell to produce electricity. Ikanos' end product, a generator, is 30-3,000% more efficient than current alternatives. Ikanos also won 3rd Place in the Wildcard Round sponsored by Murphree Venture Partners, for a total cash prize of $6,000.
Audiallo from The University of Michigan won 5th place overall for $4,000 cash. Audiallo's mission is to improve the lives of the hearing impaired through biologically-inspired smart engineering of audio-processing integrated circuits. Our wave signal processor technology vastly improves the performance of hearing aids and extends battery life while dramatically decreasing costs. They also won the IP Powerhouse Award from Fish & Richardson worth $15,000 for a total prize of $19,000.
The 6th Place Team was 80Legs from Rice University. The home team advanced to the finals for the first time and won $3,000 cash. 80legs concept: The Internet has trillions of pages of content. A lot of companies want to analyze that content to create interesting services, but they have to spend a lot of money and time to do so. 80legs dramatically reduces the costs and challenges of analyzing web-wide content by providing a cheap, easy platform for web-scale analysis.
The 7th place team came the farthest distance to compete, EzyTEX, is from Thammasat University in Thailand. EzyTEX produces the first non ammonia-based rubber additive which is utilized in natural rubber production to maintain elasticity. This patented technology eliminates several hazardous compounds while extending the life of natural latex rubber, at lower processing cost. Rubber market is 10 million metric tons. EzyTEX also won the International Team Award sponsored by BBVA Compass Bank and the Houston Business Journal/ContentActive Sales and Marketing Award for a total of $8,000.
Other prize winners include:
The $2,500 Best Nanotechnology Business Plan Award sponsored by Pearland Economic Development Corporation awarded to High Definition Glass from M.I.T.
The $2,500 Herrera Partners Hispanic Team Award went to PowerMundo from Colorado State University.
Winners in the Austin Ventures Elevator Pitch competition were:
5st Place: Si Metal – Purdue University
4th Place: Silicon Solar Solutions – University of Arkansas
3rd Place: Tendix Development – Johns Hopkins University
2nd Place: PowerMundo – Colorado State University
1st Place: ElutInc – University of Utah
In addition to the cash awards, the second through seventh place teams received in-kind prizes including: software from Microsoft, Palo Alto Software and Sage Software; and, for the second and third place teams, business mentoring from Silver Fox Advisors.
The $25,000 Microgravity Award sponsored by the Robert A and Virginia Heinlein Prize Trust was presented to The University of Texas Health Science Center - Houston (UTHSC-H). The team included Dr. Mauro Ferrari, Professor and Director of the Division of Nanomedicine, Deputy Chairman, UTHSC-H. This was a separate competition which selected three university research teams as finalists to present their proposals to a separate set of judges on Friday.
Brad Burke, Managing Director, Rice Alliance said, “Through the mentoring and networking available at the RBPC, nearly 70% of last year’s competitors have gone on to successfully launch their companies, raise funding, and build their businesses. We look forward to watching the future successes of this year’s crop of competitors.”
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.
Media Contact:
Mary Lynn Fernau
Rice Alliance for
Technology & Entrepreneurship
713-348-5374
mlfernau@rice.edu
