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3/20/2009 CONTACT: David Ruth Teams announced for 2009 Rice Business Plan Competition Forty-two teams have been selected for the 2009 Rice Business Plan Competition at Rice University. Nearly 340 entries -- a 45 percent increase from 2008 -- were submitted from around the globe. Teams were chosen on the basis of 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 category will compete for a grand prize of up to $325,000. A total of $170,000 in additional investment and cash prizes was 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 other six teams will to compete in the area of social entrepreneurship, a new category this year. They will vie for the $10,000 Sheafor-Lindsay Social Venture Award. This cash award aims to encourage business leaders to develop enterprises that have a positive impact on society. All 42 teams will compete in the elevator-pitch competition. 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 have successfully launched their businesses after competing at Rice and raised more than $145 million in early stage funding. Some of the many promising team business plans this year include: • Improved X-ray imaging technology using less than 1 percent of the current radiation dose Five international teams will participate this year. They come from the United Kingdom, Canada, India and Thailand. For a list of teams, visit: http://www.alliance.rice.edu/alliance/RBPC.asp?SnID=1445834007 The three-day competition is hosted by the Rice Alliance for Technology & Entrepreneurship along with Rice University’s Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Management. Prizes this year increased 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 June 19. 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 percent 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-plus judges coming from the investment sector. More than 80 past competitors have gone on to successfully launch their businesses and are still in business today. They raised more than $145 million in funding. At least 25 of the 36 teams that competed in 2008 are currently in business. The competition is designed to give collegiate entrepreneurs real-world experience to fine-tune their business plans and elevator pitches to be able to generate funding to successfully commercialize their products. Judges will evaluate the teams as real-world entrepreneurs soliciting startup funds from early stage investors and venture capital firms. The judges rank the presentations based on which company they would most likely invest in. "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, we hope, a financially successful business." The prizes The grand prize winner of the business plan competition will receive a package worth up to $325,000, 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, $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 prizes will be awarded to the team 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 industry sectors: energy and clean technology, information technology, aerospace and nanotechnology. These awards will provide seed funding to launch these companies in the Houston area. The new $100,000 DFJ Mercury Tech Transfer Investment Prize will be awarded to teams with unique and marketable university spin-out technologies. The purpose of the award is to encourage the commercialization of university technologies or 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 startup company that licenses technology from at least one university and/or a company led by a student team from a university. Five other teams will receive $20,000 awards. The $20,000 Dow Sustainability Award is given to the best plan to address world challenges for affordable housing, food, clean water, health and safety, and alternative/sustainable energy. The $20,000 NASA Earth/Space Life Science Award and the three $20,000 NASA Earth/Space Engineering awards acknowledge the best life-science plan or engineering plan, respectively, with applications on Earth and in space. Winners will be announced at the awards banquet April 18 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. |
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