VCIC Competition Internal

Through the hard work of Mike Midgett, Class of 2008, we held our VCIC Internal competition. We had over 15 students participate and compete in this "Be a VC for a day" competition.

It was a great event, and the winning team handled themselves well, particularly when in the firing line of our guest judges which included local VC's and angels.

A wonderful learning experience for all.

Not only does Mike deserve credit for putting on this program, but he also deserves credit for leading the VC101 and VC 102 sessions that helped prepare students for the event. Great job, Mike!

See more pictures at http://www.flickr.com/photos/howrhee/sets/72157604285640321/

CED's MedTech Conference

We were proud to help the Council for Entrepreneurial Development (CED), one of the largest entrepreneurial support organizations in the country, host the new MedTech conference, focused on medical device innovations. The Research Triangle area has a lot of strengths in this area. This conference will hopefully be a focal point for years to come, just as CED's Venture Conference, Tech Conference, and Biotech Conference have been great events for over 20 years here in the Research Triangle.

Notable speakers included Richard Stack, one of the founders of Synecor, which spun out of Duke and has already created and sold about three companies with a total market cap of over 500 million dollars. Also, the former president and CEO of Guidant Corporation, Ronald Dollens, gave a wonderful talk.

This event was held at Fuqua.

Duke's Second Annual Conference on Intellectual Property

We held the Second Annual Conference on Intellectual Property at Duke. It was a great lineup of speakers, and was hosted by our very own Marshall Phelps, Executive-in-Residence, and Corporate VP at Microsoft, and Prof. Wes Cohen.

We had visitors come in from many different parts of the country and the world.

The video for the conference is up, so in case you missed it, you can check it out. Go to http://www.fuqua.duke.edu/event/ipconference/

A big thanks to the Kauffman Foundation for providing a lot of support this great event. In addition, we'd like to thank Microsoft, ThinkFire, and PriceWaterhouseCoopers for their support as well.

Entrepreneurship Week at Duke University -- success!

We are pleased to report that Entrepreneurship Week at Duke University was a great success. We had 16 events in 6 days, and over 500 registered applicants. If you want the full scoop, check out the Entrepreneurship Week blog at http://www.eweekatduke.blogspot.com/.

Thanks to everyone that helped support our inaugural Entrepreneurship Week!

More pictures at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/howrhee/collections/72157603409355573/

eWeek Wrap-Up :: Thank You!

Thank you to all attendees, speakers, sponsors, supporters, advocates, and volunteers. The first Entrepreneurship Week at Duke was a success because of your help. With the feedback we've received during the week, the eWeek team is already beginning to plan a bigger and better eWeek 2008. Get ready!

Best,

Howie Rhee, Larry Boyd, Kaycee Shoemaker, Jeremy Welch, Jeff Clark, and Kimberly Jenkins

eWeek 2007 Co-Chairs

Day 6 - International Entrepreneurship Panel, Environmental Entrepreneurship Panel, and Closing Lunch

The first Entrepreneurship Week at Duke has come to a close. This morning there were three events: International and Environmental Entrepreneurship Panels and a Closing Lunch.

The International Entrepreneurship event featured Robert Taber, Vice Chancellor of Science and Technology Development at Duke Medicine. Mr. Taber is director of the Office of Science and Technology at Duke University Medical Center and he oversees patents and licenses for the entire university. He presented on the changing nature of entrepreneurship internationally, comparing the entrepreneurial ecosystems of China, Singapore, Italy, the US, and more.


The second event of the day was an environmental entrepreneurship panel moderated by Bob Clemen, Professor of Decision Sciences at Duke University, Fuqua School of Business. Panelists for the event included:

• Marc Dreyfors, Duke MEM '92 - co-owner of Bull City Biodiesel, founder of Forests of the World and Greenway Transit, LLC
• Lyle Estill - Piedmont BioFuels
  
• Roger Harris - founder of Jungle Wanders ecotourism company and former team leader at Paradigm Genetics

The day closed with a lunch and closing remarks by the co-chairs Howie Rhee, Larry Boyd, Kaycee Shoemaker, and Jeremy Welch, and by Larry Robbins from the eWeek headline sponsor Wyrick Robbins Yates & Pontin, LLP.

Days 4 and 5 - Start-Up Job Fair, Undergraduate Capstone Speaker, Undergraduate Entrepreneurs Pitch Session, and Social Entrepreneurship Panel

The eWeek team put on four events Thursday and Friday.

The Start-up Job Fair connected local companies with graduate and undergraduate students. The start-ups from around the Triangle represented a wide range of industries, from biotechnology to Web 2.0. The event was sponsored by Research Triangle Institute (RTI).




Will Pearson, Trinity '01 and co-founder and President of Mental_Floss magazine, capped off the undergraduate events with a presentation about his experience starting mental_floss. This event was sponsored by Aurora Funds and Intuit JumpUp.


Thursday evening, undergraduate students pitched ideas and business plans created in classes this semester to a panel of judges including:

• Chris Kroeger - Partner, The Aurora Funds
• Bonny Moellenbrock - Executive Director, SJF Advisory Services
• Jay Mebane - Co-owner and CFO, US Handbags
  

This event was sponsored by Aurora Funds and Intuit JumpUp.



On Friday, Christopher Gergen, founding partner of New Mountain Ventures, LLC, moderated a panel called "Launching Social Ventures." Social entrepreneurs on the panel included:

• Brandon Busteed, Duke Trinity '99 - Founder and CEO, Outside the Classroom
• Geoff Cramer, Duke WEMBA '01 - Founder and CEO, Futures, Inc.
• Henry McKoy, UNC MBA '95 - Founder of OneVoice Institute of Business
  

Tomorrow is the last day of Entrepreneurship Week. There are three events: the International Entrepreneurship Speaker, the Environmental Entrepreneurship Panel, and the Entrepreneurship Week Closing Ceremony. See you there!