Monthly Programs - November 9, 2010
Worcester Polytechnic Institute
Campus Center - Odeum Room
Doors open for networking: 5:30 p.m.
Meeting: 6:30 – 8:30 p.m.
Cost: Free for members, $15 for WPI alumni, $30 general public
Pre-registration
Parking
Business Plan Contest Bigger, Better Than Ever
Competing for the largest prize in the contest’s 17-year history, three finalists will present their business plans at the November 9 meeting of the WPI Venture Forum. The winner will leave with $30,000. This year’s contest is dedicated to the memory of co-founder Jim Fee ’65, who passed away October 4.
Entrants in the WPI Venture Forum Business Plan Contest will be evaluated by a distinguished panel of judges. Carl Berke is a Partner at Partners Innovation Fund, a fund charged with commercializing new ventures generated by research discoveries at Partners Healthcare. Bill Frezza is a General Partner at Adams Capital Management, an early-stage, applied technology venture capital firm with $800 million under management. Adams focuses on the telecommunications, semiconductor, applied materials and life sciences sectors. Peter Glick is a General Partner at Ampersand Ventures, a private equity firm focused on investments in healthcare and industrial companies. Eric Schultz is Executive Chairman of HubCast and former Chairman and CEO of Sensitech Inc., a supply chain intelligence company acquired by Carrier Corporation (United Technologies). He is a Partner in the Ascent Venture Partners program.
The top three contenders were selected from the full pool of applicants in a preliminary round of judging held on WPI’s campus October 16. First round judges include Lisa Hamaker of Kaliday Marketing, Will Cowen of Long River Ventures, Pam Torpey of Hamilton Brook Smith Reynolds, Charles Yon of Bowditch & Dewey, Jeremie Spitzer of Merit Customers, Jerrold Shapiro of FemiScan, Michael LaFleche of CapInc, David Graves-Witherell of Citibank, John Moore of Ion Signature Technologies, Prakash Purohit, Timothy Gray of Morgan Stanley, Alex Akheizer of Hamilton Brook Smith Reynolds, Lionel Picard, David Fogel of Swifton CFOs, Todd Jewett and Jeff Swaim of Mirick O'Connell, Craig Gardner of Coventry Associates, Jason Honeyman of Wolf Greenfield, Steve Munevar of Munevar Associates, and Otto Prohaska of Otto Consulting.
Semi-finalists who emerge from the first round of judging receive complimentary mentoring from contestant judges, who are qualified professionals and experienced professionals affiliated with the WPI Venture Forum. Mentoring helps perfect and finalize business plans for the second round of judging, and mentors offer ways to improve the business plan’s presentation. Finalists are selected from the second round.
Panel of Judges
Carl Berke, PhD
Carl Berke, PhD, Partner career has spanned over 25 years in the practice and management of innovation to bring new technologies to market. As a bench scientist and then R&D director, he worked at Polaroid Corporation and Hygeia Sciences in the development of photographic and clinical products for both consumer and professional markets. He moved to Integral/Analysis Group, a consulting firm where he was Partner and Vice President focusing on the management of innovation and growth strategy for clients in healthcare and consumer products. He has been an active private equity investor as a member of Angel Healthcare Investors LLC and serves as a board member for Quosa Inc. [research literature management software], Automation Engineering Inc. [factory automation systems] and the Sudanese Education Fund [philanthropy]. Carl holds an AB degree from Cornell University and received his PhD in Chemistry from the University of California at Berkeley. He also holds an appointment as Lecturer in the Biomedical Enterprise Program in the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology.
Bill Frezza
William A. Frezza joined Adams Capital Management in 1997 as a General Partner. Prior to his work at Adams Capital, Bill was Founder and President of Wireless Computing Associates, providing technology and strategic consulting services to major vendors in the semiconductor and telecommunications industries.
Bill served as the Director of Marketing and Business Development for Ericsson, Inc.'s wireless data division and has extensive engineering and product management experience from General Instrument Corp. and Bell Laboratories. Bill has also been involved in several start-up ventures, holds seven patents, and was a regular columnist for Network Computing Magazine and InternetWeek. He is a former of Director of the Materials Research Society (MRS).
Peter Glick
Peter H. Glick, Peter joined Ampersand in 2008 as a General Partner. Previously, Peter served as President and CEO of Cohesive Technologies, a bioanalytical equipment company that was sold to Thermo-Fisher. Prior to Cohesive, Peter served as President of Primedica, a pharmaceutical services business that was acquired by Charles River Labs. Peter has also served as VP of Corporate Development at TSI Corporation, and as a management consultant at Bain & Company. Peter holds an M.S. in Management from MIT and a B.S. in Economics from Wharton.
Eric Schultz
Eric Schultz is the former Chairman and CEO of Sensitech, a supply chain intelligence company acquired by Carrier Corporation (United Technologies) to which he currently consults. He also serves as Executive Chairman of HubCast, a cloud printing company, as a director of Shear Goodness and Windover Development, and as a Partner in the Ascent Venture Partners program. Eric was Chief Operating Officer of First Step Designs, President of Atlantic Ventures, and SVP-Midwest Operations for American Cablesystems. He received his BA from Brown University and his MBA from the Harvard Business School.
Finalists Presenting
OsComp Systems - Compression costs affect the entire natural gas supply chain from wellheads all the way until the end user. In the United States, natural gas compressors consume >$100 billion in fuel/electricity and generate >120 million tons of CO2 each year. Sales of natural gas compressors is a $7.2 billion/yr market (2010). Natural gas use and production is expected to double by 2030, according to a recent study by MIT on the Future of Natural Gas. The industry is expected to have accelerated growth in the near future as well as sustained long-term demand. OsComp Systems’ (OCS) team of MIT engineers has invented a breakthrough, patent-pending technology that reduces operating and capital costs of compression by over 30%. OCS makes marginal gas wells profitable once again, and increases the margins from already profitable ones. The DOE Stripper Well Consortium awarded OCS a grant and selected it as its #1 project in 2010, validating its importance to the sector.
OsComp is seeking $2.5M to take us through field trials of our technology.
Neuron Robotics - Neuron Robotics makes tools for simplifying the robot building process and is focused on bringing their affordable solutions to a $25 billion dollar market. Their universal robot language, Turbo BCS™, standardizes the way that the pieces of a robot talk to each other and simplifies the robotics development process. The first tool that uses Turbo BCS™, the DyIO™, is a inexpensive module drastically reducingthe time and effort required to build a robot to get users up and running in as little as 8 minutes. They are building on their current success in the Education field to become a key player in the robotics industry.
Neuron Robotics is seeking $1.0M to set up their production facility in Worcester, scale up production and meet sales for growing demand.
AxenaTechnologies An early stage start-up working to combat healthcare-associated infections (HAIs). Nearly 100,000 Americans die annually from HAIs, more than double the number killed in car accidents. On average, the 2 million patients with HAIs will stay 19 extra days in the hospital, adding $45 billion in unnecessary expenses. Medical tubing such as catheters and endotracheal tubes cause 61% of all HAIs. Catheter-related infections typically occur in the bloodstream or urinary tract. More deadly than these, Ventilator Associated Pneumonia (VAP) occurs when bacteria invade the lungs after colonizing intubated endotracheal tubes. Each year, 250,000 people are infected, 36,000 die, and $10 billion are lost in attempts to treat VAP. Axena Technologies has a novel, cost-effective method for combating HAIs resulting from medical tubing. Axena’s patent-pending nano-scale coating kills bacteria and prevents biofilm formation. Axena’s solution is distinguished from its competition in several ways: 1) The nano-particle structure increases exposed surface area and effectiveness; 2) The active ingredient is a micronutrient that is necessary for a healthy diet; 3) The simple, patentable coating process uses two inexpensive chemicals, which promotes scalability; 4) The coating has absolute resistance to UV light. Laboratory tests have shown Axena’s coated endotracheal tubes have 36 times less bacteria growth than standard tubes, and six times less bacteria growth than the only existing antibacterial endotracheal tube. Axena’s combination of low cost and high effectiveness will allow the company to become the standard in the $1.2 billion antibacterial endotracheal tube market all-the-while saving 24,000 lives annually.
Axena is seeking $200K for animal testing.
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