Duke Start-Up Challenge 2008 Winners

Duke Start-Up Challenge Winners!

Saturday, April 12th was the 9th Annual Duke Start-Up Challenge Finals. Nine

teams presented their business plan proposals to a panel of judges. The

Awards Ceremony was then kicked off with an inspirational speech by Chairman

and former CEO of Red Hat, Matthew Szulik. We are proud to present the

following winners:

*Overall Grand Prize Winner $25,000 & Health Care Track

Cerene Biomedics

Heidi Koschwanez (PhD candidate, BME), Christina Li (PhD student, BME), Carolyn

Nohejl (BME, '08), Vivek Sasikumar (Fuqua, '08), John Stroncek (PhD student,

BME)

*Overall Runner Up $10,000

WaterPLUS

Naman Shah, Saket Vora, Joel Thomas, J.E. (Win) Bassett IV, Kari Leech, Will

Patrick (Trinity, '10)

*People's Choice Trade Show Winner $1,000

Game Everything

Ferol Vernon (Fuqua, '09), Mausam Bhatt (Fuqua, '09)

*High-Tech Track Award $5,000

A-B-Sea Research

Al Basilico, John Galetsky, Jennifer Artabane (Fuqua, '08)

*Consumer Products Track Award $5,000

Visible Energy

Luke Fishback (MEM, '03), Sarah Kate Fishback (Fuqua, '09)

*Social Track Award $5,000

WaterPLUS

Naman Shah, Saket Vora, Joel Thomas, J.E. (Win) Bassett IV, Kari Leech, Will

Patrick (Trinity, '10)

Thanks to the Co-Presidents, Kris Irwin, Hylton Kalvaria, and Steve Allan (all three are Fuqua '09)

New leadership in the EVCC

We have new student leaders in the EVCC. Bobby Brenman and Amy Laverdiere recently took the helm and have recruited an excellent cabinet.

Bobby went to Northwestern University for his undergraduate studies, and worked in sales and trading at Lehman Brothers. After Lehman Brothers, he worked at a boutique consulting firm, before coming to Fuqua. He will be interning at Google this summer. He can be reached at bobby.brenman@fuqua.duke.edu.




Amy went to MIT for her undergraduate studies, and worked at both Genentech and Genzyme before coming to Fuqua. She is a Duke Venture Fellow, and is working for Hatteras Venture Partners through the summer. She can be reached at amy.laverdiere@fuqua.duke.edu.

We are thrilled to have such capable and motivated student leaders for the Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital Club.

Thanks to Jen, Josh, and everyone that helped this year!

Special thanks to Jennifer Artabane and Joshua Payne, the outgoing EVCC co-presidents. They did an outstanding job and should be commended for having a wonderful year leading the club. They led a number of new initiatives, but some of the highlights were the Week-in-Cities program which took place in Silicon Valley, Washington D.C., Charlotte, and Atlanta, the Day in RTP, the weekly newsletter, recruiting a solid first year cabinet, and helping to organize the inaugural Entrepreneurship Week. They were awesome! We will miss them and wish them the best of luck.





The EVCC Second Years

Blue Devil Weekend

Blue Devil Weekend was a great success as usual. Thanks to Alli and Kendra for organizing, as well as the entire admissions team.

We actively recruited students interested in entrepreneurship and saw some great interest. Between the two career panels focused on entrepreneursip, I counted approximately 75-80 students, or about 25% of the estimated attendees at BDW (I believe the estimate was somewhere north of 300 attendees).

The career panels featured students that had recently graduated along with our two new co-presidents, Amy and Bobby, to talk about their experiences in the Duke MBA.

In addition, we held both an Office Hours event and an Open House that drew out some really neat students.