Business Plans once more

Today is the third and final day of the Rice Business Plan Competition. Today I was a judge for the Challenge Round. In this round, you take teams that won neither first or second place in their flights (First place teams go onto the finals, the second place teams go onto the wild card round. The winner of the wild card round then goes onto the finals. Last year's wild card winner won the competition, and $100,000). In the Challenge round, the teams have 25 minutes to present, but the judges are encouraged (nay, required!) to interrupt and ask questions. It was as fun as it sounds. (in the other rounds, you can't ask questions until after the teams present)

There were four teams and four judges today. One of the judges was a doctor (a retired MD) one was a VC, and I am not sure what the other did. We had four teams – TWO Tuberculosis diagnostics tools (one for the developed world looking for latent TB, one for the developing world looking for pulmonary TB. One aimed at NGO, one aimed at the rich. Interesting segmentation) One of the other teams was going to install LED streetlights - turnkey – for municipalities, and the final team had anti-counterfeiting nanotechnology stamps that allowed verification three ways – UV Light, Small Magnets, and a specialized reader.

All the teams did pretty well on their feet, but they all wanted to reply on their presentation. That was a universal flaw.

We are now dressed up and about to go to the awards presentation.

If you want to listen to any or all of the Elevator Pitches, click here. A local radio program (run by a friend) recorded all the talks. Here is an interesting show he taped a while back)