Center for Technology Commercialization

The Lloyd Greif Center for Entrepreneurial Studies and
The Center for Technology Commercialization

Announce the Finalists for the
Fourth Annual USC Business Plan and
Technology Commercialization Plan Competition

May 1, 2008. At a gathering of nearly 300 people in the Davidson Conference Center at USC, the Lloyd Greif Center for Entrepreneurial Studies and its Center for Technology Commercialization (CTC) presented a total of $50,000 in prize money to the winners of the Fourth Annual USC Business Plan and Technology Commercialization Plan Competition. The winners were MBA candidate Elizabeth Amini and undergraduate entrepreneur majors Noah Auerhahn, Jeff Nobbs, and Dane McLeod. In addition to the prize money that will be used to launch their businesses, the winners take away six months of free space in the LA Technology Business Center, an incubator that has been a close partner with CTC and has offered internship opportunities to entrepreneur students with its companies..

Anti-Aging Games (AAG) competes in the brain fitness industry by providing online games with real-time tracking, tailoring and feedback using proven cognitive training techniques to stimulate brain activity. The target customer is age 40-75 and the team includes lead entrepreneur Elizabeth Amini, a cognitive scientist and MBA; renowned gaming expert Nolan Bushnell; and a number of expert neuropsychologists.

2008 USC Business Plan Competition Winner: Elizabeth Amini - Anti-Aging Games

Extrabux is the first company to combine a proven cost-per-sale revenue model of cash back rewards with the popular technology of comparison shopping to save customers time and money. Their model helps retailers avoid click fraud and insure a fixed return. The team has proven their concept with the acquisition of 4,500 customers and relationships with more than 1,700 online retailers.

2008 USC Technology Plan Competition Winners: (l to r)Noah Auerhahn, Jeff Nobbs, Dane McLeod - Extrabux

The judges for this year's competition included entrepreneurs, angel investors, and investment bankers.

Lloyd Greif, Greif & Co.
Scott Adelson, Houlihan Lokey
Laura Hite, Cosrich Inc.
Rick Citron, Citron & Deutsch
Steve Block, Venture Farm and the Tech Coast Angels

April 18, 2008

A review panel of 8 Tech Coast and Pasadena Angels have chosen six finalists who will present before a panel of judges on April 30 at 6:30 p.m. in JKP 212.

Mobile Travel Assistant – Stefan Bolowich, Chetan Chawla, Kevin McClave
Mobile travel solution for coprorate travelers needing to make itinerary changes

AbouTime – Erik Giles
An online payment solution for service companies

Nous Sports Inc. – Naser Khan and Imo Umoren
A proprietary coaching system to analyze game plays live on the field

Extrabux – Dane McLeod, Jeffrey Nobbs, Noah Auerhahn
Shopping portal combining cash-back rewards and comparison shopping

Anti-AgingGames.com – Elizabeth Amini
Online games to stimulate brain function in the elderly

Civility Mutual – Michael Woods
Communication training tools for patient centered healthcare

More about the competition...

Do you have a product, service, or technology that you want to launch? Would mentoring, coaching and the possibility of seed capital help you do it? Take advantage of this great opportunity to compete with other potential entrepreneurs like you in the fourth annual university-wide business plan and technology commercialization plan competition at USC. Open to all graduate and undergraduate students and faculty, and researchers on both the University Park and health Sciences Campuses.

2007 USC Business Plan Competition Winner: Jordan Wiens, Xenon Inc.

The Lloyd Greif Center for Entrepreneurial Studies, one of the leading centers for the education and practice of entrepreneurship, and its Center for Technology Commercialization, a leader in programs and processes for technology entrepreneurship and the commercialization of technologies, join to offer this opportunity to realize your dreams and start your own company. This year we are adding a Technology Commercialization Plan competition so you have two opportunities to win.

1) All-comers business plan competition for $25,000. All types of businesses are welcome but the winner must be a business that is within six months of being ready to launch..

2) Technology commercialization plan competition for technologies developed at USC with a prize of $25,000 and six months free space in the Business Technology Center incubator. These technologies should have reached the prototype stage at a minimum.

Even if you don't win, you will get a lot of support and guidance as well as make powerful connections in the entrepreneurial and investor communities.

For years our graduates have been launching and growing dynamic new companies. Any one of them would tell you that winning a competition like this one can go a long way toward helping an entrepreneur get started. Talk to Jordan Wiens who won last year's competition with Xenon, Inc.. He and his partner have successfully launched a business that provides products and services for oil refineries that control and record emissions in compliance with government regulations

Click the links on the sidebar to find more information about the 2008 Competition

Highlights of the 2007 Competition

One of the many ways that the Greif Center and the Center for Technology Commercialization reach out to faculty and students on the UPC campus as well as the Health Sciences Campus is through an annual university-wide business plan competition. This year’s $25,000 prize was sponsored by the Greif Center, the Center for Technology Commercialization, one of our alumni entrepreneurs of the year, Torin Pavia and his company ARbitech, and the Los Angeles Business Technology Center that is providing six months of free space in its incubator.

We received 32 business plans for this year’s competition. The plans were reviewed by an outside panel of reviewers comprised of investment experts from the Pasadena Angels and the Tech Coast Angels. It was their job to decide which teams would compete in the finals. The review panel consisted of

Bill Collins - Starboard Venture Partners
Doug Hayes - Tech Coast Angels
Fred Haney - Venture investment Management
Saul Leonard - Tech Coast Angels
John Baldeschwieler - Pasadena Angels
Chuck Stephens - Pasadena Angels
David Thompson - Pasadena Angels
Bob Aholt - Pasadena Angels
Al Schneider - Pasadena Agnels

Screening and review of the written plans for the 2007 competition was extremely competitive, and the judges spent a considerable amount of time debating the merits of each plan. The judges for the competition included:

Lloyd Greif - Greif & Co. Mr. Greif founded Greif & Co in 1992 after a decade-long investment banking career as vice chairman of Sutro & Co. He was the first alumnus of an entrepreneur program to come back and endow the program from which he graduated.

Larry Tashjian : the founder, President and CEO of CAM Capital Advisors, a value-based manager in public and private companies. Prior he grew Provident Investment Counsel to a $25 billion company at its peak when it was acquired. He also funded the Capital Markets training Room here at Marshall. He is a graduate of the graduate entrepreneur program

Steven Block : Retired as the senior vice president and general counsel of International Flavors & Fragrances in 2003, one of many Fortune 500 corporations with which he has worked. He is currently a member of the Tech Coast Angels and is a partner in Venture Farm, an early state execution and funding organization.

Jonathan Goody : His Bay Equity Real Estate holds over 5000 residential units in several states. His Community Bank of the Bay was the most profitable small bank in California. He just acquired 3 Coldstone Creameries, and his Bay Automotive Group – just acquired East Bay Mitsubishi and East Bay Kia, and he has a construction company – he’s a real conglomerate.

Richard Morganstern : comes from a distinguished career as an intellectual property attorney as well as Chairman of and investment banking firm focusing on funding from Foreign sources for early stage technology ventures. He is the co-found of Language Weaver, the world’s leading supplier of natural language translation systems, a USC spin-off. He currently serves on as President of the Tech Coast Angels and is a member of the Advisory board of the Marshall Center for Technology Commercialization.

Dr. Kevin Scanlon : distinguished career in academic medicine, pharmaceutical industry management and is currently a member of both the Pasadena Angels and the Tech Coast Angels where he is mentoring and supporting entrepreneurs and also consulting to international governments in Europe and Asia to develop Centers of Excellence in Bioscience. Kevin is a member of the advisory board of the Marshall Center for Technology Commercialization.

Congratulations to the winner of the 2007 USC Business Plan Competition

Xenon – Jordan Wiens and Michael Andraos
Xenon Inc. will provide engineering, integration, and field services for process and environmental analyzer systems to manufacturing facilities that use process analyzers to optimize production processes, and environmental analyzers to control and record emissions in compliance with government regulations. Hope you all got that – there will be a test.

The other finalists were:

Dine to Thrive – Wade Armstrong and Christiane Girao
Dine to Thrive provides home-delivered nutritionally-specialized food to individuals with medically-limited diets. Initial meal plans will be targeted towards cancer patients. No other company currently produces food that is specialized to the needs of this market.

Halftime Entertainment – Christine Katzman
Halftime will enhance students’ love for music and performance through a bimonthly printed magazine and community website.

EyePredict – Ran Carmi, Gabriel Law, Irina Fayngersh, and Michael Uyeda
Advertisers are seeking accurate and scalable metrics to measure return on investment (ROI). Eye-Predict’s patented solutions quantify the noticeability of key objects, such as product placements in TV shows, and logos in printed ads.

MedSpace – Geoffrey Phil lippe and Julia Matusov
MedSpace, Inc. is a HIPAA-compliant, online personal health record service that enables immigrants to manage their family’s health information and share that information across language and geographic boundaries.

CliqUp – Chis Chen, Izu Matsuo and Eric Suilano
CliqUp is a consumer research company that tracks consumer behavior and trends in the social media space. CliqUp offers deeper customer insights and customizable reports that help corporations understand their customers better, identify opportunities and trends faster, and integrate social media into their marketing strategies with more confidence, leading ultimately to better results.