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Venture Startup Team Corrosion Solutions won it all at the Mai Business Plan Competition in Bangkok, Thailand. The team took first place winning US $12,000, admittance to the Bangkok executive entrepreneur training center ($14,000 value), and they received an entry to the MIT sponsored international investment competition in Istanbul in March. As icing on the cake, the team also won best presentation and most professional team of their opening round groups.
In the words of faculty advisor Chris Cunning, “Awesome performance – couldn’t be prouder! They really represented the University and the USA exceptionally.”
Often in pitching your venture to secure financing, physical endurance is pushed to the limit. This was especially true for Corrosion Solutions. Just 4 days and 11,000 air miles removed from their last competition, the Spirit of Enterprise Competition in Cincinnati, the team successfully advanced to the finals. While the team did not advance out of their first round track, they came back in the afternoon to win the wild card round. Start to finish, it was a 14 hour day in a time zone 15 hours ahead of PST.
The final round was televised live on Thailand’s “Money TV” channel, which is the local CNBC affiliate. Harriet Foster, a representative from the US Embassy was in attendance at the competition and tweeted from the event (@THUSCreate). Another US team (Cornell) also made it to the finals, so the US was well represented. Needless to say, Jake, Brian and Jeff were in top form for the finals. Congratulations guys!
About Corrosion Solutions
Corrosion Solutions provides a surface treatment that allows lower-grade stainless steel to resist corrosion as effectively as higher-grade stainless steel in high-temperature and high-heat environments. Customers can realize cost savings of 25-30% on steel costs with applications including grills, heat exchangers, turbines and other energy related applications.
The odds were against us. Five first-year MBAs. No background in solar energy. No connection to Eastern Africa. But when the Hult Global Case Competition picked our team to represent the University of Oregon, we couldn’t resist a good challenge. Our task was to design a solution to increase access to clean, renewable solar energy in Africa. As one of 300 teams picked from over 4,000 applications, we were set to compete against schools from around the world.
What was the case you were working on?
We were consulting for SolarAid, a U.K.-based company. They have two divisions within the company and the division we consulted for, SunnyMoney, sells solar lamps and chargers in East Africa. There is a huge need for solar in developing markets, but it is difficult to implement because of cost barriers. Africa is still dependent on kerosene for light. Kerosene is really toxic, dangerous, and extremely expensive for rural African households. Solar is clean, safe, and renewable – freeing up money for families to spend on food, education, etc.
SunnyMoney has had some success in the countries they are currently in– Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi, and Zambia – but they were ready to scale and needed to figure out how. That’s where we came in. The Hult Competition allowed SunnyMoney to crowd-source the best student ideas for scaling their business.
What was it like to work on this kind of project?
It was incredibly challenging – but in an awesome way. Andrew sums it up: “This was a truly rewarding project that required me to think creatively, contribute to a team environment and work outside my typical comfort zones, in order to develop a unique solution to a challenge that needs to be resolved.” We were consulting for a business that wanted a good bottom line, but also had a social goal of affordable lighting. We had to balance doing well financially and doing good socially, which stretched what business is traditionally about.
The team meetings leading up to and in San Francisco were incredibly fun with a ton of team bonding happening, and that made it easier when we were working hard to research and learn about the economy and culture of East Africa. There were even several nights we got kicked out of Lillis because the building was shutting down.
Watching our team and ideas evolve was also satisfying. We really went from “a big jumble of everyone’s initial thoughts to a unique and well planned model,” Shannon explains.
We were blown away by the support we received from the University of Oregon. We were extremely lucky to have the support of Randy Swangard and Dave Boush, who helped us secure funding to get to San Francisco. We also had help from Anne Forrestel and Ron Severson who gave us insights on pitching, and microfinance, respectively. Finally, Cleven Mmari, a native of Tanzania was gracious enough to detail the Tanzanian political and social structure, and LCB alum and CEO of EcoZoom Ben West helped us understand manufacturing and distribution in Africa.
 
What secrets do you have for others considering case competitions?
We learned so much! But if we had to distill it down to a few quick and easy tips:
Remember the emotional connection. It’s easy to get lost in the details of your strategy. Andrew explains: “When you only have one shot to impress people, you need to be extremely clear and concise while also telling a story that evokes an emotional response.” Another trick that helps add substance: “Unbeknownst to me was the importance of using photos” in your slide deck, says Paul.
Forget about the numbers until you’ve reached a great solution. Paul sums this up well, “The fact that a number appears in the solution makes it easy to conclude that numbers are important in execution. In reality, an excellent idea trumps a good-but-not-great cost-effective solution. One team’s solution required an investment of $8 million, but when a big return, both financial and social, is as clear as they made it, $8 million is probably not hard to generate.”
Obviously you need both good content and delivery to be successful, but great delivery will set you apart. Every team had great knowledge, but what really set the winning team apart was their delivery. Though we collected a lot of information, we could have spent more time on giving a compelling and emotional presentation.
The competition was truly a team effort, but it wasn’t just about the five people on our team. “Helpful connections are everywhere – you just need to open your eyes to them,” says Jess.
What’s up with those sunglasses?
That’s a funny story. We won these Shady Peeps (a business started by UO alums) on the OMBA rafting trip during Prologue. There was a contest for which boat had the most spirit and the prize were pairs of Shady Peeps. Every member of our SunnyMoney team happened to have been on that winning boat.
We wore green and Shady Peeps at the competition to show our Oregon pride. As Jess puts it, there was a beautiful moment when we were “having our team’s picture taken in our suits, green shirts and ties, and Shady Peeps, in front of the Hult backdrop, with a swarming crowd of competitors and colleagues. We wore green with pride and didn’t take the responsibility lightly.” We weren’t afraid to be recognizable.
 
We are looking forward to the next opportunity to create a better world through business. Thank you for putting up such a great event, Hult.
-The OMBA SunnyMoney team
Grace Chang, Paul Chun, Shannon Oliver, Andrew White, Jessica Zutz
For students in the Innovation & Entrepreneurship track, Venture Startup provides the opportunity to develop a business plan and pitch it to investors. Most groups form and develop their plans during the summer in the Technology Entrepreneurship Program. After TEP, teams continue to refine their ideas during the fall term in New Venture Planning. In the Winter term, teams perfect their presentations for the business plan competition season. By Spring, teams are ready to pitch their businesses to investors.
To help us prepare, a series of vetting sessions are lined up with investors and entrepreneurs. As we found out last week in Portland, these vetting sessions are the real deal. Investors go over our plans and presentations with a fine tooth comb and don’t hesitate to point out the risks, gaps, and weaknesses they see. It’s a bit nerve-wracking, but as a business student, I couldn’t ask for a better experience.
Our day started in the Pearl District at the Ecotrust Building where we met with a group of entrepreneurs, including the CEO and the CFO of a local startup and the manager of a local investment fund. We didn’t bomb the presentation, but it certainly wasn’t our best performance. However, we couldn’t dwell on it for long since we had another vetting session lined up for the afternoon. After a bite to eat and few quick revisions to the presentation, we met with group that included a local angel investor, an accountant with extensive experience working with startups, and a lawyer whose firm has taken a number of local businesses through the startup process. We got over our yips from the morning session and gave a really solid presentation.
Over the course of the day, we received some really valuable feedback and advice. One of the more interesting aspects of the vetting process is that each individual vetter is just that, an individual. It’s not uncommon to get conflicting feedback based on a particular investor’s personal experiences, preferences, and tolerance for risk. While each individual offers unique insight, it’s impossible to be all things to everybody. At the end of the day, it’s up to us to decide the direction our business. A startup can take a million different paths. We have to choose the path that best aligns with the opportunity we have discovered in the market. It’s been a fascinating process and our plan continues to evolve and improve.
The PDX vetting sessions continue next week when we meet with members of the Entrepreneur’s Underground and the managing directors of the Portland Seed Fund. I’m really looking forward to next week’s meetings. Who knows, it just might lead us to our first round of funding!
Tashi Dondup, MBA ’12
Lundquist Center for Innovation & Entrepreneurship
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The team
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The EcoTrust Building
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Nice view!
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Setting up
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Downtown PDX
“…because ultimately investors are buying you and you need to own the stage.”
Andy Sack (Executive Directory, TechStars Seattle)
One of the main reasons I decided to enroll at the University of Oregon is the fact that the students here are provided with many great opportunities to meet with important contributors to the Pacific Northwest’s economy. On this trip to Seattle, I knew that in order to maximize the value of my time, I would need to be proactive and meet with people that will benefit my future endeavors. While each of the meetings that we scheduled were engaging, there were three that stood out as extremely informative and applicable to my own aspirations:
- One sentence summary: A very successful venture capital firm, with investments ranging from Amazon to the Cheezburger Network.
- Why this meeting was important to me: They are active in technology investments. As a coder and a general web nerd, hearing the life of an investment group helps me understand what is perceived as value.
- Most important take-away from our meeting: There is no cookie cutter recipe for value.
Andy Sack, Executive Director of TechStars and CEO of Lighter Capital
- One sentence summary: An entrepreneur involved in tech incubators.
- Why this meeting was important to me: Also involved in web startups, Andy was a straight shooter. He didn’t sugar coat anything and told us about both his high points and mistakes that he feels he made.
- Most important take-away from our meeting: Don’t overanalyze things, just do it. Just plug away and keep chugging.
- One sentence summary: A really, really cool shared space and community.
- Why this meeting was important to me: Shared spaces seem to be the future of office space, and I never was exposed to it until this meeting.
- Most important take-away from our meeting: Just being in a reputable shared space can provide good name recognition to you and accelerate your reputation.
Incoming students, you have a lot to lok forward to next year. Also, if you’re in town, I would highly, highly suggest scheduling the above meetings.
Anyways, that’s my input. If you could meet with a company that wasn’t listed, who would it be?
- Paul S. Chun, MBA ’13
Lundquist Center for Innovation & Entrepreneurship
Winter term is under way and MBA students in VSU (Venture Startup) kicked things off with a two-day boot camp to help teams transition to the next phase of the startup sequence that started with TEP (Technology Entrepreneurship Program) in the summer and NVP (New Venture Planning) in the fall. About half of all students in the IE (Innovation & Entrepreneurship) track elect to go on with Venture Startup while the other half choose to work on a Strategic Planning Project (SPP) for the remaining two terms. VSU boot camp was particularly helpful for teams that reorganized and added new members.
Day 1 of the boot camp kicked off with teams presenting their plans to faculty advisors and mentors. Teams then began an in depth analysis of their plans to identify their most relevant risks and key financial assumptions. Teams also developed org charts for their startups and a Q&A spreadsheet for the questions they might receive from investors when they pitch their business plans. The first half of Day 2 was dedicated to performing an extensive gap analysis to help teams determine where they stand and identify where they need to be before they start pitching their plans to investors. The second half of the day was spent developing 15 and 30 day work plans to close the gaps in our plans.
By the end of boot camp, every team had a clearly defined action plan and an accountability system for achieving the goals we set for ourselves. It was a particularly useful as teams prepare to pitch their plans to investors and participate in business plan competitions. Venture Startup teams will be competing for cash prizes at competitions in Louisville, Cincinnati, Bangkok, Manitoba, San Diego, Oregon and Texas. It’s an exciting opportunity and a great chance to represent the Oregon MBA.
Some Venture Startup statistics:
20% of VSU concepts launched their planned business upon graduation.
22% of VSU participants will either form a company, join a startup, or use their skills as an intrapreneur within 5 years.
100% of all VSU participants build invaluable career skills.
The graduate Venture Quest business plan competition wrapped up today. Congratulations to this year’s winner Hawk Mobility Systems and runners-up Emerald Algae Solutions and Dynamic Advertising Solutions. The teams made it through a rigorous vetting process by a panel of investors and business professionals to take home cash prizes. Teams put in a ton of work over the course of the term and it showed. The presentations were fantastic.
Venture Quest is the culmination of fall term’s New Venture Planning course. Over the course of the term, students develop business plans to launch or grow a new business. In the beginning of the term, students form teams and pitch their ideas for startups. Many of the business ideas come out of the Technology Entrepreneurship Program that students in the Innovation & Entrepreneurship track worked on last summer. Other plans are based on existing businesses looking to grow or startup ideas that students are interested in developing. The next 9 weeks are spent exploring opportunities, researching market potential, developing financial plans, and putting together an investor presentation.
NVP is rigorous but rewarding. It’s like a business plan bootcamp. Teams develop their idea with the guidance of mentors from a variety of backgrounds and professional experiences. It’s amazing to look back on where the teams started and how far they have come in such a short amount of time. While Venture Quest marks the end of NVP, teams have the opportunity to continue working on their business plan in the winter and spring terms in Venture Startup. VSU has two tracks, a competition track and a venture launch track. Teams in the competition track submit their plans to business plan competitions across the country. In previous years, UO teams have attended competitions at Carnegie Mellon, University of Louisville, University of Manitoba, University of Texas, San Diego, and New Venture Challenge (NVC), UO’s own graduate business plan competition in Portland. This track is geared towards the teams that are looking for angel investors or venture capital funding. Teams in the venture launch track focus their energies on preparing to launch their business. Both tracks offer a unique experience for participants. It will be exciting to watch teams move forward and continue to bring their businesses to life.
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Emerald Algae
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Dynamic Advertising Solutions
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Hawk Mobility Sytems
Emerald Algae
EAS is a bio-tech startup that is turning waste-water into liquid gold. Their process uses algae to clean food processing waste-water while producing value added commodities. Team: Jennifer Adams (MBA), Chris Canazaro (MBA), Rusten Gomez (JD/MBA), Jaren May (MBA)
Dynamic Advertising Solutions
DAS operates an online bidding platform for smaller advertisers entering the outdoor advertising market by lowering the minimum display time that an advertiser needs to purchase, which reduces the per unit cost. As a result, advertisers with relatively small budgets can afford to pay for advertising. Team: Kala Bernhardt (JD), Yasin Karim (PhD Physics), Brian Oehler (MBA), Ben Ryon (MBA)
Hawk Mobility Systems
Hawk Mobility Systems makes the Hawk Easy Lift – a simple, safe, and space-saving solution for moving patients. It is fully motorized and attaches directly to industry standard hospital-style beds allowing a single caregiver to lift and move a patient carefully in a home or institutional setting. Team: James Collins (MBA), Peter Philbrick (JD/MBA), Dan Richmond (MBA), Bryan Schoen (MBA)
The Innovation and Entrepreneurship track at the Oregon MBA went on its first field trip to the 8th Annual Bend Venture Conference. Bend is in Central Oregon, about 3.5 hours east of Eugene on the other side of the Cascade mountains. With a population of around 80,000, Bend has grown about 150% since 2000. It’s known for its extreme weather relative to the Willamette Valley and Portland, with the Cascade range due west and the desert just to the east of it. It’s a gorgeous town with a lot of charm, all kinds of natural activities, and killer beer.
The conference itself was a blast. The event was split into two parts, a Thursday night reception and an all-day Friday event. The reception was at the Broken Top Country Club, which offered a scenic venue and a great introduction to Bend. With the open bar and snacks powering me, I went from group to group and chatted the night away, distributing and collecting business cards along the way.
The second day, however, is where all of the meat was (both literally and figuratively). More of a presentational format and less about networking, we were introduced to five companies competing for a large amount of funding, and also a handful of other “concept” companies that competed for a concept prize as well. I’m pretty sure that all of the students that came on this trip each made mental decisions on who they liked for each division. For me personally, the thing that stood out the most was the emphasis on intellectual property. Does it really take over 2 or 3 years to file for a patent? That’s pretty crazy.
The winner of the concept prize (AudioName) was announced just slightly after the last presentation, and the winner of the funding prize (RES Equine Products, Inc.) was announced at a reception in the building just next to the theater where the presentations were held. Each winner was awarded a novelty-sized check, which we agreed was motivation to compete in future events.
It was a great experience and an opportunity for the first years in our track to get to know each other better as classmates, friends and life-long cornerstones in each others’ networks. I very much look forward to the next trip!
- Paul S. Chun, MBA ’13
Lundquist Center for Innovation & Entrepreneurship
Prologue — it was a complete mystery to me before starting this program unique to the University of Oregon. What did these two weeks have in store for me?
Well, before I can elaborate on that, I should introduce myself. My name is Paul. I was born and raised in Northern California and lived most recently in San Francisco, where I was working as a Software Engineer at a Y Combinator startup called Heyzap. My undergraduate degree was in Mathematics, and I got that degree from Purdue University in Indiana. While both my trade and my academic history helped me develop strong analytical abilities, I felt a burning desire to be an innovator. Before I could achieve my goal of becoming a successful innovator, I knew that I had to develop myself as a business person.
As I’ve always had a secret love for the Pacific Northwest and also because there are many exciting things going on here at the moment, I knew that an Oregon MBA would provide me not only with the knowledge I needed to innovate, but also with the network and credibility necessary to establish myself quickly in this beautiful part of the country.
The first step to building myself in this program was prologue. Whew! What a whirlwind the first week was. I totally botched an improv activity by misunderstanding the directions, and while I was embarrassed, I knew that the lesson learned (namely, that I need to become a better audial learner) was valuable. And this was just the first day! The rest of the week saw us do multiple presentations, and also form teams for a group presentation, which was a bit choppy but straightforward.
However, the second week was mostly devoted to a big presentation that was to be done in front of many important people in the department. The teams that I talked about earlier were selected on the basis of diversity, and by the time this presentation was being created, I understood the ways in which we were diverse: our personalities! Group work became rough as we realized how different our personalities were (aside from the common “stubborn” trait), but our storming somehow resulted in norming. Reviews of our presentation marked us as having great synergy and seeming like good friends, and we ended up advancing to the finals of the presentation competition. So to recap, you go from not knowing anyone to arguing while developing a competitive presentation to giving as convincing a presentation you can to a large audience within a week and a half… and I wouldn’t have had it any other way!
The program ended with a day in Portland. As I am part of the Innovation and Entrepreneurship track, I was both honored and thrilled about the opportunity to go to the Portland Incubator Experiment’s headquarters, where many budding startups were writing code. While I didn’t see anyone using the best text editor in the world (emacs) I saw a lot of awesome entrepreneurs and coders working hard in developing Portland as a technological hub. Oregon is quite synonymous with innovation, and seeing great coders in Portland makes me very optimistic about what the future holds here in the tech world.
Paul Chun, MBA ’13
Yesterday started off with an amazing morning at Wieden+Kennedy’s Shanghai office. For those who aren’t familiar,Wieden+Kennedy is one of the world’s premiere advertising agencies that works closely with Nike and is the agency behind the Old Spice commercials starring Isaiah Mustafa. We had the opportunity to look at case studies of innovative campaigns the agency put together for Converse and Nike geared specifically for the Chinese market. We also had a great conversation about the challenges of working with multinational companies to communicate their brand message to Chinese consumers. A key takeaway from the meeting is that the most important thing for creating a successful advertising campaign in China is to understand the culture. It’s a simple enough message, but incredibly easy to screw up. Interestingly, youth culture isn’t embraced in China as it is in the West. Businesses here are focused on who can spend money now.Wieden+Kennedy has been working to communicate with brands the importance of embracing youth in order to develop brand loyalty. Another interesting point had to do with the fact that rebellion, a hot selling point in the West, simply doesn’t fly here. The Chinese love their country, period. So rather than create “rebellious” advertising campaign’s,Wieden+Kennedy works to create campaigns that are a celebration of culture.
After a free afternoon to stroll the French Concession and munch on some baguettes and pastries, we loaded up on the bus to voyage to the far reaches of Pudong to visit with Columbia Sportswear at the YKK zipper company. I think a lot of us were a little skeptical about visiting a zipper company, but it turned out to be one of the most interesting visits of the trip. During the joint presentation, we learned about the supply chain relationship between the two companies. It’s an incredibly complex system that requires constant communication and relationship management. We then took a tour of the manufacturing facilities. While photos weren’t allowed on the plant floor, I can assure you this was about as high-tech an operation as it gets. For a zipper company, they are incredibly innovative. YKK, a Japanese company, invents its own machines to handle nearly every piece of the operation. Their focus is on quality and reliability, a recurring theme with nearly every company we met with. By focusing on excellence in manufacturing, YKK has gained nearly 45 percent of the marketplace value of zippers worldwide. Columbia alone uses 80 million zippers a year. That’s a lot of zippers!
Tashi Dondup
MBA ’12
It was another great day in Shanghai. Our first meetings was with Silicon Valley Bank, a unique financial services company that focuses on innovation markets. SVB provides banking services for venture capital firms and high-growth innovation companies such as LinkedIn and Twitter as well as venture capital firms such as Kleiner Perkins and Sequoia Capital. Pretty cool stuff. We discussed how SVB perceives risk differently from other banks because they work closely with investors who fund innovative companies that might not have revenues, but are growing fast. Venture capital is fundamentally different here. Unlike in developed markets, traditional industries such as logistics companies and restaurant chains are seeing growth of 50-60 percent a year. Investors are getting 10X returns without the same risk that the technology industry in the United States. Not that there isn’t risk in venture capital in China, it just looks a lot different here. Eventually, traditional industries will plateau and investors will have to reinvest in innovation. In the meantime, SVB is helping to develop the ecosystem for entrepreneurial technology companies in China.
It was an incredibly interesting presentation, especially for those of us in the center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship. Our next meeting was with Bank of America, which has a completely different approach than Silicon Valley Bank. We discussed a lot of macro level issues facing the country. After years of double digit growth, China’s economy is unavoidably going to slow down and the country will have to grapple with a variety of issues to sustain growth. They will need to address social and political structures to avoid “crony capitalism”. China’s aging population is a big issue. Because of its one-child policy, a generation of young Chinese will struggle to support older generations. There is also a huge wealth gap here that could seriously threaten social stability. Environmental concerns is limits growth and jeopardizing the health of its citizens. Finally, China must adjust to its new role as a global super power. Something it has been somewhat reluctant to approach head on. However, if there’s one thing that we have learned from this trip, it’s that the Chinese government is incredibly good at solving problems when it puts it’s mind to it. 2011 marks the first year of the country’s 12th Five Year Plan. In it, the government has laid out an aggressive agenda to promote domestic consumption, which they have identified as a key to sustainable long-term growth. China is also focusing on upgrading its traditional manufacturing industries and creating new projects in strategic industries to move its economy up the value chain in order to continue developing its middle class. It’s fascinating stuff and truly a privilege learn about the challenges and opportunities of this fast moving country.
Tashi Dondup
MBA ’12
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