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OCTOBER 2008 |
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The Latest News
Global
Entrepreneurship Week: November 17-21, 2008
The
Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship, in
collaboration with MTECH's
Hillman Entrepreneurs
and
Hinman CEOs, is
organizing campus-wide events for the Global
Entrepreneurship Week in November. Stay tuned
for the exciting events that will be taking place
throughout the week, including a marketplace of some
of our portfolio companies!
Dingman Day Lunch
featuring David Steinberg, VP-Online Storage
Business Unit,
Symantec Corporation
Mr.
Steinberg brings more than 28 years of sales,
operations and technical experience in the network
security, storage and data communications industry
to Symantec. As CEO, he recently led the growth of
DC-based SwapDrive, Inc. from small startup to one
of the region’s most successful recent acquisitions
by Symantec in June 2008. Mr. Steinberg has been
active in the technology communities of both
Washington and the Silicon Valley. He has helped
many startups with formation and marketing issues.
Date: Friday, October 17, 2008
Time:
11:30 a.m. - 1:00 p.m.
Location: 1212 Van Munching Hall (Tyser
Auditorium)
To register to attend, please click
here.
Congratulations to
September's Pitch Dingman winners! - The
first competition of the 2008-09 academic
year resulted in a three-way tie.
First Down Mobile
was one of the three winners, and also won the
Audience Choice Award.
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Also Inside This
Issue...
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Pitch Dingman News
First Down Mobile ($833 Award):
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Judges awarded $833 to Dan
O’Keefe, a University of Maryland undergraduate
student for his business concept, First Down
Mobile. First Down Mobile will be the first
cell phone-based stadium concession ordering and
delivery service. First Down Mobile enables
stadium goers to order concessions to be
delivered directly to their seats during the
game, avoiding the lines and without missing a
play. The system will utilize text messages to
relay orders to vendors and student runners will
deliver the food to the patron at his or her
seat. First Down Mobile also won the $250
Audience Choice Award.
Diditz.com ($833 Award):
-
Judges also awarded $833
to Sohit Karol, a PhD at the University of
Maryland, for his business, Diditz.com.
Diditz.com is a social networking website that
enables users to consolidate various sources of
online media (e.g. pictures, blogs, video, etc.)
into a single website organized around a single
event. Sohit and his partner have already
published an online beta version that is
currently being used by 1,000 trial users. He
is eager to review the results of the trial and
fully launch the website in the near future.
College Park Pawn ($833 Award):
-
Judges also awarded $833 to
Charlton Kilgore, Joel Cohen, and Chanda Arya,
three undergraduates for their business concept,
College Park Pawn. College Park Pawn will buy
used and unwanted furniture items from students
departing the dorms and other temporary living
areas in and around the College Park area and
re-sell the furniture to returning and incoming
students when they need it in the fall. The
three partners are excited that the business
will not only fill a need in the market, but
will also significantly reduce unnecessary waste
going to our nation’s landfills.
The next Pitch Dingman Competition will be held on
Friday, October 31, 2008 (11:00 a.m.-12:00 p.m.) in
1520 Van Munching Hall.
*About
Pitch Dingman |
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Portfolio
Company Updates
Kevin Kirk and his business,
A Slice of Paradise,
were recently selected as one of StartupNation's
Dorm-Based 20 winners:
"True entrepreneurs start dreaming up businesses at
a young age--and Kevin Kirk certainly fits the mold.
At 10 years old, he knew was onto something after
pocketing $300 one weekend selling jewelry while
working the concession stand at his sister's
lacrosse tournament.
He'd found the perfect niche
and a captive market: selling cool stuff to girls at
women's youth sporting events. The experiment
evolved into his business, A Slice of Paradise,
which is exactly what it became for Kevin when he
was awarded a $40,000 scholarship from the McKelvey
Foundation as a result of the business.
Now a freshman pulling down a
4.0 average and running a successful women's
accessory business, you might say Kevin is living
the dream."
For the full release, please
click
here. For the
featured slideshow on MSN Money, please click
here.
*About Portfolio Companies |
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Social Venture
Highlights
This fall's program has exceeded our
expectations for turnout and quality!
- 36 MBA students applied for engagements
(twice as many as any other semester!)
- 43 non-profits applied for projects, some
with multiple project requests
After careful evaluation, we have selected 8
non-profits and 21 students to participate. There
are 5 PT MBAs this semester and 16 FT MBAs. We also
have five 2nd year MBA coaches who serve as advisors
to the mostly 1st year MBA consultants.
Non-profits selected:
- Master Peace Community Farm
- Looking for My Sister
- Kids for Tomorrow
- Amuazo
- Global Youth Connect
- National Foundation for Teaching
Entrepreneurship
- Office of Sustainability at the University
of Maryland
- The Woman's Heart
We will share more about these projects this
semester. The application for new projects opens
again in January 2009. Contact
Melissa Carrier
(301.405.9517) for more information.
Social Venturing Program Sponsor:
*About Social Venturing |
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Capital
Access Network Updates
The Dingman Center's Capital Access Network (CAN)
brings regional start-up companies seeking
early-stage funding to the angel investing
community. The CAN Program, sponsored by Morrison &
Foerster, Silicon Valley Bank, and Deloitte, brought
the following exciting start-up companies to the
September 10 Investor Breakfast:
-
AccuStrata: We
offer a patented control system that manages at
the sub-micron level and in real time the thin
film production process, increasing yields.
-
Bid4Health:
Bid4Health's easy, one-click communication
enables facilities to fill needs quickly by
reaching hundreds of workforce and agency
candidates in seconds with the latest shift
postings on-line and through an embedded text
messaging solution.
-
mySBX: mySBX
has created and launched a collaborative portal
for businesses to partner, share information,
and exchange billable opportunities.
Our next breakfast will be held on Wednesday,
October 8, 2008 (9:30-11:30 a.m.) in 2505 Van
Munching Hall.
CAN Program Sponsors:
*About CAN
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Last Month at
Dingman
For an aspiring entrepreneur ready to take a
business to the next level capturing the attention
of an investor is critical. For the investor,
finding investment-worthy prospects is also a quarry
that can be elusive.
How does a successful match get made?
This was one of the key questions the Smith School’s
Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship answered for
approximately 100 early-stage entrepreneurs in
Beijing during a workshop, “How to Capture a VC’s
Attention Before it’s Gone,” on Sept. 19. The
workshop was part of a series offered in conjunction
with the Smith School’s 2008 China Business Plan
Competition.
Asher Epstein, managing director of the Dingman
Center for Entrepreneurship, pointed out that the
most successful pitches are those that are the
easiest for venture capital (VC) investors to see
future value in. The most difficult pitches are
those that are for unproven or untried business
ideas.
“Once you break even and you’re looking for growth
capital it’s a much easier pitch to the venture
capital community,” said Epstein. “Because once you
show you know how to make money, it’s much easier
for the venture capitalist to understand how you’ll
make them money.”
Featured speaker Benson Tam, a partner at Fidelity
Asia Ventures, shared advice, personal stories and
insight, including his first impressions of Jack Ma,
the enigmatic founder of Alibaba.com. The company is
one of Fidelity’s high-profile success stories.
Fidelity Asia Ventures is a primary sponsor of the
2008 China Business Plan Competition.
It boils down to chemistry and trust more than
anything according to Tam. The bottom line is that
the investor has to have faith in the management
team. And in China, he says, the chief executive
officer is an essential and irreplaceable part of
that team.
Anyone who is investment worthy understands their
industry says Tam, and knows where the insiders hang
out – be it literally, for example at association
events, or virtually, such as in online industry
chat rooms. This is where Tam and others like him
will also be – scoping out opportunity. The kiss of
death advised Tam, is to try and make a pitch via a
telephone call.
“If you claim you know so much about the industry
then you must know where the experts, the gurus,
usually hang out,” said Tam. “Sometimes it’s on the
Internet. In China, it’s often in chat rooms. My
colleagues, we go to the Web chat rooms where the
top programmers or the top entrepreneurs hang out.”
To the benefit of entrepreneurs, any time can be the
right time for a VC to make an investment. There is
no particular stage of development that is
exclusively targeted. “We are stage agnostic and we
are stage agnostic for the very good reason that
frankly it’s very difficult to find a good
entrepreneur,” said Tam. “And when you find them,
that’s the right time to back them.”
Attendees and investors had ample opportunity to
find each other immediately following the session
during a cocktail reception honoring the Smith
School’s 2008 China Business Plan Competition
semifinalists. Several semifinalist teams were in
attendance.
Each year the Smith School holds the China Business
Plan Competition – which awards $50,000 in cash
prizes to aspiring entrepreneurs – in support of the
growth of world-class innovation and business
leaders in China. This year the competition is
themed “Go for the Gold” and the final event and
awards ceremony will be held at Beida University’s
Guanghua School of Management on Oct. 29.
“We’ll see you all at the China Business Plan
Competition on the 29th of October,” said Epstein
before encouraging participants to take further
advantage of the resources offered by the center.
“The Dingman Center should be viewed as a resource
to you in building your venture.”
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DCE
Partner Events
Please join us for discussions of new
sources of entrepreneurship research questions, data
sources, and Smith Best Entrepreneurship Paper
prizes.
Asher Epstein will discuss possibilities through the
Entrepreneurs-in-Residence and the availability of
data from TiE-Smith entrepreneurs;
Bob Baum will discuss entrepreneurship research
awards and past successful research collaborations
with the Entrepreneurs-in-Residence and TiE-DC; and
Henry Sims, Professor of Management & Organization,
and Yun Tao Dong, PhD Student, will discuss:
The Venture Capitalist as Leader: The Influence
of Venture Capitalist Empowering Leadership on
Entrepreneur Stress and Performance
Taking a new perspective, the present study views
the venture capitalist as a leader of entrepreneurs
and analyzes their relationship based on leadership
theory and literature. Specifically, we examine
venture capitalist empowering leadership as an
antecedent of entrepreneur stress and further
investigate the negative effect of entrepreneur
stress on venture performance. We also identify
moderators of the relationship, indicating that
venture capitalist empowering leadership generates
more stress on entrepreneurs who have lower
self-efficacy (an internal factor) and/or receive
less coaching from the venture capitalist (an
external factor). The proposed method employed to
test these hypotheses is then presented. By
examining the effect of venture capitalist
empowering leadership on entrepreneur stress and
venture performance, the present study develops the
first theory of venture capitalist behavior as a set
of leadership behaviors, introduces a new view on
how to improve venture performance, and provides
insights for effective venture capitalist decision
making and entrepreneur training.
Scott Benjamin, PhD Student,
will discuss:
From Theory to Practice - Originating an
Artificial Investment Bubble
This study draws upon extant theory about
investment bubbles. The object of the study is to
either prove or disprove current accepted theories
by implementing a series of experiments. Concepts
that appear in common across current accepted
theories are integrated in a model that guides
analysis by product, industry and environments. I
will conduct experiments in multiple contexts based
upon these models. The model will simulate an
actual environment as prescribed by accepted
theories. The results of this experiment may point
to improvements in current theory and offer
practical solutions to entrepreneurs.
Date: October 7, 2008
Time: 12:00-1:25 p.m.
Location: 2517 Van Munching Hall (Executive
Dining Room)
Please RSVP to
Sara Moon by
October 1, 2008.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Agricultural
Research Service (ARS) is one of the world's
premiere scientific research organizations. GROWING
GREEN: The Second Green Revolution will solidify ARS'
role in addressing global issues concerning biofuel,
bioproducts, and sustainability.
GROWING GREEN is unlike any other technology
showcase, as it will feature technologies and
projects by teams of ARS researchers brought
together to provide solutions to important
environmental and energy issues, morning panel
discussions, and lots more!
Date: October 30, 2008
Time: 7:15 a.m. - 5:15 p.m.
Cost: $80 per person. Registration ends
October 23, 2008.
Location:
Four Points Sheraton BWI
Airport
7032 Elm Road
Baltimore, MD 21240
To register and for more details, visit the
website.
Marketing in
Technology-Driven Industries:
Certificate in
Innovation Management Program
Date: October 31, 2008
Time: 8:30 a.m. - 4:30 p.m.
Register:
Website
Getting your innovative product to your customers
and effectively communicating its benefits is only
part of the challenge of marketing. Join us for this
second module in the Certificate in Innovation
Management Program presented by the University of
Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business
and the A. James Clark School of Engineering.
You'll leave this module with a step-by-step
approach for formulating a plan of attack for
marketing in technology driven industries. You'll
gain a deeper understanding of why branding matters
in the high tech arena, as well as fundamental
knowledge of the psychology and motivations behind
early, mid and late technology adopters. You'll
learn how to uncover segments of customers who need
your innovation most, and how to effectively
communicate the benefits of your innovation to
investors. When you enroll in at least six of the
one-day modules offered, you'll earn a
Certificate in Innovation Management from the
Clark School of Engineering and the Smith School of
Business to enhance your resume and officially
recognize your knowledge gain in the topics covered.
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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
Mr. John LaPides, Chairman of the Board and Entrepreneur-in-Residence
Please visit our Web site at
http://www.rhsmith.umd.edu/dingman.
*Past Newsletters
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