DukeGEN Blog

Overview Stats on the Early Deadline for the 14th Duke Start-Up Challenge

2012-11-20T16:23:00.000-05:00

Overview Stats on the Early Deadline for the 14th Duke Start-Up Challenge
Total Teams 51 (Student: 39, Alumni 12)
Total Judges 182

Functional Tracks
Clean Energy 4
Healthcare & Life Sciences 6
IT, Internet & Media 19
Other Products & Services 11
Social Enterprises 11

Special Interest Tracks
Teams can compete in these tracks as a second or third chance to make it to Round 2
Undergraduate-led Startups 21
Women-led Startups 12

School Breakdown
School that the lead student or alum is affiliated with
Trinity 20
Fuqua School of Business 14 (9 Daytime MBA, 5 EMBA)
Pratt 11 (8 Undergrad, 3 MEMP)
The Graduate School 3
Law School 1 (LLM-LE)
Nicholas School 1
School of Medicine 1

Updates from Duke startups August 2012

2012-08-27T11:25:00.001-04:00

The following are updates from Duke alumni-led startups as of August 2012. The alumni listed here have volunteered to give updates. If you have an update, email hwr2@duke.edu

Aaron Aycock, 2005

Email: aaron@cubevibe.com

Startup Name: CubeVibe

Location: Atlanta

Update:

StartupRiot Finalist

TAG Top 40 Most Innovative Companies

Enterprise 2.0 People's Choice

HR Technology Conference "Awesome New Tech"

We've launched our product and we're currently implementing a big new customer this month!

Next Milestone:

Raising money, Adding 1-2 advisors from HR Tech Space

Rachel Cook, 2006

Email: rachel.cook@alumni.duke.edu

Startup Name: Seeds

Location: New York, NY and Nairobi, Kenya

Update:

We were recently approved by the App Store, and disbursed our first loan in Nairobi with the help of a team of Duke students and alums. We will be taking Seeds on a 50+ stop University Tour beginning this fall at Duke, in conjunction with screenings of The Microlending Film Project, my global documentary exploring the impact of microloans on women. Partners joining us on the University Tour include ACCION, Women's World Banking, and Investours.

Next Milestone:

Finding a co-founder, Raising money

Scott Dacko, 1993

Email: scott@flicmob.com

Startup Name: Flicmob

Location: New York City

Update:

Flicmob.com is in limited public beta. We have 100+ filmmakers signed up to help test & refine the product.

There are two TV pilots shooting in Los Angeles & New Orleans that are launching on the platform in October. We'll make a big public push around those projects & our new original content product.

Actively looking for content to help launch - working with indie film producers, TV documentarians, web series producers, etc. Also looking for co-founders for the platform - technical & business development.

Next Milestone:

Expanding

Jason Ethier, 2010

Email: jason@dynamo-micropower.com

Startup Name: Dynamo Micropower

Location: Boston

Update:

Proofs of concept completed under NSF SBIR Phase I grant

Won Best pitch at New Energy Symposium in NYC

Semifinalist in Mass Challenge & CTO

Full scale prototype to be completed soon

VP of Engineering to be hired in soon (Keep an eye out for a job listing soon)

Next Milestone:

Raising money, Developing a prototype

Katie Finnegan, 2010

Email: katie.finnegan@hukkster.com

Startup Name: Hukkster

Location: New York, NY

Update:

The start-up is currently in private beta (launched May 2012) and we are in the process of preparing for a public launch in September! The site will be completely re branded and have a lot of new functionality, just in time for Christmas shopping!

Next Milestone:

Raising money, Expanding

Michael Gagliardi, 1989

Email: mgagliardi@austin.rr.com

Startup Name: Jackson Electronics, LLC

Location: Austin, TX, USA

Update:

We have been shipping our first product, iRoc for iPhone, since August 2011. We are working on several development projects including a Double DIN version of iRoc, an iPad attachment, and a telematics capability. We are currently looking for investors to expand our distribution channel and complete developments through manufacturing. For more information, please visit www.iRoconline.com.

Next Milestone:

Raising money, Expanding

Daisy Jing, 2010

Email: daiserz@gmail.com

Startup Name: Perfect Beauty

Location: Los Angeles, California

Update:

Private beta, raising money

Next Milestone:

Raising money

Anne Kallus, 2007

Email: akallus@gmail.com

Startup Name: GearListed

Location: SUNNYVALE

Update:

We're planning a beta launch 9/6. Feedback is welcome. We're also looking for sports & outdoor enthusiasts to help out with engineering & community management.

Next Milestone:

Finding a co-founder, improving engagement & monetization

Matt Koidin, 2005

Email: mkoidin@gmail.com

Startup Name: Pocket

Location: San Francisco, CA

Update:

We closed our Series B of $5M last month with lead investor Foundation Capital along with Google Ventures and Baseline Ventures.

We're actively hiring developers and an analytics lead. See here for details: http://getpocket.com/jobs

Next Milestone:

Expanding

Jason Langheier, 2009

Email: j@zipongo.com

Startup Name: Zipongo, Inc

Location: San Francisco, CA, USA

Update:

http://www.zipongo.com/jobs:

VP Engineering

VP Product

UX & Visual Design

Account & Project Management

Operations Manager

http://techcrunch.com/2012/07/25/zipongo-seed-round/

Next Milestone:

Expanding, Talent recruitment, National product launch, Sales to health payors and retailers

Yoav Lurie, 2005

Email: yoav@simpleenergy.com

Startup Name: Simple Energy

Location: Boulder, CO

Update:

We're live in over 550,000 homes with two of the biggest utilities in the country (SDG&E and Pepco) and have over $1mm in YTD bookings.

Next Milestone:

Raising money

Kathryn Minshew, 2008

Email: kmminshew@gmail.com

Startup Name: The Daily Muse

Location: New York, NY

Update:

Great - we've blown past 1M users and are moving the HQ back to New York at the end of August!

Next Milestone:

Raising money, Expanding

Colin Mutchler, 1999

Email: colin@loudsauce.com

Startup Name: LoudSauce

Location: San Francisco

Update:

We recently reached a milestone: our crowdfunded ads have now reached over 30 million (from the $130k pledged on our platform). http://visual.ly/crowdfunded-advertising-people

After exploring the crowdfunding of ads across many media, our upcoming beta platform will be exclusively focused on collaborative video buying. We've learned that video is the sweet spot of being both emotionally compelling to funders, and operationally effective (and scalable) from the targeting and buying side.

We're raising an angel round this fall to roll out the platform and expand beyond political advocacy to include passionate supporters of film, music and maker culture.

We have a strong small team including a solid Rails developer, and would benefit from a senior product focused CTO and a social video guru with video buying experience who wants to deeply disrupt the advertising industry.

Next Milestone:

Raising money, Expanding

Griff Parker

Email: griffparker@gmail.com

Startup Name: WellAlly, Inc.

Location: Wayne

Update:

Today’s employer offered health improvement benefits are inefficient and outdated. Traditional programming, consisting of pre-selected workplace-centric supplier combinations, does little to change unhealthy lifestyle behaviors.

WellAlly’s is being developed to work differently. Our web-based systems enable promoting healthier lifestyle choices by Individually Designed Activity Selections (i.e., Use 3rd party resources and integrated performance-based incentives).

We are building the team, web-based knowledge-center, analytic capabilities and delivery systems to lead a new era of delivery individualization. We are looking for IT talent to help design is how it works.

Next Milestone:

Finding a co-founder, Raising money, Developing a prototype

Dan Pollard, 1992

Email: dan@mydrugcosts.com

Startup Name: myDrugCosts, Inc.

Location: Research Triangle Park, NC

Update:

NEEDS:

1. Growth funding

2. A strong sales and business development executive with experience selling prescription drug benefits to large employers and partners.

RECENT NEWS:

Here are some of our most recent wins in the market:

1. SEANC Selects myDrugCosts to Lower Prescription Drug Costs

RALEIGH, NC, August 15, 2012 -- The State Employees Association of North Carolina (SEANC) has selected myDrugCosts, a mobile software service which helps individuals save money on prescription drugs, to provide service to SEANC’s 55,000 members.

Read more http://mydrugcosts.com/2012/seanc-selects-mydrugcosts-to-lower-prescription-drug-costs/

2. myDrugCosts Selected for CED Tech Venture Conference 2012

Durham, NC CED, the Southeast’s largest entrepreneurial support organization, announced the second group of companies selected to participate in the Demo Showcase at the CED Tech Venture Conference 2012 on Sept. 11-12 at the Raleigh Convention Center.

Read more: http://mydrugcosts.com/2012/mydrugcosts-selected-for-ced-tech-venture-conference-2012/

3. Employees report saving money on prescription drugs using tool from myDrugCosts in the June 15, 2012 issue of Employee Benefit News

The preliminary results of a pilot project involving a large, self-funded employer and a new mobile application, myDrugCosts, show that 42% of employees who used the voluntary benefit reported saving money on their prescription drug costs.

Read the full article: http://ebn.benefitnews.com/news/mydrugcosts-wwl-pharmacy-costs-drugs-generics-smartphone-2725099-1.html

4. myDrugCosts Wins Best Consumer App at 2012 Health Datapalooza

WASHINGTON, D.C., June 5, 2012 – myDrugCosts was awarded First Place in the Consumer App category by the Health Data Initiative at its third annual Forum, The Health Datapalooza. myDrugCosts, and its best-in-class transparency and comparison solution for lowering prescription drug costs, was presented the award by Howard Koh, MD, MPH, Assistant Secretary for Health for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Read more: http://mydrugcosts.com/2012/mydrugcosts-wins-best-consumer-app-at-2012-health-datapalooza/

See the presentation: http://vimeo.com/44461066

Next Milestone:

Raising money, Expanding

Jason Sender, 1997

Email: jason.sender@gmail.com

Startup Name: Innovation Logistics

Location:

Update:

We are finding it very difficult to raise funds.

Next Milestone:

Raising money

Brandon Warner, 2008

Email: brandon@simpleregistry.com

Startup Name: SimpleRegistry

Location: Durham, NC and Cincinnati, OH

Update:

Raised a seed round in 2012 with CinciTech

Next Milestone:

Raising money, Expanding

Crick Waters, 1983, 1992

Email: crick@alumni.duke.dedu

Startup Name: Conga

Location: Palo Alto, CA

Update:

Conga Beta is Open!

I welcome all DukeGEN'ers to sign up and try our Social Discovery tool.

Here's a direct link with invitation code:

http://www.conga.com/signup/2-11219-0-1340684809230-025dc473f8484a909646c989414d0dfe/

About: Conga is a social relevance platform. We apply sophisticated algorithms to the connection data from your LinkedIn, Facebook, and other profiles. We create a mathematical expression of you that lets us determine how well anyone might fit with you.

Do a search in Conga and we'll tell you who is likely to be the best fit for you and why.

Give it a whirl. It works. And there is much more to come.

Thanks,

Crick

Next Milestone:

Raising money

Evan C. Anderson 2004
Email: evan.anderson@osebergenergy.com
Startup Name: Oseberg
Location: Oklahoma City

Update:
From Seed to Growth

Over 30 Clients ranging from closely held private companies to $25B market cap public companies since going commercial 18 mos ago

Cash Flow Positive

100% Client Retention

Next Milestone:

Identifying/Adding Tech Advisors, 300% Growth in 12 Mos, Hiring 1 Customer Success Manager, 1-2 Outside Sales Reps, & 2 Additional Developers w/ interests in predictive analytics, OCR, & GIS

Jessica Faye Carter, 2002

Email: jessica.carter@ontoour.com

Startup Name: Toour

Location: Connecticut

Update:

Mentioned in TechCrunch article on social travel

Currently in alpha

Several hundred users have signed up for our upcoming private beta

Next Milestone:

Private beta, Add a couple of advisors in travel space, raising money

Join the Startup Matchmaker Directory; Summer 2012 Updates from Duke

2012-08-15T10:28:00.001-04:00

Free T-Shirt! Join the Startup Matchmaker Directory

Want to match with a Duke-led startup? Or do you have a startup idea and want to find Duke co-founders and talent?

Join over 500 other Dukie's in the DukeGEN Startup Matchmaker Directory, for students, alumni, and the entire Duke community.

We'll give free Duke Start-Up Challenge t-shirts to those of you that have signed up by September 13th, on a first come, first served basis)

Joining the Startup Matchmaker Directory is a great first step towards forming a team for the Duke Start-Up Challenge.

Click here to join

Vote for Bryan Silverman

Current Duke undergraduate student Bryan Silverman has a chance to win Entrepreneur Magazine's College Entrepreneur of 2012 award, with his startup, Star Toilet Paper.

Check out his startup and vote here: http://www.entrepreneur.com/e2012college#696

Voting ends September 17th.

Duke programs in Silicon Valley

Congratulations to the ten Duke students who participated in this summer's Duke programs in Silicon Valley. Five worked at Duke-led startups, and five worked on starting their own companies at DogPatch Labs.

5th DukeGEN Angel Pitch Event a Success!

2012-06-07T11:53:00.003-04:00

We held our 5th DukeGEN Angel Event last night, awarding a $10,000 prize from Freestyle Capital. The event was held in San Francisco (our 3rd event here) at RocketSpace and sponsored by SVB (thanks to Carrie Walsh).

The full set of pictures can be found here: https://picasaweb.google.com/112782475170951809220/5thDukeGENAngelPitchEvent

A video recording can be found here:
http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/23113163

Attendance was outstanding. We had over 210 RSVPs on our event page, up from 150 last year.

A nice "surprise" visit from President Richard Brodhead.

The full set of pictures can be found here: https://picasaweb.google.com/112782475170951809220/5thDukeGENAngelPitchEvent

A video recording can be found here:
http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/23113163

Here's who pitched:

Corengi, Inc. - Humanize and Accelerate Clinical Trials. Ryan Luce 1994
Flicmob - integrate social media & media production. Scott Dacko 1993
GearListed.com - Social Gear & Adventure Directory. Anne Kallus 2007
Hukkster - Online personal shopping concierge. Katie Finnegan 2010
Pixton Comics - The social gamification of comics. Geoff Archer 1995

Here's who was on the panel:

Josh Felser Trinity '86, Fuqua '90 of Freestyle Capital
Ryan Spoon Trinity '03 of Polaris Ventures
Justin Caldbeck Trinity '99 of LightSpeed Venture Partners
Jay Jamison Trinity '92 of Blue Run Ventures
Shea DiDonna Fuqua '10

And here's who attended: http://linkd.in/ybjfvH

After the pitches, the judges convened, and the audience had a Q&A with the teams.

Then, the audience voted:

Audience Choice Winner: Pixton - 56 votes
Audience Choice Runner Up: Hukkster - 41 votes

Then, the judges came back, gave feedback to each team (in front of the audience), and then announced their results.

Judges Choice Winner: Corengi ($10,000 prize from Freestyle Capital)
Judges Choice Runner Up: Pixton

Congrats to Ryan Luce of Corengi, and to everyone who made it a great night!

Presented by:
■ Matt Koidin B '05
■ Basil Enan T '03
■ Howie Rhee B '04

Thanks again to SVB for sponsoring!

Posted by Howie Rhee '04, Co-chair of DukeGEN

Rubenstein Gives $15 Million for Duke’s Innovation and Entrepreneurship Initiative

2012-05-11T23:54:00.000-04:00

Originally posted at: http://today.duke.edu/2012/05/rubenstein-gift

DURHAM, NC - Duke University trustee David M. Rubenstein has donated $15 million to serve as a catalyst for the university's Innovation and Entrepreneurship Initiative, President Richard H. Brodhead announced Friday.

Rubenstein's $15 million gift will be used to establish new programs, enhance existing programs and support course development, internships, research, guest faculty and administrative operations that spur the creation of start-up ventures by faculty, staff, students and alumni.

"Every successful institution began as someoneâs bright idea, and the creativity and can-do spirit of entrepreneurs are playing an ever more important role in building the economy and solving social challenges," Brodhead said. "In today's economic climate, sparking and training the entrepreneurial spirit is a fundamental goal of education. We're grateful to David Rubenstein for making Duke a leader in this field."

Duke announced the launch of the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Initiative in October 2010 to expand the societal impact of Duke inventions and to better serve students and faculty who seek to establish their own ventures as entrepreneurs.

Hired to lead the initiative was Kimberly Jenkins, a university alumna and former trustee who has launched entrepreneurial ventures with leading technology companies and established a prominent nonprofit organization.

"Duke is full of intellectually curious, passionate students eager to apply their entrepreneurial skills and inventiveness to tackling the big, complex issues of the world. And our faculty are among the best in the nation at translating our research innovation out of the university to those who most need our innovative solutions," said Jenkins, senior advisor to the president and provost for innovation and entrepreneurship. "David Rubenstein's gift will establish a pathway through which ideas gain traction and are transformed into action for an evolving global economy thatâs driven by innovation and entrepreneurship."

Since the launch of the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Initiative, the university has been working to strengthen its existing programs in entrepreneurship, establish new programs to educate the next generation of entrepreneurs, build a stronger culture of research innovation across Duke and move campus ventures to the global market and create new jobs. Rubenstein's gift will support all of these objectives.

"Duke has, throughout its many schools and centers, the requisite capabilities to inspire and incubate social and business entrepreneurs and their creations," Rubenstein said. "This gift is designed to help channel and focus these capabilities, enhancing Duke's role as a national leader among universities focused on creating great entrepreneurs and innovators. I see my gift as start-up funding and just the beginning. Duke needs other alumni to join me in providing their time, expertise and financial support to advance this initiative."

To enhance entrepreneurship education at Duke, Rubenstein's gift will be used to create courses, an incubator and mentoring programs that support undergraduate, graduate and professional students in their development of important innovations and new ventures. It will also expand on programs funded, in part, with gifts from other donors.

Existing curricular and co-curricular programs include The Duke Start-Up Challenge, an entrepreneurship competition for students now in its 13th year that runs throughout the academic year, and InCube, Duke's entrepreneurial residential community where 10 companies were created in its first year of operation.

This summer, as part of a pilot program, 10 Duke undergraduates will serve as interns at start-ups in Silicon Valley and three student teams will work closely with Duke alumni on developing their ventures at Dogpatch Labs, the incubator that spawned Instagram. In Durham, three teams of undergraduates and two teams of graduate students from the Nicholas School of the Environment will launch their new ventures through DUhatch, the on-campus incubator.

"In a field like entrepreneurship, student learning must extend beyond the classroom and into the field, and it must be hands-on, applicable, relevant, and impactful," Jenkins said.

Duke's Innovation and Entrepreneurship Initiative will work with individual departments, including history, philosophy and sociology, and schools such as the Fuqua School of Business, the Nicholas School of the Environment, the Schools of Medicine and Nursing, Duke Law School and Sanford School of Public Policy, to encourage research in areas that foster innovation across the campus. Programs will be developed to promote collaborative, market-driven research and to provide financial resources to support early-stage innovation and translational research.

In addition, a centrally located space will be established to give all those involved in entrepreneurship at Duke access to equipment, resources, advice and mentorship that will foster collaboration and help move innovations from ideas and prototypes into new ventures that make a difference in the world, Jenkins said.

A native of Baltimore, Rubenstein is co-founder and co-CEO of The Carlyle Group, a global alternative asset manager. He graduated magna cum laude from Duke in 1970 and serves as vice chair of the university's Board of Trustees.

In August 2011, he gave Duke University Libraries its largest gift ever -- $13.6 million -- to support the Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library, which was renamed the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library in his honor.

In 2009, he donated $5.75 million to the Sanford School of Public Policy to help it transition from an institute into Duke's 10th school; and he contributed $5 million in 2002 to complete the construction of Sanford's Rubenstein Hall.

In addition to his service at Duke, Rubenstein is the chairman of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, a regent of the Smithsonian Institution, president of the Economic Club of Washington, vice chair of the Brookings Institution and board member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Originally posted at: http://today.duke.edu/2012/05/rubenstein-gift

MORE INFORMATION

CONTACT: Michael J. Schoenfeld PHONE: (919) 681-3788 EMAIL: michael.schoenfeld@duke.edu

Over 100 teams in the 13th Duke Start-Up Challenge

2012-02-13T11:30:00.004-05:00

We have over 100 teams competing in the 13th Annual Duke Start-Up Challenge.

Functional Tracks	2012	2011	2010
Clean Energy	5	10	11
Healthcare & Life Sciences	16	15	19
IT, Internet & Media	48	30	27
Other Products & Services	33	34	27
Social Enterprises	16	21	25
	118*	110	109

Special Interest Tracks
Undergraduate-led Startups	46	43	41
Women-led Startups	34	27	29

Pilot Track
China-focused Startups	12


School at Duke (Lead student)
Trinity	37	30
Fuqua School of Business	34	17
Pratt	30	46
The Graduate School	10	5
School of Law	2	7
Nicholas School of the Environment	2	2
School of Medicine	2	1
Sanford School of Public Policy	1	2
	118	80

* includes Alumni/Faculty/Staff teams
Student	102
Alumni/Faculty/Staff	16

Win $50,000 in the Duke Start-Up Challenge

2012-01-11T10:17:00.002-05:00

Do you have an idea for a startup company? Tell us your business idea, and earn a chance to win $50,000! Along the way you'll receive support for getting a business idea off the ground.

Last year we had over 100 Duke student teams, and 50 Duke alumni teams compete.

All Duke students (as well as postdocs and medical residents) are eligible for the prize money. Alumni, Faculty, and Staff are also welcome to participate, but will not be eligible for the prize money. They will, however, receive feedback and support.

Student Prizes:

$50,000 Grand Prize (thanks to Rich Lee of Hosted Solutions)
$10,000 Prize for best Women-led Startup
$10,000 Prize for best Undergraduate-led Startup
$10,000 Prize for best Products & Services Startup

Want to compete? All it takes is a startup idea, and some time to put your idea down in writing. Participation in the fall events is *not* required.

Get started by submitting an Idea Summary (two to five page document) of your business idea. It's due at 5pm EST, Thursday, February 9th, 2012. Last year we had over 100 Duke teams submit ideas.

Up to 49 semi-finalists (up to 7 per track) will be selected by a panel of judges to advance to the second round. If you advance to the second round, you will submit business plans and make investor pitches to a panel of judges.

The most important thing is to just write down your idea and submit it! If you want to go above and beyond, we suggest you refer to Guy Kawasaki's thoughts on Executive Summaries. Also, check out executive summaries from past competitors.

Note: Participation in the Elevator Pitch Competition in November 2011 is not a prerequisite to participate in the Executive Summary competition.

How to submit your idea: Your submission for the Duke Startup Challenge is limited to two to five pages.

Submit it today on our YouNoodle entry form.

Additional Links

Want to make sure you are eligible? Read our rules page

Statistics on the 2010 and 2011 competitions

Read about the history of the Duke Start-Up Challenge

Want to learn more about entrepreneurship activities at Duke University and the Duke Global Entrepreneurship Network?

Join our mailing list
Visit the DukeGEN website
Join our LinkedIn group (~ 4,000 members from the Duke community)
Follow us on Twitter
Like us on Facebook

Final Presentations in Duke's Program for Entrepreneurs (P4E)

2011-12-09T14:50:00.001-05:00

The goal of the Program for Entrepreneurs (P4E) is to assist entrepreneurs in launching new businesses.

This initiative is the capstone of Fuqua’s entrepreneurship educational offerings. It leverages Fuqua’s academic research, courses and broad community of practitioners to work with entrepreneurs to define, plan, establish and finance new ventures.

More info at: http://www.dukep4e.org/

Teams in New Ventures 3
Syllabus

K Kane

K Kane is a fine jewelry line whose pieces are as unique as the individuals who wear them.

HyTower Energy Storage

HyTower develops distributed pumped hydro energy storage for merchant participation in electricity markets

Epistem^Logic

Patent database and smart search engine based on artificial intelligence algorithm

Teams in New Ventures 1
Syllabus

BAMmarketplace.com

BAMmarketplace is an online and app research platform for socially driven people. We provide customers a way to use the power of their purchases towards the causes they care about most. Search by cause, by brand or by item and discover through a user-friendly, icon based platform how mainstream products and products from 3rd world entrepreneurs are creating social and environmental impact.

Connect

Our current idea is to provide platform for people with health problems to connect. We will be providing a chat/text like application on phone for people to get real time feedback from other users having similar problems. For example, a diabetic person eating at a restaurant not sure of the food he is eating, can ask for advice from other diabetic users on our service. All these users will be subscribed to the same group - "Diabetes". This idea can be later scaled to different verticals.

ConnectUs

A new social network that aims to facilitate connections between young professionals.

FlexRegistry

FlexRegistry is a location and time aware registry on-the-go for maintaining and sharing wish lists and recommendations among friends. The offering will have 2 components - an App and a backing website. The key features are listed below:

FundyPeople

A new peer-to-peer platform aimed at connecting entrepreneurs and any population wiling to invest capital.

MBAApp

MBAApp is an online platform intended to solve the many inherent inefficiencies in the current MBA application process. Via an easy-to-use online interface which would be accompanied by mobile apps, the MBA applicant would be able to manage the entire process, from writing essays, to finding schools and clubs or managing deadlines and recommendation letter requests. Rather than replace existing systems in place, it would augment them from an end-user's perspective, and feed information to them once applications are complete.

Polymags

Polymags offers magazine readers ultimate flexibility and cost-savings. Users pay one low, annual subscription fee and can make monthly magazine selections via their web or mobile account. A vast array of options is available to cater to the broad and evolving interests of readers; for example, one month a subscriber might receive Architectural Digest and the next month Women’s Fitness. Readers are able save lots of money avoiding multiple subscriptions, and they no longer have to feel guilty for letting all of those untouched magazines stack up.

Project Pineapple

Project Pineapple offers students a radically different way of finding and choosing their academic courses - courses that are relevant to both their career and personal pursuits. Through our product, they can navigate the curriculum in innovative ways such as viewing classes based on course content rather than department, or finding students who have taken similar courses and connecting with them. Eventually, through a student's personal interests and academic history, we want to connect the student to internships and other non-curricular activities that actually draw upon and augment their classroom experiences.

Scene-ster

Scene-ster is for professional or socially motivated individuals who desire to interact with a particular subset of people instantly through mobile interface. The Scene-ster smartphone app is a mobile, GPS-based, real-time social connectivity software that facilitates locating a group of people relevant to your social or professional interests by allowing you to search for people based upon characteristics and receiving real-time results on a map display. It is unlike other social media tools that require “logging in”, building a “profile”, or “checking-in”. Our product does not require logging in or building a profile while it amasses data anonymously based on user-defined characteristics to bring people together instantaneously.

Take Back the Trail

Take back your heart, health, and community

Equal parts social initiative and fitness apparel brand, the sale of all Take Back The Trail fitness apparel will support local initiatives to empower minority women in low-income neighborhoods to take back their hearts, health, and communities. Through purchasing the Take Back The Trail brand, consumers who live a life dedicated to health and fitness will be connected with women who aspire to do the same but who are yet to have the resources to do so.

www.takebackthetrail.com

Clinical Vest

Clinical Vest is designed to be a portable, non-invasive measurement system to monitor biological parameters in a non-clinical setting. The system is capable of collecting and storing biologically relevant data (e.g. abdominal sounds, maternal/fetal heart rate and respiratory sounds) that are not normally collected in current systems. Usage of the vest eliminates the need for subjects/patients to stay in clinics for evaluation and allows them to live as they normally would, and also enhances the measurement of the effectiveness of drug treatments by identifying outlier subjects in pharmacokinetic studies.

F.I.M. - Fighting the Impulsiveness Monster

The business idea is the creation of a serious health game aimed at training three specific aspects of cognitive function among adolescents with Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) facing issues with inhibitory control.

Okulife

Okulife is a prospective company that will focalize in the production, sale and distribution of ornamental plants through a Japanese technique call Kokedama (“Koke” = moss, “Dama” = ball). The project includes the creation of a detailed website with high quality pictures and a shopping cart.

PEGnacea

A reliable, high quality, low cost manufacturing technology of a biomedical material, PEG. Specialty polyethylene glycol (PEG) is widely used by research institutes and pharmaceutical companies. But the market lacks a specialized and reliable PEG provider that offers high quality PEG. We will fill this gap with 5 patentable technology by providing superior PEG product and after sales\ services to our clients.

Rent the Room

"Rent the Room” is a high quality rental service for home staging accessories (art, lamps, linens etc.). It builds on the momentum of the rent-by-mail success of Netflix and Rent the Runway to provide do-it-yourself homeowners and real estate agents with an alternative to expensive home staging services. Rent the Room allows budget saavy customers access to the simple, modern styles that appeal to home buyers without having to invest in accessories they don't want. When the home sells, they simply send their items back to us...and we send them on to another customer.

The Monday Life

The Monday Life is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization that improves the environments inside children's hospitals by asking people to donate $1, every Monday. We are currently working solely with Duke Children's Hospital yet plan to expand to children's hospitals around the world throughout our time in P4E.

TrustyEarnings

Web-based services for detecting deception in corporate financial statements: TrustyEarnings aims to use psychological and linguistic models to assess the information conveyed by executives during earnings conference calls about their affective states that, in turn, help users predict future profitability and returns.

Winter Update 2011 - Entrepreneurship at Duke

2011-12-09T14:48:00.001-05:00

By Howie Rhee

There's a lot to report.

It's been a great Fall here in Durham, for entrepreneurship activities at Duke.

Over 100 Duke student teams competed in the 6th Annual Elevator Pitch Competition (part of the Duke Start-Up Challenge and DukeGEN). That's a new record (previous high was around 70 teams). Great spread of years (from Freshmen to Medical School Residents), and schools (Pratt, Fuqua, Trinity, Nicholas, Law, Medicine, Graduate School).

Will Pearson '01 of mental_floss, gave a great talk at the Elevator Pitch Finals, where our 19 finalists pitched in Reynolds Theater of the Bryan Center (a new venue for us).

DukeGEN held it's 4th DukeGEN Angel Pitch Event, our second in New York City. (We also held our 3rd event in San Francisco in June). Summing the 3rd and 4th events, about 80 Duke startups applied to pitch, and 12 actually pitched to investors.

The Program for Entrepreneurs (P4E) started it's fourth cohort with 16 teams (a new record). They started the first course, New Ventures 1, in mid-October. About 8 of the teams were IT/Internet/App based.

InCube got off the ground and the students have moved in. Congrats to Sid and everyone involved.
The Innovation and Entrepreneurship Task Force (led by Kimberly Jenkins) has formed, met twice, and put together some recommendations on entrepreneurship at Duke going forward. The response to join the Task Force was really positive, and things are looking bright for Duke's future.

We hosted five Duke speakers for DukeGEN: Live from Silicon Valley. This was a departure from our previous years' Education Series, and all speakers joined us live via Skype. We tested Skype as an experiment, and the feedback was overall positive. Videos of their talks are available on YouTube. Speakers included:

Jason Freedman (Flightcaster, Y Combinator)
Howie Liu (Etacts, Y Combinator)
Ryan Spoon (Polaris Ventures, Dogpatch Labs, beRecruited)
Matt Koidin (Read It Later, TeamRankings)

Congrats to Duke alumni Jesse Lipson (ShareFile), Justin Segall & Yoav Lurie (SimpleEnergy), Kathryn Minshew (The Daily Muse), David Goldberg (Contently). All had exits or closed on funding.
Published DukeGEN interviews, at www.dukegen.com/profiles, with:

Jeff Kovick '11 - Co-founder and CEO of Medici Medical Technologies
Evan McCormick '11 - Founder and CEO of Investors Mosaic
Brian Hamilton '90 - Co-founder of Sageworks
Vikas Narula '07 - Co-founder of Keyhubs
Glen Caplan '02 - Co-founder of Joystick Labs
David Mauney '90 - Co-founder and Managing Director of De Novo Ventures
Brooks Bell '02 - Founder and CEO of Brooks Bell Interactive
Liz Reaves Walker '05 - Senior Product Manager at LinkedIn

Over 300 Duke students joined the DukeGEN Startup Matchmaker Directory

Looking forward to having a great Spring. Each semester we get a little better, and the goal is to continue to improve, and at the same time, continue at a sustainable pace.

--
Howie Rhee '04 is working on helping Duke be one of the best environments for students interested in entrepreneurship. Follow him on Twitter @howierhee

Successful 4th DukeGEN Angel Pitch Event

2011-10-14T11:01:00.003-04:00

Summer has come and gone and the semester is in full swing. We've hosted lots of entrepreneurship events including our 7th DukeGEN Multi-City Networking Event, the Program for Entrepreneurs (P4E) and the DukeGEN: Live from Silicon Valley speaker series.

On October 12, 2011, we held another successful DukeGEN Angel Pitch Event, our fourth overall, and the second one in New York City.

A slight drizzle in Manhattan didn't stop the attendees from coming out. The room was packed, the audience was energetic, the pitches were great, and the panel, again, did an excellent job.

About 80 Duke alumni came and filled up the room at DogPatch Labs.

Here's who pitched:

Showcase Company

• SimpleEnergy (Boulder, CO) - Justin Segall, Duke '05 (Business Partner: Yoav Lurie, Duke '05)
SimpleEnergy is changing how millions of people save energy by revolutionizing how utilities engage their customers. We leverage our experience in the energy industry and combine leading behavioral science and the tools of the modern, social web to engage customers and get the results regulators demand.

SimpleEnergy has recently raised their first round of financing and were invited by DukeGEN to showcase their company at this event, to help educate the audience members.

Pitch Competition

• myDrugCosts (Research Triangle Park, NC) - Dan, Pollard, Duke ‘92 - dan@mydrugcosts.com
myDrugCosts, Inc. operates a software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform based on a proprietary database of drug costs and savings options.

• ShelfRelief.com (Durham, NC) - Tito Bohrt, Duke ‘13 - tito.bohrt@duke.edu
ShelfRelief is a combination of Craigslist and Amazon. Connecting students within a university to let them sell their books to one another.

• CRE-DASHBOARD (Washington, D.C.) - Jill Homan, Duke ‘06 - jill.homan@gmail.com
CRE-DASHBOARD aggregates commercial real estate and economic data to create an investment dashboard for commercial real estate professionals to make better decisions - a super-charged Zillow for commercial real estate (CRE).

• CareProsper (New York City) - George Mathew, Duke ‘03 - george_mathews@hotmail.com
CareProsper makes Personal Health Records (PHR) work, by combining an incentivized PHR with a membership rewards program.

• Perfect Beauty (San Francisco) - Daisy Jing, Duke ‘11 - daiserz@gmail.com
Perfect Beauty creates a customized set of reviews for beauty products, so when a user searches for a review on a product, she can filter the results based on her profile so only those reviews that are relevant for her appear in the results.

• The Daily Muse (New York, NY) - Kathryn Minshew, Duke ‘08 - kmminshew@gmail.com
The Daily Muse brings smart content to young, career-focused women. We are not Cosmo; instead, we focus on the central needs of many highly educated, ambitious young women today.

And here's who was on the panel:

Peter Flint, Polaris Ventures and Dogpatch Labs
Rob Go '01, NextView Ventures
Thomas Lehrman '95, Alta Investors

(Phin Barnes was also schedule and helped select the teams, but had an unexpected conflict the night of the event)

And here's who attended:

RSVP list on LinkedIn

Audience voted and asked questions of all the teams:

Audience Choice went to:

The Daily Muse - Kathryn Minshew

Judges went to convene and came back to deliver the results:

Judges 2nd Runner Up:
My Drug Costs - Dan Pollard

Judges 1st Runner Up:
ShelfRelief.com - Tito Bohrt

Judges Winner:
The Daily Muse - Kathryn Minshew

Prize:

Consultation with Josh Felser '86 '90, Co-founder at Freestyle Capital
Send top pitches to to Naval Ravikant at AngelList for review

Video: You can watch the recording on Ustream.

Photos: The photos of the event are up on Picasa

Thank you to our volunteers!

Jason Begleiter, Trinity ‘09
Jason Ethier, ‘10
Shalav Gupta, Fuqua ’10
Alex Guttler, Fuqua’11
Can Kuterdem, Fuqua '09
Tom Powell, Fuqua ‘09
Niraj Tailor

Posted by Howie Rhee '04

Event run by Howie Rhee '04 and Jozef Krakora '10, Co-chairs of DukeGEN

Great 3rd DukeGEN Angel Pitch Event in San Francisco

2011-06-07T14:27:00.001-04:00

We held a successful DukeGEN Angel Event last night, hosted at Rocket Space and sponsored by SNR Denton (thanks to Richard Allan Horning '69) and SVB (thanks to Steve Allan '08).

The room was packed, the audience was energetic, the pitches were great, and the panel did an excellent job.

About 120 Duke alumni came and filled up the room.

The full set of pictures can be found here: https://picasaweb.google.com/hwr2duke/DukeGEN3rdAngelPitchEvent#

Here's who pitched:

CommuterRx - Commuter benefits, fueled by Android

Team Lead: Benjamin Picard '07
Location: Fairfax, CA

Dynamo Micropower - Cheap power dense distributed power

Team Lead: Hardy Shen '10
Location: Sunnyvale, CA
Website: http://dynamo-micropower.com/

Happy Toy Machine - Design your own toys online

Team Lead: Scott Schube '93
Location: Milpitas, CA
Website: http://www.happytoymachine.com/

LoudSauce - crowdfunded media buying platform

Team Lead: Colin Mutchler '99
Location: San Francisco, CA
Website: http://www.loudsauce.com

Rentcycle - OpenTable for product rentals

Team Lead: Tim Hyer '05
Location: San Francisco, CA
Website: http://www.rentcycle.com/

Ribbons - enable earnest friend job recommendations

Team Lead: Anthony Bishopric '08
Location: San Francisco, CA
Website: http://rbbns.com

Youbibi - China Travel Search 2.0

Team Lead: Kai Wang '08
Location: Shenzhen, China
Website: http://www.youbibi.com

And here's who was on the panel:

Jim Scheinman T '88 of Maven Ventures, his early stage investment fund. With over 15 years experience, Jim is a serial entrepreneur, angel investor, and adviser to consumer internet and mobile start-ups. He is a pioneer in social networking and engagement marketing. Jim is best known for his role as employee number one at Bebo, the third largest social network when it was acquired by AOL in early 2008 for $850M. He was also the first business employee at Friendster. Maven Ventures was the first investor in Social Gold which sold to Google in 2010 & is currently an investor/adviser at Tango, the leading mobile video call platform; and PageOnce, the leading mobile personal finance app.

Josh Felser T '86, B '90 of Freestyle Capital, an early stage venture capital fund designed to fill the void between retreating angels and venture capitalists moving into later stage investments. Josh is a seed investor and serial entrepreneur. He is the co-founder of Freestyle Capital, Spinner (first Internet music service, sold to AOL for $320mm), Grouper/Crackle (video sharing service, sold to Sony for $65mm) & FYILiving.com (health information, launched in April 2010). He is also on the board of Duke's Center for Entrepreneurship.
Ryan Spoon T '03 of Polaris Ventures, a venture capital firm specializing in seed and early stage investments in companies engaged in the information technology and life sciences sectors. Ryan was the founder of beRecruited, the nation's number one online networking destination for high school student-athletes seeking recruitment from college coaches and universities. beRecruited was acquired in 2007. Ryan worked for four years at eBay where he focused on user acquisition and launched and ran Kijiji (eBay's U.S. classified advertisements site). He also served as VP of Marketing at Widgetbox, a widget distribution platform.

Aaron Patzer E '02, founder and CEO of Mint, a free, simple, and secure personal finance web application which consolidates your financial life in one place. Aaron became the Vice President and General Manager of the Personal Finance Group at Intuit when that company acquired Mint.com for US$170M in November 2009. Prior to Mint, Aaron was a Lead Architect as Nascentric and the technical lead of the San Jose office. Aaron was selected by Fortune Magazine to the Top 40 Entrepreneurs Under 40 in 2009 and Money Magazine named him as one of the top 8 Money Heroes of 2008. He has twelve patents issued or pending to his name.

And here's who attended: http://events.linkedin.com/DukeGEN-Early-Stage-Investor-Panel/pub/576336

After the pitches, the judges convened, and the audience had a Q&A with the teams.

Then, the audience voted:

Audience Choice Winner: RentCycle

Then, the judges came back, gave feedback to each team (in front of the audience), and then announced their results.

Judges' 3rd Runner Up:

LoudSauce

Judges' 2nd Runner Up:

Happy Toy Machine

Judges' 1st Runner Up:

Rentcycle

Winner:

Youbibi.com

Congrats to Kai Wang '08 and his business partner Steven Pang.

Youbibi will be introduced to three venture capitalists by Josh Felser.

Presented by:
■ Michael S. Cann Jr. T '95 - Event Lead
■ Matt Koidin B '05 - Operations Lead
■ Shea DiDonna B '10
■ Basil Enan T '03
■ Howie Rhee B '04

Thanks again to SNR Denton and SVB!

Posted by Howie Rhee '04, Co-chair of DukeGEN

12th Annual Duke Start-up Challenge Grand Finale!

2011-04-08T20:38:00.018-04:00

Overview
On Friday, April 8th, we hosted the Grand Finale of the 12th Annual Duke Start-Up Challenge. This event was a showcase of entrepreneurship at Duke University. We had the seven finalists pitch for one-minute each to give our students, alumni, and online viewers a chance to see some of the most interesting startups coming out of Duke.

In addition to being a showcase, we awarded the $50,000 Grand Prize, a runner-up award (selected by a panel of judges prior to this event), audience choice award, and a $1,000 speaker’s choice award. A special thanks goes out Rich Lee and Melissa Bernstein for their generous contributions which helped make tonight’s prize money possible.

The evening began as hundreds of spectators welcomed J.B. Pritzker '87: a remarkable Duke alum, venture capitalist, philanthropist, and a champion of humanitarian work worldwide. After introductions from hosts Tim Canavan (Nicholas/Fuqua '12) and Vidhan Agrawal (Pratt '12), Pritzker addressed the audience with insightful lessons from his lifetime of entrepreneurship.

About J.B. Pritzker - Keynote Speaker
J.B. Pritzker ’87 is an entrepreneur, technology venture capitalist and philanthropist. With degrees from Duke University (AB ’87), and Northwestern University School of Law (JD ’90), Pritzker is an attorney who has used his business, law and civic leadership ability to become a leading advocate for civil rights and young children in poverty. He founded one of the Midwest’s leading venture capital firms, New World Ventures, and co-leads The Pritzker Group, a private investment firm. Mr. Pritzker is also a principal owner of Hyatt Hotels Corporation and TransUnion Corporation. Also under his leadership, the Pritzker Family Foundation is one of the nation’s leading philanthropic organizations for early childhood education and development. He has also applied his entrepreneurial efforts as a tireless advocate for human and civil rights on a national and international scale; serving as Chairman of the Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center and a principal funder of the Cambodia Tribunal Monitor. He is a member of the Illinois State Bar Association and Chicago Bar Association and lives in Chicago with his wife and children.

J.B. had four lessons to share

Be tenacious to the point of sheer lunacy.
Don't let your setbacks and the cynics define you. Let your actions do the talking.
Find your own path.
Remember that leadership matters.

The Pitches
Each team had exactly 1 minute each to convince the judges and audience why their start-up is worthy of thousands of dollars of investment and prizes. Tonight’s Finalists were:

70Sesame
A social mobile platform combining group messaging capabilities with target-driven coupon delivery designed for operation in China. Team Lead: Stephanie Chang, Pratt '11

HyTower Energy Storage
The HyTower system converts out of service water towers into power storage units. Their pumped-hydro system builds on proven technology to deliver safe, reliable energy storage at higher efficiency and lower cost than competing technologies. Company is planning to enter the $1.5B annual market for energy storage. Team Lead: Matt Kaufmann, Nicholas/Fuqua '11

Medici Medical Technologies
Medici develops innovative devices to restore control to women suffering from urinary incontinence. The company plans to provide a high control and high convenience solution for the 28 million Americans who suffer from urinary incontinence $20B is spent annually in this market. Team Lead: Jeff Kovick, Fuqua '11

Sidewalk
Sidewalk helps customers and businesses by uniting them together with time sensitive deals. Sidewalk makes it incredibly simple for local merchants to increase customer traffic and by helping people spend wiser. Team Lead: Rhianon DeLeeuw, Fuqua '11

ShelfRelief
The most efficient way to buy and sell university textbooks among college students. Team Lead: Tito Bohrt, Trinity '13

Accion Emprendedora USA
Accion Emprendedora will offer business management education, training and coaching for Hispanic entrepreneurs in North Carolina to help them overcome the barriers they have for growth and economic development. Team Lead: Ignacio Torres, Sanford '11

E-Clean
Plans to reduce hospital acquired infections through utilizing RFID tracking which will increase human hand hygiene compliance. Team Lead: Jessica Liu, Pratt '11

The Winning Teams
The judge’s choice grand prize was chosen by the judges of the investor pitch finals competition, and the audience choice prize was determined in real time via text message voting.

Winner of the Audience Choice Award:

Medici Medical Technologies

Winner of the $1,000 Speaker’s Choice Award:
Sidewalk

Runner-up to the Grand Prize:
70Sesame

AND THE WINNER OF THE $50,000 JUDGE’S CHOICE GRAND PRIZE:
HyTower Energy Storage
Thanks to Rich Lee for enabling us to double our grand prize

Congratulations HyTower Energy Storage and to all of tonight’s winners and competitors throughout Duke Start-up Challenge XI. And special thanks to contributors Rich Lee (Former CEO of Hosted Solutions) and Melissa Bernstein (Co-founder and Co-CEO of Melissa and Doug) and to all of the generous supporters and sponsors of Entrepreneurship at Duke. See you next year!

Want more?

Watch a recording of this event on Ustream
See the full set of pictures
Read the article in the Chronicle
Stay informed about our many events around the world through DukeGEN
And keep tabs on our on-campus events through Entrepreneurship At Duke

--
Written by Trevor Scott
Edited by Howie Rhee '04
Thanks to Hamid Ali for the live-tweeting

Investor Pitch Finals, part of the 11th Annual Duke Start-Up Challenge

2011-03-31T21:38:00.012-04:00

After months of preparation, practicing pitches, and fine-tuning business plans, tonight’s entrepreneurship competition at the Investor Pitch Finals Event hosted the final seven Duke University startup teams, each competing for the $50,000 Grand Prize.

Hosted by Tim Canavan (Nicholas/Fuqua '12) and Vidhan Agrawal (Pratt '12) at the Fuqua School of Business, the evening was a great success. From the original 110 Duke student startup teams who competed at the beginning of February, the top seven were allowed to pitch before the event’s live panel of judges and a packed auditorium.

A special feature of the evening was an outstanding keynote address from Melissa Bernstein '87; a member of the judge’s panel and Co-founder/Co-CEO of Melissa & Doug, LLC, one of the leading toy companies.

Competition Details:
Each student-led team was given 7 minutes to pitch their company idea to the judges, followed by 3 minutes for questions and answers. The decision of the $50,000 Judge’s Choice Grand Prize Award and additional cash prizes will be decided after the event and revealed at the Grand Finale Event on April 8th. In addition to the Grand Prize, three $10,000 cash prizes have already been awarded for winners of the best in each category: Undergraduate Led Start-up, Women Led Start-up, and Products and Services Start-up. And for the winner of the best Social Enterprise Start-up, a special award of $2,500 has been awarded.

The Finalists:

70Sesame
A social mobile platform combining group messaging capabilities with target-driven coupon delivery designed for operation in China. Team Lead: Stephanie Chang, Pratt '11

HyTower Energy Storage
The HyTower system converts out of service water towers into power storage units. Their pumped-hydro system builds on proven technology to deliver safe, reliable energy storage at higher efficiency and lower cost than competing technologies. Company is planning to enter the $1.5B annual market for energy storage. Team Lead: Matt Kaufmann, Fuqua '11

Medici Medical Technologies
Medici develops innovative devices to restore control to women suffering from urinary incontinence. The company plans to provide a high control and high convenience solution for the 28 million Americans who suffer from urinary incontinence $20B is spent annually in this market. Team Lead: Jeff Kovick, Fuqua '11

Sidewalk
Sidewalk helps customers and businesses by uniting them together with time sensitive deals. Sidewalk makes it incredibly simple for local merchants to increase customer traffic and by helping people spend wiser. Team Lead: Rhianon DeLeeuw, Fuqua '11

ShelfRelief
The most efficient way to buy and sell university textbooks among college students. Team Lead: Tito Bohrt, Trinity '13

Accion Emprendedora USA
Accion Emprendedora will offer business management education, training and coaching for Hispanic entrepreneurs in North Carolina to help them overcome the barriers they have for growth and economic development. Team Lead: Ignacio Torres, Sanford '11

E-Clean
Plans to reducing hospital acquired infections through utilizing RFID tracking to increase human hand hygiene compliance. Team Lead: Jessica Liu, Pratt '11

Tonight’s Judges:
Melissa Bernstein - ('87) Co-founder/Co-CEO of Melissa & Doug, LLC.

Bill Geary - Partner at North Bridge Venture Partners.

Jack Egan - Egan-Managed Capital.

Geoff Kanter - (89) Managing Director, MK Media Ventures.

Rich Lee - Former CEO of Hosted Solutions.

Karen LeVert - CEO of Southeast TechInventures.

Tom McMurray - Ph.D ('76 '78 '80) Marine Ventures Foundation. Former Partner at Sequoia Capital.

Pictures of the event are available here:
https://picasaweb.google.com/hwr2duke/DukeStartUpChallengeInvestorPitchFinals2011#
Photos taken by Olgun Kukrer

Next up:
Be sure to join us next week on Friday April 8th at 7:30pm for our final event of the year – the Grand Finale Event! This memorable night will include the naming of the winning teams for each of the awards, and feature world renowned philanthropist and investor J.B. Pritzker (’87) as the keynote speaker. You won’t want to miss it!

--
Written by Trevor Scott
Edited by Howie Rhee '04

Update on the Duke Start-Up Challenge: 110 Executive Summaries (plus 50 Alumni submissions)

2011-02-17T11:11:00.003-05:00

Hi everyone,

The deadline for the Duke Start-Up Challenge: Executive Summary Competition closed last Thursday, February 10th. We had 110 different student teams enter, which we consider to be a pretty successful turnout.

Below are the statistics for the student competition are below:

Functional Track	Spring 2011	Spring 2010
Energy & Environment	10	11
Health Care & Life Sciences	15	19
IT & Media	30	27
Products & Services	34	27
Social Enterprise	21	25
Total	110	109

Special Interest Tracks
Undergraduate Led (Special Int	43	41
Women Led (Special Interest Tr	27	29
Total	70	70

School (Team Lead)	Spring 2011
Pratt	46
Trinity	29
Fuqua	17
Law	7
Graduate School	4
Nicholas School	2
Sanford	2
Graduate School, Fuqua (PhD)	1
Pratt and Trinity	1
School of Medicine / DCI	1
Sum	110

In addition, we hosted our first annual "Alumni Track" (hosted by DukeGEN), inviting alumni startup teams to submit their entries for feedback (but not compete for the prize money). We had 50 entries (!) in our first year, and were pleased with that amount of participation. More info here: http://www.dukegen.com/alumni-track

Other updates:
- Grand Prize money has been increased from $25,000 to $50,000 (thanks to Rich Lee, former CEO of Hosted Solutions)
- $10,000 Track prizes for Undergrad-led, Women-led, and Products & Services (misc) prizes.
- Our Finals judges will be:

Melissa Bernstein '87, Co-founder/Co-Owner of Melissa & Doug
Bill Geary, Partner at North Bridge
Jack Egan, Egan-Managed Capital (2nd year of judging the Finals))
Geoff Kanter '89, Managing Director, MK Media Ventures
Rich Lee, Former CEO of Hosted Solutions
Karen LeVert, CEO of Southeast TechInventures
Tom McMurray '76 '78 '80, Marine Ventures Foundation

- J.B. Pritzker '87 will be our keynote speaker at the Grand Finale on Friday April 8th

Thanks for your support.

Howie Rhee
Advisor to the Duke Start-Up Challenge

Announcing the Duke Start-Up Challenge: Alumni Track

2010-12-16T17:43:00.002-05:00

We are pleased to announce the creation of the Duke Start-Up Challenge:Alumni Track

All Duke alumni are invited to participate in the Duke Start-Up Challenge: Alumni Track, hosted by DukeGEN. This is an opportunity for you to cultivate your startup idea and see what other members of Duke's entrepreneurial community think about it. The first step is to submit a two-page document describing your idea, due on Thursday, February 10th at 5pm ET. Feedback will be provided to everyone that submits an idea. At that point, the top 40 ideas will be selected, and invited to complete a business plan and investor pitch, presented via Skype in March. The best teams will be recognized and announced on DukeGEN.

What: Duke Start-Up Challenge: Alumni Track

When: This spring

Executive Summaries Due: February 10, 2011 at 5pm ET

Finalists Selected: February 24, 2011

Investor Pitches presented via Skype: March 23, 2011

Where: Done virtually

Hosted by the Duke Global Entrepreneurship Network (DukeGEN)

Open to all startups led by Duke alumni

Cost: Free

Learn more

Shopping for Gifts from Duke alumni-led startups

2010-12-08T15:24:00.002-05:00

It's that time of year again, when many people are looking for gifts for family and friends.

We did a quick analysis of Duke alumni-led startups that sell gifts, and found a number of good ones.

Looking for a gift from a Duke alumni-led startup?

Check out:

Duke Clothes - http://www.shopschoolhouse.com/
Desserts - http://www.meetmistti.com/
Duke Photos - http://www.replayphotos.com/
Desserts - http://www.annasgourmetgoodies.com/
Coconut Water - http://zico.com/
Wine - http://carinacellars.com/
T-shirts - http://www.eno.cn/zh/index.htm
Books - http://www.flatworldknowledge.com/
Beer - http://www.fullsteam.ag/
Learning skills - http://www.greenivyed.com/
Marinades, Salsas - http://www.gunthersgourmet.com/
Sports apparel for women - http://www.gokalyx.com/
Magazine for trivia junkies - http://www.mentalfloss.com/
Bicycles - http://www.performancebike.com/
High-end Audio Equipment/Guitars - http://www.soundpure.com/
Soccer Equipment - http://www.soccer.com/
Cheese - http://www.pastoralartisan.com/
Personalized Handbags - http://www.snaptotes.com
Comfort for your dogs - http://www.thundershirt.com/
Organize your receipts - http://www.shoeboxed.com

-Howie

5th Annual Elevator Pitch Finals with Greylock Partners!

2010-11-12T21:15:00.010-05:00

With over 400 in attendance, Duke celebrated the cornerstone event of the fall, the 5th Annual Elevator Pitch Finals with Greylock Partners! The evening featured a lineup of 18 Duke student startup company pitches led by the winners of each of the 8 different qualifying track competitions held during the week. Each competing team had exactly 1 minute to convince the judges and the audience why their company was worthy of the $5000 Grand Prize.

Following a welcome from hosts Jonathan Lee (Fuqua ‘11) and Meghan Gallagher (Fuqua ‘11), tonight’s judges were introduced. Each judge had extensive experience with entrepreneurship and the challenges of building successful start-ups. Judge David Thacker also served as the Keynote speaker for the evening and addressed the lively, vuvuzela-wielding crowd with insightful lessons in entrepreneurship from his early experience at Google and more recently as a venture capitalist with Greylock Partners. Judging tonight’s event were:

David Thacker '97. Associate Partner at Greylock Partners, Menlo Park, California.
Joining Greylock in 2008, David’s primary focus includes consumer Internet and enterprise software. He played a key role in Greylock's investments in Cloudera and Pandora and is closely working with several portfolio companies including Auditude, Oodle, Redfin and TellApart. David is currently on the board of directors at Gowalla, a location-based mobile social network. Prior to Greylock, David was a group product manager at Google. During his five years at Google, he oversaw the development of key components of the AdWords advertising system and led a product management team focused on new products for advertising agencies and strategic partners. In addition, David relocated to Europe for two years where he built Google’s product development organization in the region and drove the expansion of Google’s products into international markets. Earlier in his career, David held product development, technical consulting and sales roles at pcOrder, an enterprise software company that provided e-commerce solutions to the computer industry. During this time, pcOrder held an initial public offering (NASDAQ: PCOR) and was later acquired by Trilogy Software. David has also worked at Credit Suisse First Boston, IBM, and Electronic Arts. David holds a BA in Computer Science and Economics from Duke University and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Tom McMurray '76, '78, '80. Founder and President of Marine Ventures Foundation (MVF) and former General Partner at Sequoia Capital, Menlo Park, California.
Tom was a general partner at Sequoia Capital in Silicon Valley for nine years. He is the Founder and President of Marine Ventures Foundation (MVF), a family foundation that both conducts and funds innovative conservation research and advocacy for pelagic fisheries and also funds cold water stream restoration and advocacy work. Since forming the foundation in 2000, MVF has funded a wide range of scientific and educational programs for bluefin tuna, white marlin, bonefish, dolphinfish, whale sharks, striped bass, tarpon, trout and forage fish such as menhaden. The foundation is also engaged currently in field tagging studies of dolphin (mahi-mahi) and bonefish in the Bahamas and Caribbean and also the development of GIS tools for studying migration patterns of pelagic fish.

Christy Shaffer, Ph.D. Entrepreneur, Biotech Executive, and Former CEO of Inspire Pharmaceuticals, Durham, North Carolina.
Dr. Shaffer has been Consultant of Inspire Pharmaceuticals Inc. since February 22, 2010, and served as its Chief Executive Officer since January 1999 until February 22, 2010. She also served as President of the organization from July 1, 2005 until February 22, 2010. She joined Inspire Pharmaceuticals Inc. in June 1995 as its first full-time employee, Director of Clinical Operations. She has fifteen years of experience in drug development within the pharmaceutical industry. She previously served in a variety of positions in the clinical research division of Burroughs Wellcome Co. including International Project Leader for cardiopulmonary programs. She served as Associate Director of pulmonary research in the department of pulmonary and critical care medicine at Burroughs Wellcome. She serves currently as a Director of Clinipace, Inc. and has been a Director of Inspire Pharmaceuticals Inc. since January 1, 1999. Dr. Shaffer served as a Director of The Council for Entrepreneurial Development from 2005 to 2006. Dr. Shaffer holds a Ph.D. in Pharmacology from the University of Tennessee and completed two years of postdoctoral training in cardiovascular research in the Biochemistry Department at the Chicago Medical School before her one-year postdoctoral appointment at University of North Carolina.

Peter Heffring. President and CEO of Expion, Raleigh, North Carolina.
For the past 15 years, Peter has been engaged in bringing the customer experience to the highest level at companies around the world. He was co-founder and CEO of Ceres Integrated Solutions, which quickly became a leading provider of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Software and analytical services. Ceres was sold in 2000 to NCR for $90M. During Peter's tenure, Ceres provided solutions to over one hundred Fortune 1000 clients such as Wal-Mart, JCPenney, Wells Fargo, and Travelocity. Heffring is ready to jump back in with Expion. He is passionate about taking the principles of Enterprise Social Media Management and CRM to combine them with today's world of online social connections to yield even better customer engagement and retention.

Companies competing in tonight’s Elevator Pitch Finals event were:

IT and Media Track
Siren Alerts – a personal alert application used to replace restaurant pagers.
SideWalk – realtime, on-demand digital push promotions for small businesses via smartphones.
JobStock – a graphical method of displaying job postings for online job seekers.

Social Enterprises Track
WETOA – Women’s Empowerment Through Outdoor Adventure: providing a space for retreat and renewal for likeminded women.
The Rushie – a faith-based, lifestyle magazine targeting 16-24 year old women worldwide.

Energy & Environment Track
High Tower Energy – energy storage solutions utilizing existing water towers.
CarBone – the first ever organic bone battery - poised to enter a $16.9 Billion market.

Healthcare & Life Sciences Track
Camras Vision – a tool designed for ophthalmologists in treating glaucoma patients.
Clear Bolus – the first ever fully transparent x-ray bolus, used to focus radiation therapy x-rays.
Medical Learning Games – plans to utilize computerized gaming technology to address the bottleneck in contemporary medical training.

Products & Services Track
Drink-up Devices – a revolutionary alcohol concentration sensor that is portable, and inexpensive.
Advisync – Predictive data analytics for university student class schedules.

Women-led Start-ups Track
dreamPL8 – an online food vendor review website offering customized food solutions for people with special diets.
Bubble Tea Factory – a new competitor to coffee: an international beverage delight of sweet milk and chewy bubbles.

Undergraduate-led Track 1
Askapade – a simple online game where people can ask their friends for help and receive virtual gifts for helping others.
HeyCouldYa.com – an online marketplace where students can post and complete favors for friends.

Undergraduate-led Track 2
Nooch – Allows for the instant, peer-to-peer, secure transfer of money allowing people to split bills among friends.
ShelfRelief – A novel and time saving textbook trading and selling site.

Tonight’s winners:

The Judges’ Choice Prize of $5000 was awarded to Nooch
The Audience’s Choice Prize of $1500 was awarded to Advisync

Additional mentions:

The Judges' Choice Runner-Up was CarBone
The Judges’ Choice for "Best Pitch Delivery" was ShelfRelief.com

Thanks to everyone who attended tonight’s finals competition and congratulations to all of the winners!!
And thank you to Douglas Hanna '13 and A Small Orange, for sponsoring the Afterparty.

Pictures available at: http://picasaweb.google.com/hwr2duke/Day5OfTheElevatorPitchCompetitionPartOfTheDukeStartUpChallenge#

Written by Trevor Scott, edited by Howie Rhee

Day 4 of the Duke Start-up Challenge Elevator Pitch Competition: Healthcare & Life Sciences Track and Energy & Environment Track

2010-11-11T11:00:00.003-05:00

A solid night over in Schiciano Auditorium at the Fitzpatrick Center for Interdisciplinary Engineering, Medicine and Applied Sciences (CIEMAS). 5 teams are advancing (not the usual 4).

Energy & Environment Track

The judges were:

Luke Fishback, Founder and CEO of PlotWatt.com
Van Morris ‘78, CEO of US Microgrid

Advancing to the Elevator Pitch Finals with Greylock Partners on November 12th are:

Audience Choice: CarBone (also was the Judges' runner-up)
Judges' Choice: High Tower Energy

CarBone is a patented process that recycles waste animal bone, converting it into carbon electrodes for use in modern electronics.

(It should be noted that CarBone also won this track last year, but they are eligible to compete since they were not a finalist in the Investor Pitch Competition in the Spring. )

High Tower Energy seeks to "Use retired water towers as high efficiency, low cost energy storage devices to take advantage of huge daily fluctuations in electricity prices."

The Judges' Runner-Up selection also went to CarBone.

Healthcare & Life Sciences Track
The judges were:

Jonathan Gindes ‘03, Co-founder and CFO of Affinergy
Matt Kane ‘06, Co-founder and CEO of Precision Biosciences

Advancing to the Elevator Pitch Finals with Greylock Partners on November 12th are:

Audience Choice: Medical Learning Games
Judges' Choice: Camras Vision
Bonus Judges' Choice*: ClearBolus

Medical Learning Games is a software company that leverages established sophisticated gaming technology to solve the clinical experience bottleneck in healthcare education.

Camras Vision writes "We are providing ophthalmologists with a novel device, that can provide an effective first solution to glaucoma and stop the progression of blindness caused by this chronic disease."

ClearBolus is "a bolus for radiotherapy, with the novel property of complete transparency, allowing for more efficient and accurate skin cancer treatment."

* We had an administrative error (organizers fault, not the judges' fault) with the Audience Choice voting. There was a tie (two teams had 6 votes), Medical Learning Games and Last Call. The procedure is to let the judges break the tie. But when the information was passed from the MC to the judges, it was that "Team 1 and 5 are tied". They looked at their sheets (not knowing their order was different) and they said "let's go with ClearBolus" (their Team 5). (On a side note, it turns out that ClearBolus was already their Judge's Runner Up pick.)

We went forward with the announcements, not knowing there was an error. And we caught the error just after we announced that ClearBolus was the winner. We paused the event, reconvened the judges and decided to break the original tie (Medical Learning Games and Last Call; they chose Medical Learning Games). In addition, we didn't think it was right to tell ClearBolus they were now out. So we added a Bonus Judges' Choice to let them in. The Judges' Runner-up, it turns out, also went to ClearBolus (but was decided before the error happened).

Pictures of the event are here: http://picasaweb.google.com/hwr2duke/Day3OfTheElevatorPitchCompetitionPartOfTheDukeStartUpChallenge# (Thanks to Olgun Kukrer for taking the photos in both rooms)

Written by Howie Rhee

Day 3 of the Duke Start-up Challenge Elevator Pitch Competition: IT & Media and Products & Services Tracks

2010-11-10T15:22:00.004-05:00

A great night with almost 40 teams competing in the IT & Media Track and the Products & Services Track (which functions as a miscellaneous track for teams that don't fit the other functional tracks). We had two rooms that were standing room only.

IT & Media Track

The judges were:

Brooks Bell ’02, Founder and CEO of Brooks Bell Interactive
Jed Carlson ’05, Co-founder and COO of ReverbNation
Jesse Lipson ’00, Founder and CEO of ShareFile.com
Mike Rasmussen ’03, CEO of Republic of Fun
Joe Velk ‘85, Angel Investor

Advancing to the Elevator Pitch Finals with Greylock Partners on November 12th are:

Audience Choice: SideWalk
Judges' Choice: Siren Alerts

Sidewalk describes itself as follows: "Get more, pay less: spend smarter with the Sidewalk app. Businesses get foot traffic on demand, and you get great deals - everyone wins."

Siren Alerts is a personal alert application to be used in lieu of restaurant pagers.

Also mentioned was the Judges' Runner-Up: Redeemio

Redeemio: the disruptive innovator in the daily deal “grouponomy.” Specifically? Aggregation. Personalization. Lead-generation. In a billion-dollar market.

Products & Services Track (miscellaneous)

The judges were:

Patricia Blizzard ‘99, Founder of Caju Salon
Chris Duke ‘87, Founder of Anna’s Gourmet Goodies
Jay Mebane ‘90 / ‘99, Co-founder and COO of Snaptotes.com
Sean Lilly Wilson ‘00, Founder of Full Steam Brewery

Advancing to the Elevator Pitch Finals with Greylock Partners on November 12th are:

Audience Choice: Advisync
Judges' Winner: Drink-Up Device

Advisync asks, "Ever wonder where will you go? Navigating the many different paths can be an arduous process, but what if there was someone, something out there that could help you find the path so you can get going, faster? Advisync is a new suite of tools to provide smart recommendations to you based on our unique data mining algorithms. Advisync. Sync Different, Be different."

Drink-Up Device asks, "Ever wonder what is really in the bottom of your red plastic cup? With this discreet alcohol concentration sensor you will know whether you are getting ripped off or should hold back on that second round."

Also mentioned was the Judges' Runner Up: AirMart

AirMart is a store that sells and packages groceries and other essentials conveniently for travelers upon landing at airports.

Pictures of the event are here: http://picasaweb.google.com/hwr2duke/Day3OfTheElevatorPitchCompetitionPartOfTheDukeStartUpChallenge# (Thanks to Olgun Kukrer for taking the photos in both rooms)

Written by Howie Rhee

Day 2 of the Duke Start-up Challenge Elevator Pitch Competition: Undergrad-led Startups Track

2010-11-04T20:14:00.016-04:00

29 Duke University undergraduate-led start-up teams pitched their business ideas tonight at the second sequential day of the Elevator Pitch Competition. From a company designed to pay users for watching commercials to a high tech firm promising batteries made from bones, diverse, innovative, and intriguing company concepts were presented before a live audience and judges - each team vying for a spot to compete at the Elevator Pitch Finals with Greylock Partners. The Elevator Pitch Finals competition will be held on November 12th at Fuqua, and the entire Duke community is invited to attend. That night, each of the two winners from the 8 tracks of enterprises will be allowed to compete for the $5000 cash prize selected by the judges and a $1500 audience choice prize which will be selected by the viewers using live text message voting.

Live from Duke University
Hosted live by Vidhan Agrawal (Pratt’12) and Dovina Qu (Pratt ’12) at Duke University’s Bryan Center, each of the 29 competing start-up teams were given exactly 1 minute to convince the judges why their company deserves to be funded with a seed round of investment capital. Judging the event was a panel of seasoned start-up business professionals:

Justin Klein ’99, MD ‘06 – Principal at NEA Venture Partners
Doug Eisner ’07 – Co-founder and COO of Grassroots Bio
Taylor Mingos ’07 – Founder and CEO of Shoeboxed.com.
Matt Kane '06 - Co-founder and CEO of Precision Biosciences
Jon Fjeld '90 - Executive Director, Fuqua Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation

Competition among the teams was tight. Well prepared pitches and passionate pleas for funding heightened the excitement of the evening’s already electric, entrepreneurial atmosphere.

Pictures of tonight's event can be found here: http://picasaweb.google.com/hwr2duke/Day2OfTheElevatorPitchCompetition2010DukeStartUpChallenge#

Undergraduate-led Startup Track Contestants

For this track the rule was: "Whoever is pitching must be an undergrad, and the same people pitching in this track must pitch in all other tracks and in the Finals."

Tonight’s competitors were:

Track 1

Auris Ingenum
Airmart
Gebshed
inCadence
Yoh Show
CarBone
Corona Enterprises
Askapade
Smart Shot
EnergySync
Pocket Blue Light
HeyCouldYa.com (formerly Emom.com)
Winyata
ClearBolus

Track 2

InterestIn
Nooch
The Ujamaa Project
FriendCal
Pure Hair Salon
ShelfRelief.com
Connectwork
Golden Diamond Mansion Certification
Mufu
AdApt
time2work
TheRushie
Advisync
Scribblit
Smarticles

Each Track produced an:

Audience Choice Winner
Judge's Choice Winner
and a Judge's Choice Runner-up

In addition, a Best Freshmen-led Team* prize was awarded.

The Winners

The winners of the audience choice awards were HeyCouldYa.com (formerly Emom.com) and ShelfRelief.com.

HeyCouldYa.com (formerly Emom.com) is a network connecting students in need of college-related favors/assistance to students willing to oblige for a reasonable price.

ShelfRelief is a website startup that asks "Are you tired of paying hundreds of dollars for books and getting just a few bucks when you sell them back? Let us solve the problem for you."

The Judges' Choice for the overall winners of the Undergraduate-led start-up track were Askapade and Nooch.

Askapade is a Q&A platform that makes it easier and more fun to ask your friends for help.
Nooch is a revolutionary new Peer-to-Peer Money Transfer System. Web-based design will utilize social media and cell phones to allow quicker, easier and cheaper transactions. Immediate access to funds and low fees and will attract a wide range of users.

inCadence and ShelfRelief.com were the Judges' Runner-ups in their respective tracks.

inCadence forges entirely new perspectives of the physical world through seamless on-locale augmented reality delivered on mobile platforms.

Both the Judges' Choice winners and Audience Choice winners will advance to the Elevator Pitch Finals event on November 12th at Duke University featuring Greylock Partners. Congratulations winners!

* To encourage freshmen to participate, we created a Best Freshmen-led Team prize of $150. We had four freshmen teams (who, randomly assigned, were all competing in Track 2). So as not to bias the judges, we did not tell them about this prize beforehand. In the case that no Freshman-led team was awarded points in the judging process, we were going to ask the judges independently to select a Freshmen-led Team prize winner. As it turned out, Scribblit received points in the judging process and was awarded the prize.

Scribblit is "a textual (with optional integration of picture/sound/video within text) media-sharing website where users can read, create, and share original content for free. "

Congratulations, Scribblit.

Pictures of tonight's event can be found here: http://picasaweb.google.com/hwr2duke/Day2OfTheElevatorPitchCompetition2010DukeStartUpChallenge#
(Thanks to Olgun Kukrer '12, and Tim Canavan '12)

Posted by Trevor Scott, edited by Howie Rhee '04

5th Annual Elevator Pitch Competition begins, part of the Duke Startup Challenge Elevator Pitch Competition

2010-11-03T20:04:00.017-04:00

The 5th Annual Elevator Pitch Competition, hosted by the Duke Start-Up Challenge commenced with an eventful round of pitches from the Women-led startups track and the Social Enterprises track. Hosted by Meghan Gallagher (Fuqua ’11) and Jonathan Lee (Fuqua '11) at the Fuqua School of Business, 20 student teams pitched their startup ideas to mark the first day of competition among aspiring entrepreneurs throughout Duke University.

Summary of the Competition:
The 2010-2011 Duke Startup Challenge Elevator Pitch Competition begins with student entrepreneurs divided among 8 different qualifying tracks, competing in front of a live audience and a live panel of experienced judges. Each team has exactly one minute to pitch their business idea before the judges, and receive one question from the judges. At the conclusion of each qualifying track event, 2 Finalist teams are be selected to compete at the Elevator Pitch Finals with Greylock Partners on November 12th, 2010, hosted in Geneen Auditorium at the Fuqua School of Business, where they will be able to compete for a cash prize of $5000, selected by the judges, and an audience choice prize of $1500, selected via text-messaging.

More information can be found at: http://www.dukestartupchallenge.org/2010-2011/epc

Summary of the Women-Led Start-ups Track

Tonight marked the commencement of the Women-Led Start-ups Track, the second year of this track, meant to encourage women from across campus to be entrepreneurial. It was a strong showing. Teams were led by students from across Duke University and featured pitches by:
-Complete Makeover
-Expressions
-Bubble Tea Factory
-Pure Salon
-Street Snacks
-Asteria Propulsion
-Innovation Education International
-dreamPl8
-The Morph Purse
-TheRushie
-K Kane
-Scribblit

Our judges were Sarah Kate Fishback '09, Liliana Valle '09, and Nancy Zeleniak.

The Winners:
While the judges deliberated over their choice of a winner, host Meghan Gallagher directed the audience to the secure text-message voting system to determine the Audience Choice Award.

From the judges, the runner-up of the Women-led Start-up Track was Street Snacks and the overall winner was DreamPl8. And, after the audience's text-messaging votes were tallied, the winner of the Audience Choice Award was Bubble Tea Factory.

Both dreamPl8 and Bubble Tea Factory will advance to the Elevator Pitch Finals on November 12th with Greylock Partners.

dreamPL8 is an online food review website dedicated to helping consumers with diverse foodstyles find food vendors that can meet their needs and wants in their own community.

Bubble Tea Factory's goal is "Introducing Bubble Tea to the Netherlands: A fun, exotic and classic Taiwanese drink"

K Kane is a fine jewelry line whose pieces are as unique as the individuals who wear them. Dissatisfied with the monogram jewelry on the market several years ago, founder Kate Kane designed and handcrafted a pendant featuring her initials. When friends and strangers repeatedly asked for similar pieces, Kate realized that she was on to something. The economic downturn has caused consumers to be significantly more mindful of their discretionary investments, which has translated into more considered purchasing and gifting with a mind towards timelessness, quality and emotional significance. The unifying factor behind K Kane designs is personalization. While K Kane “signature pendants” currently allow Kate to grow her business on a highly customized level requiring very little start-up capital, the next step is “jeweled poetry,” a jewelry play on Magnetic Poetry that allows customers to build phrases of significance to them out of golden words – eventually available in several languages and fonts – and add these words to sophisticated chains and bracelets.

Pictures of tonight's event can be found here:

http://picasaweb.google.com/hwr2duke/DukeStartUpChallengeElevatorPitchCompetition2010#

-Written by Trevor Scott, edited by Howie Rhee

---------------

Summary of the Social Enterprises Track

Tonight we had 8 great pitches in Social Enterprises Track

Our judges were:

- Bill Stevenson ‘96, Formerly Director of Social Investments at Lenovo

- Al Huntoon, Founder and CEO, Catalyst Consulting Services

- Keith Artin ‘99, COO of TROSA

The Winners:

Advancing to the finals event are WETOA the judges choice and TheRushie the audience choice.

Scribblit was selected as the judges runner-up.

WETOA stands for Women's Empowerment Through Outdoor Adventure and is provides women aged 30 to 60 with the opportunity to adventure in the outdoors and revitalize their mental and physical potential.

TheRushie is a "Social Network and Magazine for young Christian women

Scribblit is a textual (with optional integration of picture/sound/video within text) media-sharing website where users can read, create, and share original content for free.

A big thank you to all of our judges and competitors!

Don't forget to come to the Elevator Pitch Finals with special guest speaker David Thacker '97, of Greylock Partners, one of the top venture capital firms in the world. Investors in Facebook, LinkedIn, Pandora, etc... on Friday, Nov 12 @ Fuqua, Geneen Auditorium, 5:30pm Networking Event, 7:30pm Finals

Free vuvuzelas for everyone in attendance.

See http://www.dukestartupchallenge.org/2010-2011/epc/finals for more details.

Pictures of tonight's event can be found here:

http://picasaweb.google.com/hwr2duke/DukeStartUpChallengeElevatorPitchCompetition2010#

(Photos by Vidhan Agrawal and Olgun Kukrer)

- Written by Tim Canavan '12

Great 2nd DukeGEN Investor Pitch Event in New York City with over 100 Duke alumni in attendance

2010-10-20T07:31:00.001-04:00

We held a successful DukeGEN Investor Event last night, hosted at DogPatch Labs (thanks Peter Flint) and sponsored by SNR Denton (thanks Chip Korn, Law '96).

The room was packed, the audience was energetic, the pitches were great, and the panel did an excellent job.

About 100 Duke alumni came and filled up the room at DogPatch Labs.

The full set of pictures can be found here: http://picasaweb.google.com/eshipatduke/DukeGEN2ndInvestorPitchEvent#

Here's who pitched:

CoverHound (San Francisco, CA) - Basil Enan, Trinity '03 – basil@coverhound.com

Americans spend over $180 billion a year on car insurance, but shopping for car insurance sucks - CoverHound is changing that. We give smart recommendations based on each shopper's unique needs and preferences, provide all the information needed to make an informed buying decision, and make getting quotes easy -- online or over the phone.

Foodably (Palo Alto, CA) - Brian Schwartz, Trinity '09 - brian@foodably.com

Foodably finds the best local food based on your dietary needs. Foodably enables restaurants and grocery stores to engage with their patrons who have dietary needs.

FriendCal (Durham, NC and New York, NY) - Andrew Brown, Trinity '11 and Lauren Gundrum, Trinity '09 - andrew.brown@duke.edu

FriendCal is a social calendaring application that simplifies group planning by allowing users to share and make plans on a common calendar. FriendCal will use these future plans to offer discounts to related venues and events.

Medical Learning Games (Durham, NC) - Peter Lamar, Fuqua '12 – peter.lamar@fuqua.duke.edu

Learning games for Health Professionals

MoxMe! (Mansfield Center, CT) - Danny Briere, Trinity '83, Fuqua '85 – dbriere@moxme.com

MoxMe! is a SuperGroup platform that powers an interconnected group experience across social media. MoxMe! overlays the existing social media group experience with higher level privacy, policies and programs, and enables a feature-rich group to exist simultaneously across a broad range of social sites, devices and web sites.

PhySmart (Springfield, VA) - Rachel Greenberg, Fuqua '99 - rcgreenberg71@yahoo.com

PhySmart is an online marketplace connecting medical professionals with the vendors that have the products and services they need. By integrating the efficiency of a basic user profile with the capability to do anonymous searches, PhySmart helps medical professionals make smart choices and ensures vendors get qualified leads.

Republic of Fun (Durham, NC) - Mike Rasmussen, Fuqua '03- mike.rasmussen@repfun.com

Republic of Fun is re-inventing games publishing in the digital download age. Using a patent pending "Fan-Sourcing" technology and methodology, Republic of Fun runs game IDEA contests among its fans for games on smart phones, XBLA, PSN and WiiWare. Winning ideas are then produced by Republic of Fun with ongoing involvement from the community, top contributors are rewarded with prizes, ranks, and acheivements. This creates a marketing and merchandising channel outside the vertically integrated platform owners, and gives Republic of Fun a measurable advantage in the games they release.

WingTips Interactive (New York, NY) - Kimberly Karpf Skelton, Trinity '03 - kimberly@wingtip.it

WingTips is a product sharing and storing platform that enables consumers to assemble products in a digital closet from their favorite retailers online and get instant feedback from their friends. Simply put, WingTips is Wingmen and Wingwomen sending tips.

And here's who was on the panel:

Chris Fralic, First Round Capital (thanks to Josh Felser T'86, B '90 for the introduction)

Chris Fralic is a Partner at First Round Capital, an early stage venture capital firm with offices in Philadelphia, San Francisco, and New York. Chris has 25 years of technology industry experience, with significant Internet business development roles since 1996. Prior to joining First Round in early 2006, Chris was VP of Business Development at social bookmarking and tagging company del.icio.us through the Yahoo! acquisition. Chris was also one of the early employees and VP of Business Development at Half.com starting in 1999, and after the eBay acquisition spent six years with eBay in a variety of entertainment, business development and media roles. Chris earned his BS in Finance from Villanova University and his MBA from St. Joseph's University in Philadelphia.

Rob Go '01, NextView Ventures

Rob is a co-founder of NextView Ventures, a micro-VC firm focused on Internet-enabled innovation. He was previously a venture capitalist at Spark Capital and was the product lead for search and discovery for EBay. Blog: www.robgo.org. Twitter: @robgo

Mark Peter Davis '01, DFJ Gotham

Mark is a NY based venture capitalist at DFJ Gotham Ventures. In addition to being a VC, he is the author of a blog (markpeterdavis.com) that addresses industry topics and offers guidance to entrepreneurs on how to raise venture capital. He is also an active community organizer and founded the NY Venture Community and the Columbia Venture Community.

Kal Vepuri '03, The Trisiras Group

Kal is the founder of The Trisiras Group, a holding company he formed in 2009 to manage his investing activities and operating companies. A software engineer turned entrepreneur, Kal bootstrapped a few technology and telecom businesses during and after his time at Duke, where he received a B.S.E. in Electrical Engineering, Computer Science and Economics. He spends much of his time working with founders and management teams of high-growth companies.

Peter Flint, Polaris Ventures and Dogpatch Labs

Peter joined Polaris Venture Partners in 2003 and invests in early stage companies focused on consumer internet and mobile applications and infrastructure. He currently sits on the Boards of stickybits, JIBE and BlackArrow. In December 2009 Peter opened Dogpatch Labs NY which currently has 14 companies and 37 entrepreneurs in residence. Prior to joining Polaris Peter had a very successful operating career with MTV Networks, New England Sports Network and QVC. Peter was also a Managing Director with Ramsey Beirne Assocaites, one of the most highly regarded executive search firms in technology.

And here's who attended: http://events.linkedin.com/DukeGEN-Angel-Pitch-Event-NYC/pub/390023

After the pitches, the judges convened, and the audience had a Q&A with the teams.
Then, the audience voted:

The Audience Choice prize went to: Republic of Fun!

Then, the judges came back, gave feedback to each team (in front of the audience), and then announced their results.
Judges 2nd Runner Up:
FriendCal

Judges 1st Runner Up:

Republic of Fun

Winner:

CoverHound

Congrats to Basil Enan, Trinity '03!

Basil will get a call with Vicki Levine BSE '00 of Lightbank, a 100mm fund.

Thanks again to DogPatch Labs and to SNR Denton.
And thanks to Tom Powell '09 (lead organizer) for making it all happen. And to Jozef Krakora '10, Shalav Gupta '10, and others who helped volunteer and make things happen.

Posted by Howie Rhee '04, Co-chair of DukeGEN

Video of P4E Idea Pitch Event

2010-09-02T21:02:00.001-04:00

Program for Entrepreneurs (P4E) - Idea Pitch Event

Thursday Sept 2nd, 4-7pm

Location: HCA Auditorium, Fuqua School of Business

Video of the P4E Idea Pitch Event on September 2nd.

http://lectopia.oit.duke.edu/ilectures/ilectures.lasso?ut=1230&id=30003

More info about the event: http://www.dukep4e.org/pitch-event

Pitch order

Golf & Fly
Votosphere
Smart Supermarket Cart
LifeDash
Academia
Addition: Salsa Timoteo
Connectivity- Anytime, Anywhere!!
Good Groceries
Autoextract
K Kane
Outdoor Adventure Travel Website
CDM (Comprehensive Disease Management)
MoxMe
Padel-Tennis City
Watu Research
Simple Steps Family and Wellness Center
Nonprofit Grants Finder

--
Howie Rhee, MBA
Managing Director, Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation
Fuqua School of Business, Duke University
Office A236
919-617-1123 Google Voice / Mobile
919-660-1929 Office

Learn more about Entrepreneurship at Duke - www.EntrepreneurshipAtDuke.com
and read our Duke Entrepreneurship Manual - www.dukeven.com.
Twitter: @EshipAtDuke

Top 10 Entrepreneurship At Duke Activities

2010-08-30T22:42:00.001-04:00

Top 10 Activities

Compete in the Duke Start-Up Challenge. $25,000 Grand Prize.
Join the Duke Global Entrepreneurship Network (DukeGEN) and connect with over 2000 Duke alumni and students
Join the Program for Entrepreneurs (P4E). Receive course credit towards starting a company.
Apply for the DUhatch Student Business Incubator
Visit EntrepreneurshipAtDuke.com
Take a class at Duke
Come to the Education Series. Hear from successful Duke alumni entrepreneurs.
Join the Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital Club (grad students) or The Duke Entrepreneur (undergraduates)
Connect with Durham startups and Triangle startups
Join the Startup Matchmaker Google Group. Find a startup or find a teammate.

Nice video profile of Sabi Sushi

2010-08-03T13:19:00.001-04:00

http://video.aol.ca/video-detail/wasabi-news-package/383008386

--
Howie Rhee, MBA
Managing Director, Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation
Fuqua School of Business, Duke University
Office A236
919-617-1123 Google Voice / Mobile
919-660-1929 Office

Learn more about Entrepreneurship at Duke - www.EntrepreneurshipAtDuke.com
and read our Duke Entrepreneurship Manual - www.dukeven.com.
Twitter: @EshipAtDuke