University students compete for start-up money in Boise, ID in Northwest Venture Championship

Some of the country´s newest entrepreneurs had their ideas vetted this week by Treasure Valley venture capitalists and business people in an annual competition at Boise State University.

Julie Howard
The Idaho Statesman

• Northwest Venture Championship http://www.northwestventurechampionship.org/

The companies, all seeking investments to launch their business, ranged from custom music CD kiosks to a technology that monitors heat variations that can damage silicon wafers.

The Northwest Venture Championship involves undergraduate and graduate university students vying for more than $20,000 in funding for the development of their companies. Fourteen student teams from 11 universities in the United States, Canada and Mexico are competing.

The final round of the competition is today. Teams will present their business plans, make a pitch for venture capital funds and then answer questions from a panel of judges.

The free event is open to the public and runs from 9 a.m. to noon today in BSU´s Student Union building.

While some ideas came from the students, others were in partnership with larger entities. Two teams from Washington State University based their plans on technology developed by the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory near Idaho Falls.

Competitors first had to present viable business plans to qualify for the competition. “I´d say within a year, 70 percent of these business plans will result in real businesses,” said Kent Neupert, the competition director and a professor of entrepreneurship at BSU.

The Northwest Venture Championship, started last year, is aimed at propelling good ideas from university settings into the commercial marketplace and giving students from various disciplines opportunities to partner up and gain experience in launching businesses.

“This brings students from business and marketing fields together with technicians to work on real business plans that go before real-world venture capitalists,” said Gautam Pillay, executive director of the Inland Northwest Research Alliance, a sponsor of the competition.

INRA, a non-profit educational and scientific institution that networks with eight wsestern universities including BSU, Idaho State University and University of Idaho, was created to promote such opportunities. The organization awards $1,000 to the team that best combines academic disciplines, such as a management team comprised of an engineering major, an MBA student and a finance major, and plans to locate in the Northwest.

Winning graduate teams get $10,000 and undergrad teams get $5,000 to further develop their ideas. A bonus for graduate-level teams is a berth in a similar competition at the University of Texas next month. That “Moot Corp” contest nets the first-place winner $100,000 in start-up funding.

Mark Hofhine has high hopes for his technology that monitors heat damage in silicon wafers. He thinks it could rapidly become a multimillion-dollar business. A hardware and component engineer at Hewlett-Packard Co. in Boise, Hofhine developed the technology while pursuing his master´s in electrical engineering at BSU, from which he´ll graduate in spring.

“We´ve been about a year in the process of forming,” said Hofhine, who has partnered with students to form Havix, a company that will incorporate later this year. “At first, I thought I had just a great academic project, but now, win or lose, we´re going to move forward with this.”

The group is still working out patent issues with the university to determine whether BSU will patent the technology — and thus own the intellectual property — or release it to Havix.

Other business plans presented ranged from biomedical products to a nanosatellite-based communications service to a beauty and health spa chain.

Area entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and business people were on the panel of judges.

To offer story ideas or comments, contact Julie Howard
[email protected] or 373-6618

http://www.idahostatesman.com/Business/story.asp?ID=35859