It's a crowd favorite. The team not only was charming but had a rich opportunity, proprietary technology, and some basis in reality, since the equipment was already being used by some textile makers.
Siriwichai makes a little speech: "Thank you, thank you very much. KhĂwp khun khĂ‚." ( Thank you in Thai.) "We are in seventh heaven. I would like to apologize for making most of the weak jokes. I would like to thank the judges and congratulate them on their excellent judgment in choosing us." Everyone laughs. This might be the only team that could get away with that joke.
SUNDAY, 6:15 A.M.
I may be one of the last travelers to see the old Austin airport at this ungodly hour. There's a brand-new facility about to open across town, one that is said to be bigger and better. More than most cities, Austin has benefited from being a hotbed of entrepreneurship. The growth of Dell and the other local tech giants has seeded the ground for a thriving crop of energetic start-ups looking to leverage the resources of a tight little cash-rich community, one that understands the power of entrepreneurship to build wealth and realize dreams.
No wonder these teams work so hard to put on a good show at Moot Corp. Two years ago, when I first served as a Moot Corp. judge, I was struck by how bright the students were and what strong ideas they brought to the table. But then, many of the teams were not serious about the businesses they were proposing. It was different this year. All the contestants I spoke to intended to start the business described in the competition plans. And did they have big plans! Fabrica, with its new technology and an offer no fabric maker could refuse. Granos Inka, planning to revolutionize the economy of Peru. Vusion, which for all the slickness of the team is proffering an entire new technology potentially worth many millions. Even Walter Albecker, who, if he can only persuade us all to see his chair the way he does, could be sitting on the ground floor of something very big.
In its way Moot Corp. is a microcosm, a concentrated snapshot of the venture-capital crucible and the companies it yields. It is a mecca for would-be entrepreneurs with practical ideas. Here they can test their plans, get expert advice, and maybe even find the resources they need to build companies and fortunes. The contest is exciting to see as ideas and energy from all over the world are all brought together at once.
That's Moot Corp.: 25 dreams, no waiting.
Michael Warshaw is a senior editor at Inc. Ilan Mochari is a researcher at Inc.
Moot Corp. reality check
It's the opportunity that counts at a business-plan competition. Each team has an idea that it thinks is worth millions, if not billions. But how well do these ventures do once they leave academia and run smack-dab into the real world?
We contacted three past winners of Moot Corp. to see how well their prizewinning business plans had predicted their own future.
BUSINESS: Independence Marine Technologies, maker of the WhaleAway device--a brick-size sonic device to warn dolphins, porpoises, and whales away from commercial "gill" fishing nets--and the 1993 winner of Moot Corp.
MANAGEMENT TEAM: Fred Hagedorn, John Hagey, John Hattery, Caleb Tower, and Tom Zant--all students at Northwestern University's Kellogg Graduate School of Management
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: In late 1993--just two months after the team graduated--the government restricted gill-net fishing in overfished waters, deep-sixing the market for the WhaleAway. Today the Kellogg quintet all have management jobs outside the marine-biology industry.
BUSINESS: True Dimensions, maker of ergonomic chairs that incorporate NASA zero-gravity research on neutral body posture into their design, and the 1995 winner of Moot Corp.
MANAGEMENT TEAM: University of Texas at Austin/The Texas Business School students Michael Hanratty, Jeff Hoogendam, Leslie Frank, Wes Boyd, and Irene Bond
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: True Dimensions anticipates that its sales this year will top $1 million. It has nine employees and manufactures eight chairs a day for sale in retail chains such as the Healthy Back Store.
Hanratty, the CEO, is the only team member working at the company (although Hoogendam is on the board). Hoogendam is CEO of a computer software start-up. The others have marketing jobs at such established companies as Dell. "The prize had nothing to do with our success," Hanratty says, "but the competition's feedback process made a big difference" when it came to tweaking the company's business model.
BUSINESS: Bio-Pet Technologies, marketer of the drug SpaySafe, which sterilizes female dogs through vaccination rather than the traditional surgery, and the 1998 winner of Moot Corp.
MANAGEMENT TEAM: Founder Richard Fayrer-Hosken (inventor of the vaccine and a professor of veterinary medicine at the University of Georgia) and four students from the university's Terry College of Business: Tobias Groenen, Kimberly Haynes, Jeffrey Mills, and Mark Patterson
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: SpaySafe probably won't get FDA approval until December--six months later than predicted in the Moot Corp. business plan, which projected $3.5 million in sales for 1999. But Fayrer-Hosken has raised more than $500,000 from vets. Haynes and Patterson plan to rejoin the company once business is under way. Mills is working for an Internet start-up. Groenen reportedly works for McKinsey & Co. in Germany.
From Moot Corp., the team gained the credibility it needed to persuade the University of Georgia--always more comfortable dealing with large, established corporations--to license this technology to a start-up. "I'm not sure we'd have otherwise gotten exclusivity or such reasonable performance targets for royalties," says Charles Hofer, the team's faculty adviser. Winning also helped when it came to raising seed capital, most of which came from veterinarians. --Ilan Mochari
