MARCH 2008

The Latest News

SAVE THE DATE: Cupid's Cup Business Competition and BB&T Business Invitational -     Cupid's Cup is an annual business competition showcasing young entrepreneurs from the University of Maryland. This competition is made possible by one of UMD's most successful entrepreneurs, Kevin Plank, CEO of Under Armour, whose generous donation of $22,500 is awarded each year to the top place winning companies. The BB&T Business Invitational will be held in advance of Cupid’s Cup. This will be a “marketplace" showcasing all of the Dingman Center-incubated businesses. Register to attend!

  • Date: Friday, April 11

  • Time: 12:00 p.m.-5:00 p.m.

  • Location: Frank Auditorium in Van Munching Hall

Congratulations to Asher and Julie Epstein on the birth of a healthy baby boy - On Saturday, March 8, Asher and Julie welcomed into the world a beautiful, baby boy who weighed in at 7 pounds, 3.5 ounces. We're happy the Dingman family is expanding!

Congratulations to February's Pitch Dingman winners - Feed the Turtle, FutureInvestmentsBankers.com and Terrapin Shipping and Storage won the February Pitch Dingman Competition. Save the date for the next $2,500 Pitch Dingman Competition on March 28.

Welcome the Dingman Center's new portfolio company - Mom Made Foods, the Mid-Atlantic's first organically-certified producer of fresh frozen foods for children, is highlighted in the "Portfolio Company Updates" section.

Don't miss your chance to register for "Strategies for Surviving and Thriving in 2008--How to keep growing in a slowing economy" - This conference will cover strategies for dealing with, overcoming and even growing in the face of an economic downturn. Register today and mark your calendars for Tuesday, April 8 from 8:30-11:30 a.m. Please click here for more information.
 

Also Inside This Issue...
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Pitch Dingman News

Save the Date:

$2,500 Pitch Dingman Competition on Friday, March 28 from 11:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m. All are welcome to attend and watch students pitch business ideas to a panel of judges in hopes to win up to $2,500

February 2008 Pitch Dingman Competition Winners

Terrapin Shipping and Storage:

  • Corey Laplate and Aaron Frank’s business, Terrapin Shipping & Storage, hope to offer a service of convenience to the University of Maryland Community. Given that many students don’t have vehicles on campus that are large enough to transport their items home or to a storage facility, they are often left in a bind when it comes time to going home for summer break. They provide students with storage and shipping options that offer door-to-door pickup and delivery. They will reach out to out-of-state students and students living in campus-housing (since most campus housing arrangements only last from September to June), and are optimistic about their prospects and look forward to servicing the College Park Community.

Feed The Turtle:

  • Jimmy Lyons’ business, FeedTheTurtle.com, is an interactive online menu guide completely run by students. FeedTheTurtle.com is a database of all the menus, food and bar specials in the College Park area. It enables students, faculty and residents to view the menus and make their purchase online, which, if requested, can be delivered directly to their door. It also provides a platform for restaurants to perform point-of-sale advertising directly to their target market.

FutureInvestmentBankers.com ($250 People's Choice Award Winner):

  • Kunal Mahajan’s business, FutureInvestmentBankers.com, will serve as a one-stop shop for investment banking interviews. The site will encompass everything you need to know to get into the industry and succeed in the interview. Some of the key features of the site will be a Networking 101 Discussion, Investment Banking Overview, Financial Statement Analysis, Discounted Cash Flow and Leveraged Buyout Modeling, Mock Interviews with others on the site, Full Accounts of Superdays, as well as a Message Board. The site will focus on college students across the world as well as high schools.

*About Pitch Dingman
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Portfolio Company Updates

Welcome the Dingman Center's New Portfolio Company, Mom Made Foods

Mom Made™ Foods, the Mid-Atlantic's first organically-certified producer of fresh frozen foods for children, was launched in May 2006. Mom Made offers conveniently-sized servings made with the freshest organic ingredients then immediately frozen to lock in freshness. Mom Made products are all-natural without any additives or preservatives, offering three product lines, Mom Made for Baby, Mom Made Meals (launching March 2008) and Mom Made Munchies (launching March 2008).  

Heather Stouffer, Founder, created the Alexandria, Va.-based company when she couldn't find any store-bought products in area supermarkets or specialty stores that she felt good about feeding her infant son. As a full-time working mom, cooking her own food wasn't always an option and she sought a practical way to introduce her son to a variety of wholesome, nutritious solid foods that would create the foundation for a lifetime of healthy eating.  

Now widely distributed throughout the region in stores such as Whole Foods, Wegmans and many others, Mom Made plans to expand to freezer aisles across the USA.  For more information, visit: www.mommadefoods.com.

*About Portfolio Companies
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Social Venture Highlights

Social Venture Spring 2008 Projects

 

Green Guild Biodiesel: Using renewable and sustainable fuel derived from vegetable oils or animal fats, including waste vegetable oil from almost any restaurant

Biodiesel is a renewable and sustainable fuel derived from vegetable oils or animal fats, including waste vegetable oil from almost any restaurant.  US restaurants produce over three billion gallons of waste vegetable oil every year. Biodiesel requires a relatively simple processing procedure, and can be produced for safe use in any unmodified diesel engine vehicle as well as in home heating.

  • Objective: The proposed project aims at assisting Green Guild (GG) with their business plan by advising them in the areas of finance and marketing. The project will start by identifying the market size and segments for GG’s product, through primary and secondary research. Then financial projections (forecasted cash flow and profit/loss analysis) will be prepared for the business based on the market and available opportunities. The project will end by devising a market strategy for GG to build and tap its target market to meet its financial goals and its bigger target of social welfare by providing a clean source of energy.

  • MBA Students: Anirudha Roy Chowdhury and Iryna Halubkova

InterConnection: Facilitating access to the Internet to undeserved populations

Since 1999, InterConnection Seattle has worked to facilitate access to the Internet by providing training, low-cost refurbished computers and Internet services to underserved local and global populations. So far the organization has had a successful and sustainable venture with Interconnection Uganda, developing a business model under which refurbished PC’s are shipped to Uganda for final assembly and some software installation.

  • Objective: This project aims to develop a packaged framework to determine the feasibility of new resale ventures offshore. The package will include a spreadsheet-based financial model to analyze the main costs of the operation, along with a general guideline to asses the target market and facilitate the establishment of new operations offshore.

  • MBA Students: Jorge Diaz, Joshua Israel, Jonathan Hollaway

O.U.R. House of Central Vermont: Providing a safe and supportive environment to assist survivors and families of child sexual abuse

O.U.R. House of Central Vermont is a non-profit organization providing a safe and supportive environment to assist victims, adult survivors and families in the prevention, discovery, intervention, and healing of child sexual abuse.  They provide a safe and child-friendly facility where trained police and Vermont Department for Children and Families investigators can interview children to determine if sexual abuse has occurred. 

  • Objective: The goal for this project is to develop a 3-5 year strategic plan that includes a financial plan.  The objective is to improve the consistency of funding from grants, private funding, donations, and fundraising.  Part of the financial plan will include planning a budget for the non-profit.

  • MBA Students: Christen Hartnett and Greg Miller

Slum Doctor Programme: Providing hope, medicine, food, education and dignity to orphans and HIV/AIDS victims in Africa

The Slum Doctor Programme (SDP) is a multi-citizen effort to provide hope, medicine, food, education and dignity to orphans and people living with HIV/AIDS in Africa. SDP works to provide emergency medical care in Kenya and help widows in Uganda start their own businesses so they can support their families.

  • Objective: The proposed project would involve developing a strategy to market SDP to potential web based donors as well as help develop the skills necessary to develop a interactive relationship to the worldwide AIDS relief community. The project would also require the consultants to develop an action plan as well as an affordable budget for the technological infrastructure necessary to activate the process.

  • MBA Students:  Aditya Naik and Tinu Ogunde

Social Venturing Program Sponsor:

*About Social Venturing
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CAN Companies

Which Companies will present at March's CAN Breakfast?

The Dingman Center's Capital Access (CAN) brings regional start-up companies seeking seed and early-stage fudning to the angel investing community. The CAN Program, sponsored by Morrison & Foerster, Deloitte and Silicon Valley Bank, would like to introduce you to March's start-up companies:

Conflicts Authority

  • Conflicts Authority is developing a web-based system to identify corporate family relationships for the legal and financial community. Corporate family relationships include the links between officers, directors, key personnel, stockholders, corporations, parents, subsidiaries, branches and affiliates.

TRX Systems

  • TRX Systems is developing a location-aware computing and wireless sensor network that will allow users to track and monitor personnel in real-time. Unlike GPS systems, this technology can be used indoors.

Type80

  • Type80 develops and markets proprietary intrusion detection and security event notification software for IBM mainframe computers running on the zSeries/Operating System (z/OS). Type80 has two products fully developed, patent protected and fielded at paying customer sites.

CAN Program Sponsors:

            

*About CAN
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Upcoming Dingman Center Events

Dingman Center and Smith School Entrepreneurship Research Luncheon

You are invited: Smith School of Business Faculty & Doctoral Students, you are invited to attend the Dingman Center and Smith School Research Luncheon Series on March 12 from 12:00-1:25 in the third floor atrium of Van Munching Hall. Please RSVP to Jen Howell.

Change behaviors in entrepreneurs:

Alan boss will discuss the following: Organizational success depends on a firm’s ability to navigate environmental complexities and to adapt to conditions around them. Often, success is elusive, and to survive, firms must be able to adjust. Despite the hard work and persistence put toward a new venture, almost one fourth of all new entrepreneurial ventures fail within the first two years and approximately two thirds fail within six years. Our research examined five change behaviors (adaptation, bricolage, experimentation, improvisation, and trial and error) that entrepreneurs engage in to avoid failure. We uncovered a more parsimonious conception of change behavior: (1) multiple improvement actions and (2) extemporaneous bricolage, and investigated the impact of these on subsequent venture success. (Full, two-page summary of project)

Entrepreneurship in China:

Minwen Li and Tanakorn Makaew will discuss the following: During the last two decades, China adopted the free-market system and has witnessed an unprecedented economic growth, especially in the private sectors. As a result, entrepreneurship in China has blossomed. In this study, we analyze the characteristics of successful Chinese entrepreneurs and investigate the impacts of these characteristics on firm financial decisions. By using the Chinese data, we could compare our results with existing evidence from developed countries and explore the discrepancies. We hypothesize that these discrepancies are the key factors driving the success of the Chinese economy in recent years.
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Last Month at Dingman

Smith Students Win the 2008 Venture Capital Investment Competition (VCIC)

Every year the MBA Entrepreneurship Club hosts a local round of the Venture Capital Investment Competition (VCIC), whose winner then moves on to a regional competition. This year the local round took place on February 8, 2008 and featured three local startups that are currently in the process of looking for funding-Prechamps, Inspire and mpowerplayers.

The students were judged on three different tasks throughout the competition. The first was due diligence, then term sheets and an executive summary, and finally a quick four-minute presentation and an eight-minute question-and-answer session. Vontade Capital took home first place and second place went to Green Thumb Ventures.

Full story

Two Smith MBAs now CEOs of Local Discounter Visit the Dingman Center

"We were told it was like a fish trying to swallow a whale," said Dan Shuman, CEO of C-Mart, a brand name discount store of designer merchandise, when asked about his overtaking of the store. Shuman and company President, Brad Bondroff, spoke to a crowd of approximately 40 during a Dingman Day Lunch on February 8. These childhood friends went into business together and recently bought a majority share of C-Mart from the family that owned and operated the business since the 1970s.

In buying into C-Mart, Shuman said he and Bondroff wanted to branch out and find a company in the retail liquidation industry that fit their skill set, which includes a strong background in technology and the ability to aggressively grow a business. C-Mart seemed to be the perfect fit; however, it took great persuasion on their end to convince the family that C-Mart needed a change.

What's in store for C-Mart's future? Shuman and Bondroff are creating an integrated e-commerce site, www.cmart.com, with real-time inventory maintenance, optimizing advertising efforts by using such innovations as thermal image tracking and modernizing the look and feel of store. Their best advice to budding entrepreneurs? "No" is not the right answer, you just have to keep going until you find the "yes."
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DCE Partner Events

2008 Mid-Atlantic Business Plan Competition

Any student, in any major, from any year, currently attending a degree granting institution in Delaware, the District of Columbia, Maryland, Virginia or West Virginia Or having earned a degree from one of those schools in the past twelve months) may enter or form teams. This event is hosted by the MIT Enterprise Forum of Washington-Baltimore. Undergraduate and Graduate students are both eligible. A Wildcat Champion Belt will be presented to the captain of he student team that wins the final round of the competition on April 26. Register today!
 

Deadlines:

  • Sunday, March 9, 2008 (Executive Team Registration & Executive Summary Submission)

  • Monday, March 24, 2008 (Semi-Finalist Notification)

  • Saturday, April 26, 2008 (Semi-Formal & Final Rounds at Georgetown University, Washington, D.C.)

UMD Ex-Professor Gives Lecture on Living in a Virtual World

Second Life (SL), is a multi-user virtual environment platform that is emerging as a new educational landscape in which users create personae and operate in a virtual world. It has become part of higher education and higher education a part of SL. This workshop will look at the ways two faculty members have made Second Life part of their teaching. A general discussion of SL as an emerging educational platform will follow, including pedagogical implications, and challenges of using this innovation for e-learning.

  • Date: March 12

  • Time: 12:00-1:30 p.m.

  • Location: University of Maryland, College Park, Marie Mount Hall, Maryland Room

  • Presenters: Don Heider, Associate Dean, Philip Merrill College of Journalism; Kari Kraus, Department of English and College of Information Studies; and Yuanyuan Li, CTE staff

The Green Guild Biodiesel Cooperative's Community Meeting

The Green Guild Biodiesel Cooperative, a startup nonprofit based in the DC metro area, will be holding a community interest meeting and presentation at the Center for Educational Partnership in Riverdale, MD on Wednesday March 12 at 6:00 p.m.


The Green Guild was started by two recent University of Maryland graduates in partnership with Biodiesel University and the Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship. They will be presenting plans for the creation of a member-based cooperative business that produces and distributes biodiesel fuel from waste vegetable oil to communities in the DC area. The presentation is intended for local community leaders, those among the existing biodiesel community and prospective members. You will have a chance to tour our retrofitted school bus Biotanker and ask questions of the coordinators. Green Guild is seeking founding members as well as those interested in volunteering on a steering committee to help get this project off the ground as soon as May 2008. Come learn about this exciting venture and find out how you can get involved.

  • Date: March 12

  • Time: 6:00 p.m.

  • Location: Center for Educational Partnership (in the Community Room #0131), 6200 Sheridan St, Riverdale, MD 20737

  • Contact: Adam Schwartz with any questions or visit www.greenguildbiodiesel.org and sign up on the announcement list.

DCE-Sponsored Event: Strategies for Surviving and Thriving in 2008: How to keep growing in a slowing economy

 

2008 has started out as a year of turbulent economic uncertainty. Now more than ever it is important for leaders of emerging companies to understand the dynamics, challenges and opportunities that are a part of this volatile environment. This programs will discuss strategies for dealing with, overcoming and even growing in the face of an economic downturn. The event will take place on Tuesday, April 8 from 8:30-11:30 a.m. in 1511 Van Munching Hall. To attend, Register now for only $35!

 

Speakers:

  • Andrew Sherman, Partner, Dickstein Shapiro LLP

  • Mike Bruce, President and CEO, InScope Solution, Inc.

  • Melissa Carrier, Director of Venture Investments and Social Entrepreneurship, Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship

  • Asher Epstein, Managing Director, Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship

  • Todd Klein, Managing Partner, Legend Ventures, LLC

  • Pamela Piper, Deputy Chief Administrative Officer for Government Internal Support Services, Prince George's County

  • Dave Lee Tayman, Associate, Dickstein Shapir LLP

  • Steve Thomas, Executive Director, TiE-DC

  • S. Tien Wong, Chairman and CEO, Opus8, Inc. and Enterpreneur in Residence at the Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship

2008 ISR Systems Symposium

The Institute for Systems Research (ISR) would like to invite and encourage you to attend our 2008 Systems Symposium, as well as to let others within the university community know about this event. Feel free to forward this email announcement as you see fit.

  • Date: Thursday, April 10

  • Time: 8:00 a.m. - 3:30 p.m.

  • Location: Samuel Riggs IV Alumni Center, University of Maryland

Morning:

Keynote address by Pradeep, Dean of the College of Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University, and member of ISR's Strategic Advisory Committee, as well as three technical talks by ISR alumni

 

Free Buffet Lunch:

The lunch features a panel presentation on the benefits of collaboration between ISR, industry and government agencies. The panel features ISR alumni working in industry: Robert Hoffman, Metron Aviation; Scott Selberg, Agilent Technologies; Ben Levy, Sensis Corp.; Vikram Manikonda, Intelligent Automation, Inc.

 

Afternoon:

More than 100 research posters and demonstrations covering the breadth of current ISR research

 

Registration is free and online at: http://www.isr.umd.edu/SS2008/
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The Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship

Founded by Rudy Lamone in 1986, the Dingman Center was one of the first of its kind in the country and has emerged as a top-ranked entrepreneurship center. Thanks to initial funding with a generous grant from Michael D. Dingman, founder of the Signal Corporation (now part of Honeywell International), the Dingman Center continues to grow as a regional and national catalyst in the field of entrepreneurship. The Center is now aggressively evolving, and in some areas, is expanding its services to further its role as a leader in the student, regional, and academic entrepreneurial communities.

The Dingman Center is currently led by:

Asher Epstein, Managing Director
Melissa Carrier, Director of Venture Investments and Social Entrepreneurship and Acting Director,   Office of Career Management
Mr. John LaPides, Chairman of the Board and Entrepreneur-In-Residence

Please visit our Web site at http://www.rhsmith.umd.edu/dingman.

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