While Tony Brown initially set out to aid the failing journalism industry with his NearBuy iPhone application for classified ads, his product may have a greater impact on the failing real estate market.

Last week, a panel of industry experts selected him and teammates Zenhua Ma, Dan Wang and Peng Zhuang as winners of the Reynolds Journalism Institute Student iPhone Competition hosted by the University of Missouri. The team created an application that syncs real estate classifieds pulled from Google Base and Craigslist to a Google Map based on the iPhone user’s location. The application also allows users to post pictures of the surrounding neighborhood via Flickr and even communicate with the Twitter community for reviews of the property itself.

Outfitted by the school with $3,000 and new iPhones with AT&T service contracts, the team competed against three other teams for eight months to create the most innovative, media-oriented application. “I can’t say that I’m an expert in anything related to real estate," Tony acknowledges, but believes his efforts to modernize the traditional classified ad may help save the tanking industry. Continue Reading...

With nearly 4,300 colleges and universities in the United States, SlouchBack looks to provide comfort for dorm rooms across the country.

"Why Sit Up Straight When You Can SlouchBack?"

Andrew Goetting, Roger Williams University 2008 graduate and founder of SlouchBack, lives off of drive, perpetual optimism and a healthy obsession with comfort.

During his freshman year at Roger Williams, Andrew came to a stunning revelation: college dorm rooms are small.  With little seating area beside a typical dorm bed, students are forced to cram on the same furniture where they sleep just to hang out. 

Andrew explains that "many of the students don't realize how much time they will be spending in their dorm room, which can make such cramped quarters uncomfortable."Continue Reading...

It's college graduation season.

Eric Schmidt, Google's chairman and CEO, gave the keynote speech at Carnegie Mellon University's commencement ceremony on Sunday, May 17. Here's the official video, including these words of wisdom at the 8:01 mark: "You cannot plan innovation. You cannot plan invention. All you can do is try very hard to be at the right place and be ready."

Not many college-based business plan competitions can claim they've given birth to over 120 companies that have cummulatively attracted hundreds of millions of dollars in venture capital, have had market caps in the billions, have been acquired by such leading companies as Cisco, MTV, and 3M or have gone public on their own like Akamai, net.Genesis, and C-Bridge Internet Solutions.

Although the finalists at this year’s MIT $100K Entrepreneurship Competition all come from different competition "tracks,” they share one common theme: logical innovation.

The business ideas that are cultivated at MIT are drastically different from the types of "Web 2.0" start-ups you'll read about on most blogs. The types of concepts that are brainstormed, studied, researched, prototyped, developed, and launched through MIT’s annual business plan competition tackle real-world problems with incremental technological innovation that provide solutions, such as preventing blindness and capturing energy from shocks in automobiles.

I like to describe these solutions as "logically innovative" because they mix current technologies with ideas that are feasible and don't require the adoption of too many technologies or too far advanced technologies. In other words, they're inventions that leverage existing technologies to provide a magnitude of value greater than what currently exists without over reaching their bounds.

A large part of this equation is studying and tackling one very specific problem.

Competition winners are chosen based on the feasibility of the new solutions, size of the market opportunity, value proposition, and whether or not people are actually willing to pay for their products.

This year’s top concept is rather simple.Continue Reading...

Business plan competitions are quickly becoming marquee events at universities as they help discover, fund and bring compelling technologies to market. UC Berkeley's 11th annual competition at the Haas School of Business has helped launch companies who've raised a cumulative $165 million in venture capital. While many have been acquired for several million, some have much larger exits, such as Timber Technologies that sold for $138 million to Tokyo Electron Limited. They placed second in 1999. Here's a look a look at the the top three companies that placed this year.

AutoTB, the winner of this year's Berkeley Business Plan Competition, aims to tackle an epidemic that affects one third of the world's population infected with tuberculosis. The start-up that originated from Cambridge University in England won an additional $25,000 for their device that is designed to improve diagnostics by automating sputum microscopy. The goal is to decrease analysis time, increase sensitivity and reduce human error present in current procedures. Not only is it a worthy cause, but they have the potential to capture a significant portion of the $1 billion dollar market for tuberculosis diagnosis.

Business plan competitions like the one at Berkeley not only attract some of today's top MBA and PhD students, but also draw venture capitalists from highly esteemed firms, such as O'Reilly AlphaTech Ventures, Hummer Winblad Venture Partners and BlueRun Ventures that served as the competition's final round judges. This year, the competition attracted 100 executive summary applications and 40 venture capitalists who donated their time to judge the event.

Prize money totaled $45,000 and uncovered two other healthcare start-ups.

Novophage took second place for their "advanced biological solution to treat antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections in a clinical setting." When used in conjunction with antibiotic therapy, the Boston-area MBA students' solution was able to increase the survival rate of mice with septic infection from 20-80%. They're calling their solution the "next generation of antimicrobials."

The Berkeley Business Plan Competition isn't Novaphage's first contest. The MIT, Harvard and Boston University-born company recently placed second at the University of Nebraska's business plan competition (March 29, 2009), were among three finalists at Boston University's competition (April 7, 2009) and grabbed first place at the University of South Florida International Business Plan Competition (March 5, 2009) and the top prize at the 26th annual Global Moot Corp Competition at the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin (May 9, 2009).

The Moot Corp Competition prides itself as the largest and oldest new venture competition in the world and is often referred to as the "Super Bowl of world business plan competitions." Novophage's prize at Moot Corp totaled $135,000 including $25,000 cash and an Austin Technology Incubator Launch Package worth $25,000.

While AutoTB is tackling tuberculosis and Novaphage fights infections, Berkley-based Integrated Diagnostics is taking on another global epidemic, HIV, which 33 million people lived with in 2007.

Integrated Diagnostics took third place for $5,000 at Berkeley with an additional $5,000 for the People's Choice Award for "developing a novel, easy-to-use, patent-pending, point-of-care device for early stage, accurate HIV detection." Like AutoTB and Novaphage, they aim to increase accuracy, while decreasing the cost of expensive laboratory costs.

Ready to compete?

For good advice on writing an effective business plan, Sequoia Capital has a business plan outline that addresses key points you want to consider.

Related links:

• Berkeley Business Plan Competition
• AutoTB
• Novophage
• Austin Technology Incubator Launch Package

"Worrying is destructive. Worrying slows you down. Worrying makes it harder for you to achieve any attainable goals."

-- An unnamed fellow entrepreneur

Recently, an enthusiastic entrepreneur approached me at a networking event to mention that's he's working on a "tremendous" new start-up.  He was hoping that I might have a few relevant connections to offer. 

Awesome.

Excited to hear about his deal, I pushed for the details.   Unfortunately, he informed me that he cannot disclose anything in too much detail because his start-up is still in stealth mode.  In fact, if I really would like to know more, he notified me that he'd be open to grabbing coffee the following week, at which time I could sign a non-disclosure agreement. 

I smiled politely, wished him the best of luck, and moved on to a different conversation.

Pulling simply from the nature of our discussion that day, it's possible I will never know just how tremendous his idea is.  Mr. Stealth Mode's unwillingness to establish an open dialogue is just one more reason why his idea may never turn into anything of real value.

It seems like nearly every first-time entrepreneur is obsessed with the concept of stealth mode.  This turns out be a stage that most entrepreneurs would rather forget; one defined by too much theory, too much wasted time, and not enough tangible progress.

So, ditch your stealth mode. Here's why.

Top Five Reasons Why Stealth Mode Is Worthless

1. Your initial idea probably sucks.  You're assuming a lot by believing others will actually steal it. As entrepreneurs, we like to think that we can solve almost any problem in the world.  Well, it turns out most others don't think quite as highly of our brain diarrhea as we do. And that's for one good reason: most ideas suck. 

The only way to figure out whether or not an idea has any real merit is to actually start getting feedback from someone besides your mom.

2. You have more problems to worry about than whether or not someone will steal your idea. The chances of failure from something other than a stolen idea are high.  There are countless reasons why you're going to fail: your timing is going to be off; you're going to build the wrong product; you're not going to raise enough capital or generate adequate revenue to keep the lights on; you're not going to assemble the right core team; you're going to lose motivation; etc. (See Eric Karjaluoto's "Why your web startup will fail")

3. You're going to turn people off and therefore miss out on great networking and investment opportunities. Investors won't sign NDAs (VC Brad Feld explains why here).  Most experienced entrepreneurs won't either. Building a strong network is critical to your success and being in stealth mode only inhibits your ability to build out your network.  Bottom line: Don't give influencers in your market a reason to avoid learning and talking about your start-up.

4. You'll miss out on valuable feedback. Feedback from customers, entrepreneurs, investors, etc. will make your product and company exponentially better.  Similar to point number three, putting up barriers to constructive feedback only worsens your odds of success.

5. You'll waste valuable resources simply protecting an idea. Time is money.  If you're worrying about protecting your idea, then you're not 100% focused on actually proving out your idea. Ideas alone don't result in liquidity events. The quicker you validate your concept, the better.

Whoa, You're Actually Building Value!

When you finally begin an open dialogue about your efforts, you're forced to focus 100% of your energy on learning, iterating, and building actual value.  At this very point of open communication, real progress begins occurring.  Notably, others begin offering meaningful introductions, customers start telling you what they want, and your product begins taking meaningful shape.

So if you're working on a deal in stealth mode, do yourself a favor and purge that toxic philosophy from your vocabulary.

This post is re-published from Fund My Startup and written by Gabe Lozano who is the co-founder and CEO of LockerDome.

This past weekend Novophage took first place and bagged $135,000 at the University of Texas at Austin's annual Moot Corp Competition. The prize money breaks out like this:

1. $25,000 in cash;
2. the Austin Technology Incubator Launch Package worth $25,000, featuring a one-year membership, which includes strategic business consulting services and mentoring from a team of industry experts, office space, and access to discounted legal, accounting and businesses services from top-tier providers;
3. consulting with the UT's McCombs School of Business entrepreneurship faculty worth $25,000;
4. a full page ad in Inc. magazine worth $60,000.

Novophage has developed patent-pending bacteriophages (viruses that infect and destroy bacteria) that will increase the efficacy of antibiotic treatment and extend the lifetime of antibiotics. The phages attack bacteria, significantly delaying the onset of antibiotic resistance. The phages are designed to complement existing antibiotic treatment of infections.

According to the company, they have observed 30,000-time increases in bactericide (the killing of bacteria) of antibiotics, when combined with Novophage-engineered phages against various types of bacteria, which are obstacles in antibiotic treatment. The company also boasts an increase in the survival rate of E. coli-infected mice from 20% to 80%, when phages are used in conjunction with traditional antibiotic therapy.

Novophage is comprised of a stellar team of PhD, MD and MBA candidates at top universities in the Boston area, including MIT, Harvard and Boston University.

Related links:

• Novophage
• Moot Corp Competition

Below is the transcription of the Ultra Light Startup's panel discussion on crowdsourcing business models that took place on Boston on May 4th. The panelists included:

Jay Batson - Co-founder of Acquia, a start-up commercializing open source Drupal .

Peter LaMotte - Marketing Director of GeniusRocket , a start-up crowdsourcing marketing and advertising content.

Doron Reuveni - Co-founder of uTest , a start-up crowdsourcing software testing.

John B. Rogers - Co-founder of Local Motors , a start-up crowdsourcing automotive design.

Moderator:

How can start-ups and companies of all sizes bring crowdsourcing into their business?Continue Reading...

The Kauffman Foundation produces some of the most interesting surveys on entrepreneurial activity and the role that entrepreneurs play in economies. Their recent study shows that entrepreneurship remained strong in 2008. In fact the entrepreneurial activity rate slight increased from .30% of adults starting businesses each month in 2007 to .32% on average in 2008. This is important because it shows (along with historical trends) that entrepreneurial activity is generally insensitive to economic downturns.

In one of our recent polls, 57% of respondents indicated that they would start a company in an economic downturn. Another 40% said that they're already working on a startup. Although, this data is skewed since it depicts our audience of predominantly entrepreneurs, it does stay consistent showing that entrepreneurs in general are not deterred by the state of the economy.

In another poll, we asked if the Obama Administration will be good for entrepreneurs. 47% said yes, but 30% said no. This combined with the previous poll may suggest that expectations for Presidential policy won't deter entrepreneurs either - different policies just make it harder or easier.

One of my favorite Kauffman studies shows the impact of MIT trained entrepreneurs, who produce over $2 trillion in annual revenues. Below are some of the key findings of the current study:

The oldest age group—ages 55 to 64—experienced a big increase in business-creation rates from 2007 to 2008 and, as a result, has the highest level of business creation (0.36 percent).

The activity rate increased sharply for immigrants in 2008—from 0.46 percent in 2007 to 0.53 percent in 2008—further widening the gap between immigrant and native-born rates.  Although the increase in entrepreneurship rates among immigrants was driven entirely by low- and medium-income-potential types of businesses, immigrants also are more likely than U.S. natives to start high-income-potential types of businesses.

Latinos' entrepreneurial activity rate increased from 0.40 percent in 2007 to 0.48 percent in 2008, continuing an upward trend that began in 2005. Over the thirteen years of the study, Latinos have had the highest percentage increase in entrepreneurial activity (from 0.33 percent in 1996 to 0.48 percent in 2008).

Asian-Americans' entrepreneurial activity also increased sharply, from 0.29 percent in 2007 to 0.35 percent in 2008. Non-Latino white business-creation rates increased slightly, while African-American rates slightly declined.

Entrepreneurial activity increased from 2007 rates for both men and women (from 0.41 percent to 0.42 percent for men and from 0.20 percent to 0.24 percent for women).

With the exception of the Midwest, all regions saw increased entrepreneurial activity from 2007 to 2008.

The states with the highest 2008 entrepreneurial activity rates were Georgia, New Mexico, Montana, Arizona, Alaska and California.

The states with the lowest entrepreneurial activity rates were Pennsylvania, Missouri, Wisconsin, West Virginia, Iowa and Ohio.

Among the United States' fifteen largest metropolitan statistical areas, Atlanta had the highest entrepreneurial rate (0.74 percent) in 2008. Philadelphia had the lowest rate (0.16 percent).