One of my favorite things over the past four years has been the UW Business Plan Competition.  As a grad student, in 2005, I had two ideas and we went nowhere.  In 2006, I jumped on another student team and we won "Best Consumer Product."  Last year, I was a first round judge and merely observed the rest.  And this year, thanks to the kindness of some of my favorite people, I was invited to judge the tradeshow round.

Quick moment of clarification for those who don’t know anything about this.  Every year, about 60-80 teams submit a business plan.  Some teams are made up of 4 students, some teams are established companies with a student consultant.  It’s a broad range, so you see a lot of neat ideas.  These 60-80 teams are whittled down to 32, who then fill a room and pitch their idea to about 100 judges in a tradeshow type setting.  That list gets cut down to 16, then down to 4, and a winner is chosen.  So, Wednesday, we had the tradeshow round of 32, and our job as judges was to "invest" 1000 fake dollars into at least 5 companies.  You are free to split that 1000 however you like, as long as 5 or more companies are given money.  The 16 teams who receive the most money move on to the next round.

Now, my favorite part about this whole competition is that since most of the people you talk to are undergrad, MBA or PhD students, they still have this sense of optimism and naivety.  For example, you ask an undergrad with a dream, "What’s your exit strategy?" and his response is pure and good.  He says, "Exit?  We’re going to make this a profitable business.  I don’t want to sell it.  This is my idea, and it’s going to work."  Wow, as a human being, you love hearing that.  But then you have to crush his hopes and dreams, and invite him to join the real world.  You have to tell him, "Well, here’s the thing.  If I’m a VC, and I put money in, there better damn sure be an exit.  Because I’m not really in the business of giving you a bunch of coin so you can build a company that doesn’t make me rich.  You will sell, and you will sell when I tell you to."

Anyway, the whole thing is great.  Wide eyed, naive students getting creative and coming up with some crazy cool ideas.  It’s the kind of place that you walk out of wishing they all would get the money they need to build the product they want to build.  Sure, there were some plain dumb ideas – but only dumb from the standpoint that they were unfundable.  Every idea itself had merit.  Even the ideas with terrible business plans and execution were at least interesting ideas.     

I’m being lazy and not going through the whole list of companies.  But here were some ideas that stood out for me.  I’m not saying all their business plans were great, but the ideas stuck in my head

• A way to deliver medicine through the nose to the brain, to get cancer medicine pas the blood brain barrier.
• A company who developed a new strain of algae that they could farm for oil.
• An exercise device specifically tailored for people in retirement homes.  A kind of "soloflex" for people in wheelchairs.
• A system for capturing excess carbon from buildings to decrease heating costs.
• A career web site specifically tailored to kids right out of school.
• A "match.com" for tradeshow attendees, where you fill out a profile, and the site suggests other people attending the show you should meet with.
• A company that produces organic clothing.
• A sunflower village in Kenya so villagers can earn money.
• A Web site for coaches to help them manage their teams.
• And other cool ideas….

Congrats to all the teams who made it to the next round.   And I hope those teams that didnt make it, continue to tweak their plans and shoot for success.