Young Entrepreneurs Rewarded

A team from Westmont was one of eight selected from 45 entries to compete in the Spirit of Entrepreneurship and Enterprise Development (SEED) business plan competition March 7 and 8 at Fess Parker’s Doubletree Resort. The eight semi-finalists in the national competition made presentations to a panel of venture capitalists, angel investors, investment bankers, corporate CFOs and successful entrepreneurs.

First place went to uShip Inc., a business conceived and launched by three M.B.A. students from the University of Texas at Austin. The second place venture was TeleEMG Corp. from Boston University and Autonomx LLC from the University of Arizona took third place. The winning teams won monetary prizes to use as seed money for entrepreneurial pursuits.

The opening luncheon featured a keynote address from Ed Lee, founder of Wahoos Fish Tacos. Lee spoke about his own entrepreneurial journey from one small taco stand to 40 restaurants doing more than $45 million in annual sales.

The vision of SEED is to submit top collegiate entrepreneurship business plans to a world-class panel of evaluators, create high-level dialogue about all aspects of venture feasibility and long-term viability, and reward the best teams with access to seed capital and introductions to private, early-stage investors.  This year’s financial sponsors included: TechKnowledge Point, J. Slevcove & Associates, AGIA and Insurance-Central.com, Tynan Group, Caliber Advisors, SLR Capital, the Westmont Board of Advisors, Vision Launchers, and Strathmore Advisors.

David Newton launched the competition. He is founder and president of TechKnowledge Point Corporation, the world’s first and only online, 24-7, entrepreneurship research and referral exchange. Newton also teaches entrepreneurial finance at Westmont and founded the entrepreneurship program there. TechKnowledge Point operates EntrePoint.com: “The Doorway to Collegiate Entrepreneurship” (www.EntrePoint.com) which categorizes and ranks more than 425 collegiate entrepreneurship programs nationwide and publishes the Top-100 programs every year in the April edition of Entrepreneur magazine (the 2005 listing is the third annual).

For more information, contact Newton at (805) 565-6193 or e-mail info@techknowledgepoint.com. More information about the company may be found at www.TechKnowledgePoint.com.