From: Rohit Khare (rohit@uci.edu)
Date: Fri May 26 2000 - 00:38:18 PDT
http://siliconvalley.internet.com/news/article/0,2198,3531_379841,00.html
Bay Area Schools Snare Top Prizes at Biz Plan Competition
"By next year we'll bring the functionality to let you walk around this room
with a Palm and run a PowerPoint presentation."
By David Needle
One hundred and forty-three schools from across the country placed six
hundred entries involving over 2,000 students, but when the dust settled
only five Internet-related ventures remained to take the top, big bucks,
prizes.
The San Francisco Airport Marriott was the scene Tuesday night for the first
PLANedu competition sponsored by Palo Alto-based Garage.com where a team
from the University of California, San Francisco scored the $150,000 grand
prize for an ASP venture known as Quicksilver Genomics. Sharing the two
$50,000 1st place prizes was a team from Stanford with its Kwaish wireless
applications venture and KnowNow, a two-way Web notification endeavor from a
team at the University of California, Irvine.
Each of the five finalists had 15 minutes to present their business plan,
after which they grilled by an all star panel of Internet executives and
investors who determined the winners. Although these were college teams made
up of undergraduate and graduate students, the presentations were
professional quality, graphically appealing affairs promoting ambitious
business enterprises. Several of the teams included students with years of
work experience at large computer companies and some who've applied for
patents on their technology.
GRAND PRIZE WINNER
Quicksilver Genomics is an Application Service Provider for the structural
genomics market. The team's licensable technology enables pharmaceutical,
biotechnology, and academic researchers to rapidly discover patentable lead
compounds from unclassified gene sequences.
"Quicksilver Genomics exemplifies the remarkable business ideas that are
being developed by student entrepreneurs at universities across the
country," says Garage.com CEO Guy Kawasaki.
BRINGING DESKTOP APPS TO MOBILE DEVICES
"What is the killer application for the Palm (handheld computer)? The
(desktop applications) you're already using," says Anand Chandrasekaran, a
presenter for Kwaish, and an MS candidate in Electrical Engineering at
Stanford. Kwaish is a Hindu word for Dream.
The Kwaish application distribution network is designed to deliver any
business application to any wireless handheld device "quickly, cheaply, and
easily." Kwaish says it plans to generate revenue using its patent-pending
"Applications on Demand" architecture by selling subscriptions to mid-tier
businesses and other organizations. Kwaish projects it can reach $40 million
in revenue by 2003.
Chandrasekaran claims Kwaish has "home run potential" and a 9 month lead
over competitors. "By next year we'll bring the functionality to let you
walk around this room with a Palm and run a PowerPoint presentation," says
Chandrasekaran.
Rounding out the awards were the two winners of the 2nd place $25,000 prize:
Fluid Bandwidth, from the University of Texas, Austin described itself as an
Enterprise application integrator providing turnkey solutions for
Voice-over-IP.
RedFolio.com, from Purdue University, presented a Web-centric artificial
intelligence engineering solution for manufacturing and service businesses.
Garage.com, is an online venture capital company that helps entrepreneurs
and investors create, build, and fund promising early-stage technology
companies.
May 24, 2000
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