BYU Team Competes for $1 Million in Start-Up Funds and Chance at Opening NASDAQ
Utah Firms
BYU student start-up Property Solutions was announced today as one of twelve finalists in the National Institute for Entrepreneurship's Venture Bowl 2004. With hundreds of entrants, Venture Bowl is the nation's largest college business plan competition. All twelve finalist teams, including BYU students David Bateman and Benjamin Zimmer, will be brought to New York on April 24th to compete for a shot at winning a funding offer, and one fortunate person will be crowned Forbes Magazine's Future Capitalist. The Grand Prize winning team will open The NASDAQ Stock Market on Tuesday, April 27th at 9:30 a.m., which will be televised to millions around the globe.
"This is the third year for the Venture Bowl, and the quality of the participants is the best we've seen," comments Suzanne Isack, Executive Director of The National Institute for Entrepreneurship, adding, "We're not only impressed by the teams and their plans, we're equally impressed by how much support we've received from universities across the country."
Teams will present their plans to a celebrated panel of judges made up of distinguished business and thought leaders, including: Adriane Antler, Jones Day; Enlai Chu, Ancer Pharmaceuticals; Dr. Santanu Das, TransSwitch Corporation; Brian Le Gette, 180°s(tm), LLC; Andrea Macdonald, MacDonald Media; Andrew Maslow, Esq., Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center; Tom Potter, The Brooklyn Brewery; Paul Sun, President; Motia, Inc.; Chad Troutwine, VeritasPrep; and Julius Walls, Jr., Greyston Bakery.
"There's been a lot of talk lately about the lack of new job creation. It's been a pivotal issue in this election year. The fact is, though, small businesses generate some 75 percent of all new jobs," says David Geliebter, a serial entrepreneur and Managing Partner of Carrot Capital, a principal sponsor of Venture Bowl. "It's initiatives like the Venture Bowl, that are nurturing and encouraging young people to pursue the American Dream of starting a business. Michael Dell started his made-to-order computer business from his college dorm room. FedEx started as a business plan Fred Smith wrote for a Yale University class. There are hundreds of similar success stories, Netscape, Yahoo, Cisco Systems, and the list goes on."