THE ENTREPRENEURSHIP CLUB PRESENTS
8TH ANNUAL
TIGERLAUNCH
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY’S
BUSINESS PLAN CONTEST
FEBRUARY 23RD , 2008
www.princeton.edu/eclub
tigerlaunch.blogspot.com
ABOUT TIGERLAUNCH
Now in its eighth year, TigerLaunch provides an integrative learning experience from which students gain practical experience. The competition focuses on the formulation and writing of a plan for launching a new business venture combined with the oral presentation of the plan. Today’s final event includes invaluable feedback from a panel of judges made up of entrepreneurs, investors and venture capitalists.
Earlier today, eight teams of Princeton University students competed in a preliminary round to determine the finalists.
The nine judges chose the five finalists based on their written business plans as well as on their oral presentations. This afternoon, you will hear from each of the five finalists as they compete for a total of $10,000 in cash prizes. The first place team will also receive complementary legal services, courtesy of Cathyrn Mitchell at Fox Rothschild, LLC.
ABOUT THE PRINCETON ENTREPRENEURSHIP CLUB …
Founded in the fall of 1998, the Princeton Entrepreneurship Club aims to foster an entrepreneurial spirit at Princeton University. Its activities include a speaker series featuring innovators, investors, and entrepreneurs, recruiting efforts for entrepreneurial enterprises, and the Annual Business Plan Contest.
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The Princeton Entrepreneurship Club wishes to acknowledge the efforts of Howard Cox '64 to promote entrepreneurship at Princeton University as he generously donates the prize money for the Contest.
We would also like to thank the USG Projects Board and the CIEE for their financial support, Bob Monsour, our advisor, for his guidance, the U-Store for its generous gift donations, and the judges for their time and advice. In addition, we extend our gratitude to Cathryn Mitchell at Fox Rotschild for donating her legal services.
The contest is also supported by the Princeton Entrepreneurs' Network, a not-for-profit organization devoted to facilitating the founding, funding, and servicing of rapid-growth companies, primarily – but not necessarily – involving Princeton alumni/ae. For more information, visit www.PrincetonEN.org.
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If you have any questions about the contest or would like to be involved with the contest next year, please contact the
Contest Directors, Selcuk Arkun,
at (609) 651-7988 or darkun@princeton.edu, or Sar Medoff, at (336) 253-4730 or smedoff@princeton.edu.
Essential to the contest was the assistance provided by Entrepreneurship Club President Joe Perla ’09, and TigerLaunch team members Ashley Kerr ’10, Franco Lopez ’11, and Okan Okutgen ’11.
PROGRAM
9:30 – 10:00AM Registration and briefing.
10:00 – 11:00AM Elevator speeches. Each team introduces themselves to the judges with a four-minute presentation.
11:15 – 11:45AM Breakout Sessions – Teams
11:50 – 12:20PM meet with 2-3 judges for 30 minutes in an office setting. Teams deliver a presentation, respond to questions and receive feedback
12:30 – 2:00PM Lunch and judges select five finalists.
2:30 – 4:15PM Final presentations. Each finalist will present for 20 minutes, including time for questions by the nine judges.
4:30PM Trophies and prizes are awarded. The contest will award a total of $10,000 ($5,000 to 1st place, $3,000 to 2nd, $2,000 to 3rd place).
4:30 – 5:30PM Entrepreneurship Club hosts a mini-reception for interested community members, contestants and judges in the Whig Senate Chamber.
PLANS AND TEAMS
BRIGHTBOX LEARNING - Nearly 3 million children suffer from a learning disability and receive special education in school according to the U.S. Department of Education. BrightBox Learning connects families and children with LDs to a full-service, feedback-oriented website that manages all aspects of learning disability intervention and treatment through an array of focused products, forums, feedback, expert opinion and interaction.
Team: Melissa ‘Bethani’ Massey ’10, Jennifer Howard ’09, Tiffany Ko ’09, Emily Miller ‘09
Natural Learning aims to change the way students learn math and science. By harnessing the power of technology, Natural Learning will create a new method of teaching that is both more effective and more efficient. It will be a program that teaches "dynamically," examining the user with each click and question answered to individually tailor the product to him or her.
Team: Amit Mukherjee ‘10
Princeton Biomedical Inc. is a rising integrated medical device company specifically involved in orthopedic implants. The company will be involved in the manufacturing, marketing, and development of surgical implants. The value proposition is based on its innovative technology that has shown a 4-fold increase in tissue-implant integration rates in preclinical studies. Every year, an estimated 1.2 million Americans will have a fracture that could benefit form some form of orthopedic implants, yielding an estimated 3.5 million orthopedic implant each year. This is in addition to the rising use of implanted corrective orthopedic devices such as spinal correction. Within its first year of operation, Princeton Biomedical plans to manufacture and sell multiple sizes of orthopedic screws, pins, rods, wires, and nails.
Team: Christian Thériault (Masters)
SCVNGR is an interactive texting scavenger hunt that uses proprietary cellular technology to send out clues and receive responses via SMS. SCVNGR hunts will be designed for major tourist destinations such as Boston and New York, offering visitors and locals a fun and active way to spend all or part of the day. As each clue is solved, the SCVNGR texts a locally relevant reward to successful team, such as a free ice-cream cone from the famous ice-cream shop just across the street or a half-off ticket to the museum they've just discovered. Users can sign up for these free SCVNGR hunts on the go by texting "SCVNGR New York" to our short-code or ahead of time by signing themselves and their teams up on the web. SCVNGR will also offer the SCVNGR-Hunt Builder, an online application which allows organizations to inexpensively create their own custom SCVNGR hunts, for team-building activities or unique promotions.
Team: Seth Priebatsch ’11, Daniella Priebatsch
SYNTHOTHINK views its mission to create a decision-support software technology to allow public and private entities with small-to-medium scale decision-making tasks to effectively and efficiently manage and analyze data. SynthoThink does so by implementing an innovative and easy to use database structure.
Team: David Levit ’10, Sam Perez ‘10
TIGER LOGIC develops and markets high performance Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) chips using a novel technology patented at Princeton University. FPGA is a fast-growing market that is projected to grow from $3 billion in 2005 to $6.4 billion by 2010. One of our team members is this technology’s leading investigator and she is also one of the patent holders.
Team: Nickolas Jiang (Masters), Nikolay Hadzhiev ’10, Sonya Hadzhieva ’11, Wei Zhang (PhD)
U.S. INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY EXCHANGE (USIPE.com) is a patent-pending online invention marketplace that aims to bring inventors out of the woodwork and find the diamonds in the rough. Because obtaining a patent on an invention is such an expensive and time-consuming endeavor, many inventors of potentially valuable inventions are deterred from the process and their inventions sit idle in their top desk drawer. USIPE aims to flip this model. Instead of inventors assessing and funding their own inventions, USIPE allows the people to discover, evaluate, and fund their favorite inventions. For the first time, any Inventor with a great idea, regardless of his or her financial resources, can use this innovative web-based business to obtain a patent, and any Believer with a keen eye for "the next big thing" can own shares of the most popular and groundbreaking inventions.
Team: Andrew Knight (PhD), Jadie Dayton, Adam Litt, Patrick Nichols
VIRTUECODE presents "Welcome", a revolutionary platform for online real estate marketing. Using 3D models of property created in a virtual environment called "Second Life", sellers will be able to effectively market any property in the world to any person in the world. Buyers will be invited to navigate and interact with the 3D models in real-time, together with a personal tour guide. To help them choose the right place for them, buyers will have the option of designing the properties they see with real-life home improvement products.
Team: Josh Shulman ’11, Daniel Cesar, Zohar Fischer
CONTEST JUDGES
Scott Birnbaum – Red Sea Venture Partners, Investment Manager; Epok Inc., Co-Founder
Racquel Bracken - Domain Associates, Analyst
Richard Caruso – Uncommon Individual Foundation, Founder and Director; Integra LifeSciences Corporation, Chairman of the Board
Adrienne Clough '02 - Graham Partners, Associate
Saahill Desai '06 - Jane Street Capital, Derivatives Trader
Eric Kutner '95 - ICS Consulting, Business Development Consultant
Raj Lakhanpal – HealthAtoZ, President and CEO
Greg Olsen – GHO Ventures, President
Dennis Specht – Roundbox, Founder, Co-Chairmain, President, and CEO
Jon Wonnell '81 – AIG Consumer Financial/Financial Services