Brown University Entrepreneurship Program

Sharing and Inspiring Entrepreneurial Stories since 1997!

Date: Saturday, November 19th

Time: 11:30 AM – 4:30 PM
Location: Brown Faculty Club (right next to Keeney) **note the change in venue**
Address: One Magee St, Providence, RI

Hear from renowned entrepreneurs and discover your own entrepreneurial spirit!              (To view the full schedule, click on the eventbrite link below)

 This event is free and open to the public, with a suggested donation
for attending alumni/community members. Please RSVP by visiting http://eprogram.eventbrite.com/

Social Kickoff Event

(FREE KABOB N CURRY)

Monday November 7th,  7-8pm (CIT Atrium)                                                                                                              

Think you have a startup idea for the next big thing? Then come to the CS-EP Social Kickoff to find out how you can get involved with the Brown entrepreneurial community.

While you’re at it, cross paths with some new people you might potentially want on your team (potential co-founder?), and engage with Brown alums Charlie Kroll (CEO of Andera; Venture for America Board Member) and Andres Douglas ’09 (CEO of Bakodo) as they speak of their experiences about starting a business. CS Professor Shriram Krishnamurthi will also provide his wisdom and inspiration in the start-up community.

Afterwards, take the challenge: what’s the worst startup idea you can think of? We’re talking ideas you wouldn’t consider prototyping in a million years. Bring a friend, come enjoy free tasty Kabob n Curry and hear people pitch their horrendous ideas.

Congratulations to the winners of the 2011 Elevator Pitch Competition! All the finalists did an amazing job, and we wish them the best of luck in their future endeavors.

1st Place: Cancer Creating Champions (Sidney Kushner)                                                                                                                                                             2nd Place: Munch Card (Ben Vishny)                                                                                                                                                                                   3rd Place: Sparketplace (Isaac Goldberg)

Thank you to all who participated! We look forward to hearing more about your ventures as they develop!

Students are given 60 seconds to pitch their business idea. The idea can be related to a non‐profit or for‐profit venture. In the past, elevator pitches have ranged from topics that include developing innovative software, providing cleaner-burning cooking stoves to rural villages in Peru, and creating a school fund for children in Africa. There will be two tracks for the E-Pitch Competition: Idea Stage Ventures and Developing Ventures to make sure teams at all stages of business development have the chance to win seed-funding.

 All participants must fill out this form by Thursday (10/6/11)

https://docs.google.com/a/brown.edu/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dEYtN1F1VnpGOXdpa0NpZ2QtRm9vOHc6MQ

We congratulate the winners of the 2011 EP Startup Competition on all of their accomplishments – we wish them the best of luck in realizing their dreams and changing the world with their incredible projects:

Grand Prize Winner
Rip van Wafels

First Runner-Up
The School Fund

Second Runner-Up
WaterWalla

We would also like to congratulate finalists PriWater and Privicare, the winner and runner-up of the 2011 RI Business Plan Competition Student Track!

RI Business Plan Competition Winners Announced

We are proud to announce the judges of this year’s EP Startup Competition, who will bring an incredible depth of experience and expertise to the table in judging the competition finalists on Saturday.

William J. Allen

Throughout a career of over 35 years, Bill Allen has been an innovative and strategic leader in the philanthropic and non-profit sectors.

Bill has a Master of Social Planning (M.S.P.) from Boston College Graduate School of Social Work. As Executive Vice President of Community Services (1977 to 2004) at the United Way of Rhode Island, he led a community building operation focused on systems change and achieving results. He built a team that has leveraged funds with individual and corporate donors, local and national foundations and government to achieve maximum impact in affordable housing, community development, family support, workforce development and out of school time activities. He served as Interim President of United Way of RI in 1996. He was one of three individuals who led a coalition which designed and successfully lobbied for Rhode Island’s welfare reform legislation.

Bill was elected to the Cumberland School Committee in 1986 and chair of the Committee in 1988. He has been president and a member of the boards of Lincoln School and the Cumberland Library. He now serves on the boards of Butler Hospital, Amos House, Children’s Friend and Providence Singers. He is the immediate past chair of the board of RI Kids Count and current chair of Clean Power Now. He is also an associate partner at Social Venture Partners Rhode Island.

He has held senior management positions with United Ways in Broome County, New York and Portland, Maine. He began his career as a caseworker for the Boston Welfare Department and has managed a Neighborhood Employment Center for Boston’s anti-poverty program. Currently he is on the part-time faculty at Brown University’s Taubman Center for Public Policy, Boston College Graduate School of Social Work and Providence College.

Richard Katzman

 Richard Katzman was Chairman & CEO of Kaz, Incorporated, a global consumer appliance company, until its recent sale in December 2010. Under his leadership, the company grew from $4 Million in annual sales to $500 Million by expanding its product offerings and international distribution, and pioneering brand extension licensing with the global power brands Vicks, Honeywell, and Braun. Mr. Katzman’s family has a tradition of entrepreneurship. His grandfather invented the electric vaporizer and founded Kaz in 1926, his father had a successful career as a professional cartoonist while also leading the company, and his brother founded the Princeton Review and 2tor.com.  Mr. Katzman graduated with an A.B. from Brown. He is a board member of the Princeton Review.

Erik Simon

Erik Simon is Director of Marketing and Communications for Dun and Bradstreet Credibility Corp., the leading provider of credit building and credibility solutions for businesses.  Erik is responsible for all public communications, offline marketing and is heavily involved in business development deals as well.  Prior to Dun and Bradstreet Credibility Corp., Erik was involved in advertising and business development activities for j2 Global Communications, a publicly traded company with customers in 45 countries around the world.  One of Erik’s key responsibilities at j2 Global was managing all business development, sales and marketing for eFax Free, the largest free online telco service in US. Prior to j2 Global Communications, Erik was involved in 2 start-ups focused on online video,  VideoBanner.com, one of the first companies focused on online video advertising, and Vosaic, a company founded to commercialize video technologies developed by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champagne, the same University that developed the Web’s first browser.  Erik was also one of the founding manager’s of Steven Spielberg’s Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation, where he helped launch the largest archive of video testimonies ever created. Erik is a graduate of Boston University and a former speechwriter for two Boston Mayors, Raymond L. Flynn and Thomas Menino.

Allan Tear

Allan is a founder and managing partner of Betaspring. Allan has founded three venture-funded startups: Elastic Networks, Incanta, and WhyData. He has raised over $15M from angels, venture capital, and strategic partners, including Slater Fund, Intel Capital and AT&T. He is an expert in new product and service launches.

Allan is co-founder of Hackable City and Mashable City, open-source projects that facilitate social capital in our urban environments and communities through better information, transparency, and citizen engagement. He advises students and schools on entrepreneurship through the Brown COE program, MET School, and the Carnegie Mellon Dean’s Leadership Council. He was selected in 2008 for the Providence Business News “40 Under Forty” list. Allan is a graduate of Carnegie Mellon University, with B.S. degrees in Electrical & Computer Engineering, and Public Policy.

We are pleased to announce that eight finalists will take the stage during EP Forum on Saturday, April 30 to compete for over $50,o00 worth of cash and in-kind services.

The teams that have qualified for
the final round are listed below: 

Axena Technologies
Cancer Creating Champions
MainGreen.tv
Privicare
PriWater
Rip van Wafels
The School Fund
WaterWalla

We hope that you come out to support these ventures!  We will be conducting an audience vote after the presentations (from 3-4 PM in Smith-Buonanno Hall room 106), which will account for 10% of the total score. See you there!

We cordially invite you to attend the 14th Annual
Entrepreneurship Program Forum!

Date: Saturday, April 30, 2011
Time: 2:00 – 6:00 PM
Location: Brown University Smith Buonanno Hall (Pembroke Quad)
Address: 95 Cushing Street (East of Brown St.)

To register, please visit: http://epforum2011.eventbrite.com/
This event is free and open to the public, with a suggested donation
for attending alumni/community members.

Schedule of Events

2:00 – 3:00

Panel Discussion: Providence’s Particular Brand of Entrepreneurship

a discussion about the unique entrepreneurial environment that exists in providence in which local entrepreneurs will share their insight and experience as members of providence’s community of entrepreneurs

Panelists:

Angus Davis – Founder and CEO, Swipely
Hyun Kim – Founder and CEO, Mama Kim’s Korean BBQ
Julie Sygiel – Co-Founder and CEO, Sexy Period
Jack Templin – Founder and CEO, Lockify; Founder and Partner, Betaspring

3:00 – 4:00

Final Round of the 2011 EP Startup Competition

the finalists of the startup competition will each have 5 minutes to give their pitches to ep forum audience members, who will then vote on what they believe to be the best venture (this will account for 10% of the final score)

4:00 – 5:00 

Panel Discussion: The Entrepreneurial Process

a discussion centered around the processes behind entrepreneurship and the qualities of an entrepreneur – specifically, this panel will examine social and commercial entrepreneurship side-by-side in an effort to shed light on what the two often-divided spheres of venture creation share

Panelists:

Mike Baker – President and CEO, DataXu
Steve Glenn – Founder and CEO, LivingHomes LLC
Steven Wallace – Founder and President, Omanhene Cocoa Bean Company
Bert Crenca – Founder and Artistic Director, AS220

5:00 

Announcement of the 2011 EP Startup Competition Winners

5:00 – 6:00

Keynote Lecture
Kent Swig, CEO and Founder of Swig Equities

Hope to see you there!
http://epforum2011.eventbrite.com/ 

After much deliberation with our advisory board, we have decided to for the first time expand our annual event into a startup competition.

This means that we will expand the range of what we accept as entries into the competition to include anything through which you can convince the judges that you satisfy the criteria we have detailed below. Possibilities for acceptable entries include, but are not limited to:

- complete business plans are of course still acceptable
- prototype demonstration videos
- pitch videos with an attached executive summary
- project presentation in powerpoint form

Please submit your entries to ep@brown.edu by 11:59 PM on April 19, 2011.  Feel free to contact us at that address with any questions or concerns you might have.

We invite you to submit your business plans to the 2011 EP Business Plan Competition!

In the spirit of Brown entrepreneurship (and to maximize the use of our limited resources), this year both social and commercial ventures will be judged side by side, according to the same criteria.

The deadline for submissions is 11:59 PM on April 19, 2011

Please send your business plans in .pdf format to ep@brown.edu

The final round of the competition will take place on the morning of April 30, 2011.  All final round contestants will then have the opportunity to pitch their ventures at our 14^th annual EP Forum, and the results will be announced at the conclusion of the event that afternoon.

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Format

1. Both commercial and social ventures will be judged according to the same criteria, posted below
2. A panel of qualified judges will review all first round submissions electronically. Their scores will be used to determine the finalists who will go on to compete at the live, final round event
3. Six to eight finalists will be selected from the first-round submissions
4. A different group of judges will read, hear, and rate the finalists’ plans and oral presentations the day of the final round.
5. 10% of final round scoring will be determined by audience vote after all teams have presented at the final round. Once the audience vote has been tallied, it will be combined with the judges’ scoring before assigning prizes and winners.

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Eligibility

To compete in the Brown Entrepreneurship Program’s Business Plan Competition, each entrant must meet the following criteria:

Team

• All teams must have at least one, currently enrolled, Brown student (may be an undergraduate, graduate, or medical student)

• No participant in the competition may join more than one team

Business Plan

• All information provided must be true and accurate to the knowledge of the entrant
• No submission may violate intellectual property rights
• Participants may not contact any judge of the business plan competition between the first-round submission deadline and the end of the final round of the competition.

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Judging Criteria

Potential Scope / Impact (50%)

What is the magnitude of the problem that the venture addresses,
and how well does the solution match the scope of the problem?

1. Opportunity  (5.0 pts)

• Scope of the problem – how compelling is the need being addressed?
• Size of the addressable market (scale of the social problem)
• Uniqueness and viability of the proposed solution

2. Market Knowledge (5.0 pts)

• Evidence of research into the need – includes data to support the case for the need, data to support adoption)
• Demonstrated knowledge of target market
• Extensive research and  understanding of the competition

3. Concept Development (5.0 pts)

• Feasibility of the solution
• Viability of the business model proposed to deliver the solution
• Scalability in terms of the potential for growth or replication of the venture

Success Potential (50%)

Given the team’s business plan and presentation, how likely is the venture to succeed?

4. Viability and Sustainability  (5.0 pts)

• Overall likelihood of achieving demonstrable results
• The potential for the venture to receive financial support from additional investors/donors (including opportunities for funding from foundations, social venture funds, angel investors and venture capitalists)
• In the case financial descriptions (pro forma financials or cash flow analysis) are provided, the financials are realistic and well grounded in the need and market analysis, as well as adoption research

5. Management Team / Presentation (5.0 pts)

• Strength of the venture’s management team, including the team’s depth of knowledge, network and experience
• Polished presentation that displays the team’s preparation
• Demonstrated leadership ability and cohesiveness of team

6. Dedication and Vision (5.0 pts)

• Commitment of the team to continue work on the venture and realize its goals
• Passion for entrepreneurship and commitment to Brown’s entrepreneurial community – has the team participated in EP/SII activities, peer critique?
• Evidence of previous work and commitment to the project (in terms of support network, fundraising, development)

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Sponsors

We would like to thank our sponsors and donors for their contributions of cash prizes and in-kind services to the competition. Without them this competition and the support it provides for student entrepreneurs would not be possible.

A special thank you to our corporate sponsor, Dun & Bradstreet Credibility Corp.  Please click on the logo below to learn more about their product offerings.