Department of Energy Invites Young Alums to Washington DC

Posted May 14, 2012

Stratman, Beebe, McIntosh with mentor Eben Johnson at Cleantech New Venture Challenge regional finals in Boulder

They’re graduates now, but just a month ago, three undergraduate students from University of Colorado at Boulder took the CU Cleantech New Venture Challenge, and put their business idea—called BioRecyclean—to the test.  Biorecyclean took second place in the inaugural Western Midwest Regional competition.  Since then, the team has been invited to San Jose for the National Cleantech competition and business boot camp, and to Washington, D.C., to attend the 2012 Department of Energy National Finals with the awards ceremonies at the White House.  The CU Cleantech New Venture Challenge first place winning team, Navillum, will compete in the DOE National Finals.

The BioRecyclean team–Charlie McIntosh (Chemical & Biological Engineering), Ashlee Stratman (Biochemistry) and Marshall Beebe (Chemical & Biological Engineering)—worked extensively with Kyle Fenner, Business Development Manager of Colorado Horse Park and CEO of Colorado Horse Park Foundation, in designing a system to break down biowastes into biogas, high quality fertilizers, soil amendments, and pathogen-free recycled bedding materials.

Fenner has since published a page at the fund collection site Crowdtilt to help raise funds in support of the team’s travel expenses. Making your contribution at http://tilt.tc/yE3W helps young CU alumni bring clean and affordable energy technologies and practices to market, and changes the future of energy.  The contribution site is open for a limited time.
Learn more about the cleantech competition in Boulder

About the Team Members

Marshall Beebe grew up on his family’s cattle ranch in Bayfield, Colorado, where he became interested in renewable energy and agriculture. His entrepreneurial spirit and affinity for renewable energy led him to CU-Boulder, where he enjoyed engineering classes, outdoor sports and baseball.

Charlie McIntosh is from Webster Groves, a suburb of St. Louis, Missouri, where he first became interested in applied science through an internship at Washington University in St. Louis. It was his early interest in innovation, and later a senior design project focused on transforming farm waste into an economically viable, environmentally sustainable resource, that served as the impetus behind his teamwork and the Biorecyclean system design.

Ashley Stratman is from Pleasanton, California. Studying engineering came naturally, as her first passions centered around both science and changing the world. She plans to use her degree, and the practical know-how that began as a senior design project, to better the equine industry. Stratman is a rock climber and a longtime member of the CU Triathlon team.

About the Cleantech New Venture Challenge

On April 20, six finalist teams took their winning pitches to Boulder’s St. Julien Hotel to present their clean energy concepts to an audience of onlookers and judges in pursuit of the $100,000 CU Cleantech New Venture Challenge first place prize.  The inaugural Western Midwest Region competition, which began in October 2011, is one of six competitions made possible by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) National Clean Energy Business Plan Competition.

About CU Cleantech

CU Cleantech was launched in 2011 to build upon the University of Colorado’s leadership in cleantech, renewable energy research and commercialization. The organization was founded with the purpose of positioning the University of Colorado as the main regional hub of innovation and commercialization within the rapidly expanding cleantech ecosystem by creating a collaborative initiative that fosters entrepreneurship, industry involvement and student opportunities. Visit www.cucleantech.com

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CU Team Wins International Venture Capital Investment Competition

Posted April 18, 2012

The University of Colorado graduate team from the Leeds School of Business in Boulder won the 15th International Venture Capital Investment Competition (VCIC) competition at the University of North Carolina on Saturday, April 14 beating second-place IESE (Spain), and third-place Georgetown.  Other finalists were Berkeley, Cornell, Michigan, NUS (Singapore), Oxford, Wake Forest, and Wharton.

MBA students Lindsey Jensen, Dane McDonald, Jeff Schreier, and Nick Wyman along with law student Mark Wiranowski, advanced to the finals by winning the West Regional in a competition that includes 50 regional events on four continents with more than 1,000 MBAs competing.

“VCIC is not a business plan competition. It is an entirely unique event in which MBA students emulate the life of VCs. The “VCIC Experience” is a WIN-WIN-WIN convergence of three elite groups: top MBA students, visionary entrepreneurs and successful VCs, each of whom has much to learn from the others.”

“This victory builds on the amazing support of the VC/entrepreneurial community and the support of the Deming Center over many years of competition,” said team member Mark Wiranowski.  “Our team learned a tremendous amount from our mentors who have experienced VCIC as competitors, judges, coaches and presenting entrepreneurs.”

“Since 2000, the Leeds VCIC team has won eight regional competitions advancing to the international finals where they have placed in the top four. We’re very proud of our team’s victory and the chance to represent the PAC-12 with its first victory since 2006,” said Paul Jerde, Executive Director of the Deming Center for Entrepreneurship.

The Deming Center for Entrepreneurship at CU-Boulder’s Leeds School of Business has been a regional host school for the Venture Capital Investment Competition since 2000. We’re honored to be among the VCIC Hall of Champions
– VCIC host schools considered leaders in entrepreneurship education.

Says team member Mark Wiranowski:
We truly stood on the shoulders of giants.  The advice and coaching from local VCs, VCIC alumni and supporters helped us to ramp up quickly instead of reinventing the wheel.  The level of knowledge in Boulder-Denver about VC and about VCIC was a tremendous boon.  The rubber met the road when entrepreneurs freely offered to pitch us.

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The Mountains Win Again

Posted March 8, 2012

On February 29, CU’s Venture Capital Investment Competition team took off for the University of Southern California to compete in the western regional finals of this global contest–and won. This marks CU’s 8th trip to international finals in 12 years; in 2006, 2007 and 2010, the CU team won the Entrepreneur’s Choice award. International finals take place April 12-14 at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, and some of the competition includes Wake Forest, Michigan, Berkeley, Georgetown, Cornell, and Wharton.

When we asked this year’s team what their secret was to making it to international finals, they told us that a great deal of their success was due to the preparation, coaching and mentoring they received from Boulder and Front Range business community leaders–leaders such as Jason Mendelson, Brad Bernthal, Kyle Lefkoff, and Rob Delwo (Leeds MBA ’10), to name a few.

This year’s CU team members are (pictured left to right): Jeff Schreier, MBA; Lindsey Jensen, MBA; Dane McDonald, MBA; Mark Wiranowski, JD;  Nick Wyman, MBA. 1st year alternates who will lead the team next year are Nick Steele, MBA and Rob Foss, MBA.

Says team member Jeff Schreier (MBA ’12):
“The best thing about participating in VCIC is the legacy that Colorado has created for itself within the competition. After the regional event, we had faculty and students from other schools and the judges coming up to us to ask us how we prepared and what the program at CU is like.”

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The Value of an Education in Entrepreneurship

Posted February 5, 2012

Larry Nelson of w3w3.com recently interviewed the Deming Center for Entrepreneurship’s executive director, Paul Jerde.  In this interview you’ll learn if Paul thinks entrepreneurship can be taught, and what happens when the skills behind entrepreneurship are demystified.

You’ll learn what our students at the Leeds School of Business get from an education in entrepreneurship and the process of helping students–who may come to Leeds with a broad or narrow definition of what an entrepreneur is–understand how to evaluate ideas for having commercial viability and commercial applications.  Because, as Jerde says, “Most people in the world don’t really know.”

Listen to the full interview.

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Making a Difference in Sixty Hours

Posted February 2, 2012

Do you have an internship or project opportunity for a Cross Campus student? Our certificate students are currently seeking entrepreneurial internships or projects to complete their certificate requirements! 

Six Cross Campus Entrepreneurship students are working to complete the certificate requirements in time for graduation in May 2012. These requirements include completing 60 hours of an internship or project with an entrepreneur or startup organization by mid-April.

These students are specifically interested in opportunities to work and explore in the following (academic major) areas:

  • Sports, entertainment, or retail (Communication)
  • Architecture, economics, economics+renewable energy, or geography (Economics)
  • Medical, sports medicine, whole body wellness, from chiropractic to nutrition (Psychology)
  • Public relations (Communication)
  • Non-profit (Communication)

Get more information and learn more about requirements.  Please email jacquelyn.dietrich@colorado.edu if you are interested in providing an entrepreneurial internship opportunity for a certificate student! We’re also looking to build our list of entrepreneurs and organizations that might be interested in the future.

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Students on the Move

Posted January 20, 2012

The Leeds Social Impact Consultants (LSIC) was formed in 2010 to connect MBA students to local nonprofits. Teams of MBAs complete pro-bono consulting projects with organizations on a variety of business issues. LSIC’s most recent projects include:

  • A team worked with the Unreasonable Institute, an this exciting social venture accelerator, to design a financial model for institute  Unreasonable Institute, is a talent staffing company that links impact driven organizations to like-minded job seekers.
  • A team worked with the executive director, staff, and  board of directors of YWCA Boulder to provide a financial analysis of the YWCA’s  programs to assess cost cutting and revenue generation opportunities.
  •  A team worked with this start-up social venture RE-Work to provide an analysis of their market opportunity.

CU Cleantech Internship and New Venture Challenge

Lance Legel  ’12 and Aashish Aroon ’12 recently participated in the CU Cleantech internship program and are also participating in the cleantech track of the CU New Venture Challenge. Lance and Aashish met during an internship showcase orchestrated by Candace DeWitt Mitchell, spouse of Zac Mitchell, MBA ’11. That showcase experience, along with a little encouragement, has the two students in a startup that may already have a $100K contract in the works. The year before they got their entrepreneurial experience honed at the CU New Venture Challenge.

Through the CU Cleantech internship program, last summer, Lance worked at Pike Research and he was subsequently hired. Legel explains how it all came about in the following message to Mitchell and  Trent Yang, of the CU Cleantech Program at Deming:

Dear Candace and Trent,

I have a great story about the company that Aashish Aroon and I have formed. This great true story will explain why this week will be my last week working at Pike Research!

I just finished a heartfelt and encouraging talk with the President of Pike Research. I told him what is happening with Dao Synergy – Aashish’s and my company – and specifically, what happened to Dao this morning.

With one awesome partner (PhD student, School of Leeds, Information & Operations Management: Jingjing Li), I met with the Administrative Corporal for the City of Lafayette’s Police Department this morning. It went perfectly. In his words, paying Dao $10,000 to make a smart mobile app system for his fleet of police officers is “cake” (“$10,000 is cake.”). In other words: delicious. Even better, he discussed how the City of Lafayette is connected to technology systems that all of Boulder County use.

With another awesome partner (BS Electrical & Computer Engineering with lots of passion), I soon after realized that Boulder County has a total of 4 cities and 6 towns. So why couldn’t we do a contract that costs each City police department $10,000 (again, “$10,000 is cake”!), and costs each Town, let’s say, $2,500? Actually, I feel very confident that we can. And what would that mean? One $55,000 contract.

In fact, I could easily see us charging the City of Boulder Police Department $55,000 alone, since it spends $29 million per year, and we will be building smart systems that may allow it to save, quite possibly, up to and even beyond $500,000 per year. So, if we work really hard and continue to play our cards correctly, Dao Synergy’s first contract may be worth $100,000, and our first product may make 300,000 citizens of Boulder County that much safer and happier with their police departments. My ECE partner and I think we have “an 85% chance” of getting such a contract signed – we originally said within one month, but probably more realistically, by the end of the year.

So, when I told this to Clint Wheelock, Pike’s President, he more than understood why I need to stop working for Pike – making my last day this Friday – and invest more time into Dao. Of course, I should “move on to a greater opportunity”, in his words. He said he agreed that “smart devices” were the next big wave for governments to embed into their infrastructure. By the way, Pike’s analysts predict that companies serving the smart governments market will make a combined total of $6 billion over the next decade, in the United States alone. That number is $20 billion for the whole world.

Summary: Dao Synergy could get a contract signed of $10,000 to $100,000 in the next few months or so. I quit my job at Pike Research today, but remain friends and partners with Pike’s President. The President of Pike Research thinks Dao Synergy is postured to be “the next big thing” in a $20 billion dollar global market of servicing smart governments. We have lots of hard work to do together, and are ready to step up our energy on this company.

Lance Legel
CEO, Dao Synergy
NVC 2011-12

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Community on the Move

Posted January 19, 2012

Freytag Honored

J.William Freytag, Deming Center Board member and venture capitalist was awarded the 2011 Leeds Entrepreneurship Service Award for exceptional service to the Deming Center for Entrepreneurship and its constituents, and for distinction in entrepreneurship. Nobel Prize winner, and University of Colorado Distinguished Professor Tom Cech introduced Freytag at the ceremony.

Dr. Freytag is also a member of the Board of Trustees of the University of Colorado Foundation, a member of the Advisory Council for the Bard Center for Entrepreneurship, University of Colorado Denver Business School, and a member of the Board of the Deming Center for Entrepreneurship, Leeds School of Business, University of Colorado. Dr. Freytag received a BS from Purdue University and a PhD in biochemistry from the University of Kansas Medical School.

Board Members Recognized
Several Deming board members were recognized during the Colorado Cleantech Industry Association (CCIA) second annual Colorado Cleantech Industry Awards Celebration last fall. The event honored leadership in advancing cleantech job creation and financial and technical viability.

Industry peers ranging from venture capitalists and corporate strategists to current and former technology CEOs selected 20 finalists. The selections were based on the company’s ability to create an innovative clean technology that has a viable market strategy, and the ability to raise funds to support the technology and job creation. The winners include:

• Breakout Cleantech Company of the Year – OPX Biotechnologies, Inc. Michael Lynch–Chief Scientific Officer at OPX spoke at the 2011 Entrepreneurs Under the Microscope event.
• Colorado Cleantech Entrepreneur of the Year – Adrian Tuck, Tendril Networks
• National Cleantech Leader – National Renewable Energy Laboratory, part of the RASEI partnership at CU-Boulder
• Governor’s Award for Cleantech Leadership – Paul Nelson, Clean Range Ventures

Notable Deming Board Member nominees included:
• Breakout Cleantech Company of the Year Nominee Tim Connor, CFO of Boulder Wind. Boulder Wind Power (Boulder) – boulderwindpower.com.

• Emerging Cleantech Company of the Year Nominee Denver-based RavenBrick  ravenbrick.com, CEO Alex Burney.

• Colorado Cleantech Entrepreneur of the Year Nominee Jeff Bisberg, Boulder-based Albeo albeotech.com.

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Silicon Valley Trek

Posted January 18, 2012

Planning for the GEA Silicon Valley Trek 2012 is underway. This year’s tentative trip schedule: Monday, March 26-March 29, 2012. The annual event is sponsored and planned by the Leeds Graduate Entrepreneurs Association (GEA), MBA Association (MBAA) and the Deming Center.

During the inaugural trip last year, MBA students traveled to San Francisco to visit technology related companies as well as venture capitalists in order to learn about the entrepreneurial development of the Silicon Valley technology industry. It was a valuable learning experience as well as inspirational to all of the students who attended.
Companies visited included:

• Zynga: Social Gaming Company
• Roger Smith: Silicon Valley Bank: Roger was involved in investing in many successful Silicon Valley startups
• Dave Morin: Path: A more exclusive version of Facebook, Dave is a former Apple and Facebook employee and played a key role in the beginning of Facebook
• Dave Stastny: Centaur Partners
• Richard Roof: Ellie Mae
• Paul Brown: Bedrock Capital, Stanford GSB, Environmental Markets
• Matthew Macko, Ryan Potvin: Environmental Building Strategies

The Silicon Valley Trek is not associated with the annual, fall, Leeds School of Business Wall Street Trek for Leeds undergraduate students.

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Faculty on the Move

Posted January 17, 2012

Maw-Der Foo  has been chosen to serve as an Associate Editor at Entrepreneurship Theory & Practice starting in 2012.

Alumni Terry Vogt (’75) along with his spouse Mary partnered with Daniel Birmann (’76) and together have funded a Sustainability Research Grant to support research efforts in this area. The grant came about due to the efforts of Donna Sockell and Center for Education on Social Responsibility (CESR). This year’s recipient is Assistant Professor of Management and Entrepreneurship Eva Yao for her paper “Internationalization of US Venture Capital Firms in Clean Technology Industries: Motivation and Syndication Strategy.” Eva has also been featured at one of our Faculty Focus events.

On the road this past fall, Deming Network member and serial entrepreneur Ray Johnson, was selected to be part of a US Cleantech Entrepreneur delegation sponsored by CRDF Global. Johnson taught, mentored and assisted several Russian Cleantech start-up groups selected by the Skolkovo Foundation. The three day workshop, titled “Technology Entrepreneurship Workshop” (TEDP) was held at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations.

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An A for Every Q

Posted December 15, 2011

by Paul Jerde, Executive Director of the Deming Center for Entrepreneurship

I have frequently offered the disclaimer that I believe that Entrepreneurship is the answer to almost any question. Try it yourself sometime – it’s fun.

For example:
Q: How are we going to address some of the world’s biggest sustainability and social needs?
A: Entrepreneurs will.  (See also: The Unreasonable Institute)
Q: How are we going to address global poverty?
A: By enabling local entrepreneurs (See also: IDE – International Development Enterprises)
Q: How do corporations stay competitive through innovation and new business opportunity?
A:  By creating a culture of corporate entrepreneurship (See this intriguing study entitled Corporate Entrepreneurship: How? from the Indian School of Business)

At the risk of oversimplifying, I am convinced that innovation and entrepreneurship are, in fact, inseparable as the required elements for effecting change in the world – and for fostering economic development; they drive discovery and execution of new solutions to the world’s really big challenges and thereby create jobs.  Innovation goes nowhere without entrepreneurs.  And entrepreneurship requires innovation as its catalyst.  (On another occasion we can visit the other answer to almost every question – that answer being education.)

Let’s test my hypothesis one more time by asking one more question that is at the top of everyone’s mind:
Q: How can we best promote world peace?
A:  Through entrepreneurship (See Peace through Entrepreneurship?  A CNNMoney Fortune Editorial by Jeff Bussgang of Flybridge Capital Partners.)
This last one is a very interesting commentary about a visit to Massachusetts by ten Palestinian tech CEOs talking about entrepreneurship.   Some excerpts of the author’s comments:

What if the next Skype or LogMeIn was started by a Ramallah-based entrepreneur instead of a Swede or Hungarian, respectively – would that be a good thing?  My conclusion: 100% yes. And after meeting with the Palestinian CEO delegation, I would say 200% yes. Thomas Friedman said recently that the surest cure to poverty was entrepreneurship. I would say the same regarding peace. If the Israelis and Palestinians are busy cooperating commercially, creating jobs and wealth for both sides, it will meaningfully reduce the tension that unemployment and a lack of opportunity for young and old represent.
I was blown away by the group of Palestinian entrepreneurs – they had more in common with entrepreneurs in Boston, Silicon Valley and NYC than probably many of their own people. They could have stepped right out of TechStars central casting – smart, scrappy, ambitious, hungry. I enjoyed hearing their stories of their entrepreneurial journeys to create their companies.

Note the reference to TechStars – founded right here in Boulder and now expanding the model to Boston, New York, Seattle and beyond.  This defines our community – a perfect storm of entrepreneurs living the answer to the question.

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