New Products / Ideas that need funding!!!

What you get? Your product/idea promoted at two of the most prestigious Business Plan competitions in front of 100s of Venture capitalists by some of the best business grads in Asia along with possible funding of nearly 200K from the Rice University and 20K+ from CMU.

What we get? A partnership (percentages to be worked out mutually) in the company that gets formed to take your product to market and an opportunity to present your product in the two business plan competitions along with extensive product knowledge.

Deadlines: Respond before Nov 30th, 2007 (Ideas would be processed as they come in and we are also looking at a few ideas from within the university - so the early your idea reaches us, the better your prospects)

Details of the business plan competitions:

http://www.alliance.rice.edu/alliance/RBPC.asp

http://www.mcginnisventurecompetition.com/

Take a look at the prizes on offer. Most of those would go into your product. Mail me your contact details along with a 2 page summary of your product, what stage it is in, in terms of development, patenting, and commercialization.

Contact Details: arhebbar (at) gmail.com or randhir (at) ust.hk

Rice / CMU Business Plan competitions

I'm all excited now. Team Greenbucks finally made its decision - to some extent driven by the bucks but just the option to go to one or both of the two most prestigious of Business Plan competitions is something we just could not afford to pass.

The USF competition was also pretty attractive with the option of going to the one state I hadn't visited in US being a pretty good alternative. But the grand prize of 100K USD at Rice was way too good to pass. I know this involves a lot more competition than USF - but then one thing the three months here has taught me is that the human spirit just longs for challenges. Throw it a challenge and believe in it and you'll make it or at least get really really close. We'll give it our best shot and the one fear I had that my team was not as committed to BP was washed away today with the belief I saw in going for Rice and really the effort we all put in during the internal case competition.

Before you guys start going ga'ga over the 100K figure, that's just money to help build the product growth. We probably won't get even a penny out of it. :-) Rice has a lot of small prizes like 3-4K USD. I don't think any product can be promoted with just that kind of money. So winning 5th or 7th prize might be better than winning first prize here.

Last night was crazy. Suddenly my team members start talking about Case Competitions and how they'd be the better option with chances of success being better and everything. Had a tough time convincing them. Finally decided that it was best to give it some time. Prof Nason finally helped convince my team this afternoon that BP wasn't really that much of an effort since we were all anyway going to take the Business Plan course.

And then the climax with one team member keen on USF and the others keen on RICE/CMU after we'd sent our preference to the Professor. It really should be fine since Rice was the second choice there too.

GOOOOOOO GREENBUCKS!!! Thanks Wolf, Carrie and David for being such wonderful team-mates.

Business Plan or Case Competition!!!

That's the big question on my mind. I'd love to go to BP just for the experience side of it ... but I've heard how frustrating it can get if you don't have the right product. The best win-win is finding a product you love and believe in or better still, if its your own product. This serves two benefits, it's your baby. So you work double hard, just to get it recognition and maybe potential exposure to funding. Two, some competitions actually give you a prize award to help grow the product / idea into a viable venture.

Since I don't have a viable idea on my mind right now, anyone of you who does or knows someone who does, do get them in touch with me arhebbar (at) gmail.com so that I have some options when I go into make a choice of product for the Business Plan Competition (now that I have the freedom of making the choice).

N72 - Calendar and To Do Notes!!!

After a good one year of having this phone, figured out to keep the calendar and "To Do" list updated thanks again to my team mate - Wolfgang. Now on, hope to miss fewer deadlines. Atleast won't miss them as long as I'm aware of them.

Before this, I was actually setting up each event on my phone and I only know what an effort it was updating it. If nothing else, this discovery will save me a ton of time for sure.