I had the pleasure and honor last week of serving as a judge for the University of San Francisco International Business Plan Competition. This is truly an international competition, with over 100 submissions from around the world. All twenty of the teams selected came to San Francisco, from Singapore, the UK, the Philippines, India and all over the US.
The first event was the classic "elevator pitch" competition, where each team had 90 seconds to explain their business to the judges. The San Francisco Chronicle had a great article on this part of the competition. The next day the teams were split into groups of five and gave a much longer presentation, with a Q&A session with the judges. The top teams from this stage, along with the highest ranked team from the elevator pitch, competed for the top prize on Saturday morning at USF's beautiful Lone Mountain campus.
The creativity, energy and intelligence of the competitors was fantastic. The experience was invigorating for me, and shows that there continues to be a strong entrepreneurial spirit - not just here in the Bay area, but worldwide.
Congratulations to the winners, Harmonic Devices from UC Berkeley who have developed the technology to allow a number of components cell phones to be made smaller and more cheaply. Some other exciting submissions were an RFID-based toll system for parking lots (Spark Parking from Northwestern), an "almost forever" battery replacement (Perpetua from University of Oregon, and the audience's favorite demo - the hibernating fish (Buhi Marine Supply from Silliman University, in the Philippines).
Actually, all the competitors warrant a hearty congratulations!
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