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Student Teams Win $22,000 for Enterprising Ideas

April 20, 2007

MADISON – Undergraduate marketing majors Stacy Knuth and Mat Lerner, won $10,000 as the first-place team in the tenth annual G. Steven Burrill Technology Business Plan Competition hosted by the UW School of Business. The team presented a winning business plan for AdverCycling, a bicycle advertising concept targeted at college campuses.

The day’s competition featured 27 students from 5 colleges within the university. Teams had 20 minutes to pitch their ideas to a panel of experts. “The breadth of student participation underscores how powerful and imaginative ideas to address society’s needs can really emerge anywhere on campus,” says competition Director Anne Miner. “This really fulfills the dreams of the competition’s founders.”

Second prize of $7,000 went to a WindLift, a wind-powered pumping system, presented by engineering student Arnav Anand, and business majors Robert Creighton and Sean Ebert. The team was also presented with an honorary mention award for sustainability in entrepreneurship.

These two winning teams will be automatically included in the Wisconsin Governor's Business Plan Competition, which will hold its final competition in June.

Two additional prizes of $2,500 each went to 10H Incorporated, a device for improved handling of electron microscopy samples, and InZum, online video streaming software. Tom Godfrey, an MBA student in entrepreneurship and Tej Pavoor, a PHD student in chemical engineering presented the plan for 10H Incorporated. The InZum team featrued undergraduate students: Ash Gupta, finance and entrepreneurship; Michael Griepentrog, computer science; Kris Ugarriza, journalism; and Jon Hardin, math and computer science.

A mini competition prize for early submission was awarded to Ben Durkee and Matt Christensen for ColoGlow, a tool that screens for colorectal cancer.

Previous Burrill Competition participants have gone on to launch, build and sometimes sell their businesses in areas as wide-ranging as financial education products, drug delivery systems and agricultural technologies.

The G. Steven Burrill Technology Business Plan Competition is a cross-campus effort led by the deans of the School of Business, the College of Engineering, the School of Law, and the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences. The cross-campus Initiative for Studies in Technology Entrepreneurship also sponsors the event.

Within the business school, it is a joint venture of the Erdman Center for Operations and Technology Management, the Weinert Center for Entrepreneurship, and the program for Strategic Management in the Life and Engineering Sciences.