The Buerk Center for Entrepreneurship awards $170,000 to eight student-led start-ups

Haiti Babi Blanket

Haiti Babi

When Katlin Jackson returned from her second trip to Haiti in January 2012, she was a woman on a mission. After spending time in a Haitian orphanage, she’d discovered that a good number of the children there weren’t orphans at all. Their parents were simply too poor to care for them. Within months, Katlin, along with UW junior Kari Davidson, cofounded Haiti Babi and entered the 2012 Business Plan Competition.

Haiti Babi now employs four Haitian mothers to knit and crochet high-quality, incredibly soft baby blankets and accessories that are sold to moms in the United States. In 12 months, Katlin and Kari have taken an idea, defined a mission (Moms helping Moms), and created a start-up company that is making real headway. They have a well-thought-out brand, fashionable products, and a detailed operations plan. Their Indiegogo campaign brought in double their fund-raising goal, pre-orders for their first blankets surpassed all expectations, and Haiti Babi has been featured in Seattle Magazine, Social Good Moms, and Disney Baby.

Much of Haiti Babi’s success can be attributed to the intelligence, drive, and dedication of its founders, but they’ve also had great help along the way. They were admitted into the Jones Milestones/Foster Accelerator in July 2012.

The JM/FA at the Foster School’s Buerk Center for Entrepreneurship is a TechStars-like program that provides a milestones-based framework, monthly coaching from Seattle entrepreneurs and investors, and connections that help student teams make the transition to start-up companies.  From July 2012 to February 2013, 10 teams worked to recreate their teams, develop their technologies or get product to market, and raise early-stage funding. On February 13, eight teams were awarded between $10,000 and $25,000 for their efforts.

  • PatientStream, a cloud-based electronic patient-tracking system for hospitals, licensed its technology from the University of Washington and secured a $500,000 investment from the W Fund.  Ben Anderson (TMMBA 2012) is the founder, and brought in Keith Streckenbach as COO and co-founder to drive sales. Anderson quit his day job at UW Medicine/Harborview in October.
  • Haiti Babi provides mothers in Haiti with employment to keep their children out of orphanages. As part of their “Moms helping Moms” mission, Haiti Babi’s mothers knit and crochet high-quality, incredibly soft baby blankets that are sold in the United States. Co-founders Katlin Jackson and Kari Davidson (BFA 2014) raised funding through an Indiegogo campaign, pre-orders for blankets surpassed all expectations, and Haiti Babi has been featured in Seattle Magazine and Disney Baby.
  • LumiSands was awarded a $150,000 National Science Foundation SBIR Phase-I Grant and a $50,000 gift from the Washington Research Foundation for the development and manufacture of its silicon-based alternative to rare-earth phosphors used in LED lighting. Co-founders Ji-Hao Hoo (PhD 2013) and Chang-Ching Tu have negotiated an agreement with the University of Washington, and are still in the technology development phase.
  • JoeyBra, “the first sexy and comfortable fashion bra with a pocket,” closed a successful angel investment round, produced a new, quality sports bra with a waterproof pocket in a full range of sizes, and has been featured by Forbes, MSNBC, and CNN.  Mariah Gentry (BA 2013) and Kyle Bartlow (BA 2013), the co-founders, have contracted with a former Miss America as a spokesmodel and will launch their product nationwide in April 2013.
  • Microryza, a KickStarter-type site for smaller science and research projects,was admitted into Y-Combinator in October and moved to the Bay Area. Cindy Wu (BS 2011) and Denny Luan (BS 2011) have raised more than $170,000 and their site has funded projects from tracking Magellanic penguins to sustaining native bees and student-designed electric racecars.
    Update: March 28, 2013 – Microryza was named one of the top 5 Y-Combinator start-ups to watch by Inc. Magazine.
  • Strideline sold more than 60,000 pairs of their signature city skyline crew socks in 2012. Co- founders Jake Director (BA 2013) and Riley Goodman (BA 2013) have organized a national sales team, are now selling in Nordstrom and Zumiez, and were the subject of a UW TV short feature
  • SuperCritical Technologies has designed and will build compact modular power plants that provide up to 5MW of clean, reliable electricity for heating and/or cooling. Chal Davidson (MBA 2012) is the CEO, with Max Effgen (MBA 2012) as a co-founder. The company raised $200,000 in angel funding to complete the conceptual design and establish supplier relationships, and is currently fundraising to build the prototype.
  • UrbanHarvest is an urban farming company that grows high-value hydroponic lettuces and herbs within feet of where they’ll be consumed. The brainchild of Chris Bajuk (MBA 2011) and Chris Sheppard (MBA/JD 2012), UrbanHarvest is currently negotiating with a large SoDo corporation to build a rooftop greenhouse.

So what’s next? The work certainly doesn’t stop here. As any entrepreneur knows, it takes more than six months to grow a thriving business. And that’s what the JM/FA ultimately provides at the end:  additional runway.  This follow-on funding is a testament to the companies’ hard work so far, and an investment in what we know they can become.

The Jones Milestones/Foster Accelerator is funded by the Herbert B. Jones Foundation and additional private donors who, like us, believe in the ability of student entrepreneurs.


Posted by ellenp2 - February 22nd, 2013 - 0 comments - Permalink


Paradigm shifts and P4 Medicine

Dr. Leroy Hood, a pioneer in the systems approach to biology and medicine, spoke at UW Foster School in January 2013 about innovation, complexity, P4 Medicine—predictive, preventative, personalized, and participatory—and much more.

Dr. Hood has played a role in founding more than fourteen biotechnology companies, including Amgen, Applied Biosystems, Darwin, and The Accelerator and Integrated Diagnostics. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine. Of the 6,000+ scientists world-wide who belong to one or more of these academies, Dr. Hood is one of only fifteen people accepted to all three. Additionally, Dr. Hood has published more than 700 peer reviewed articles and currently holds 36 patents.

In a career of dramatic innovation, Dr. Hood has seen a number of paradigm shifts. He identified four common traits. Each paradigm change:

  1. Fundamentally altered how, in his case, scientists think about biology and the practice of biology.
  2. Faced enormous initial skepticism and, in some cases, actual hostility because there were perceived threats to the traditional way of getting things done.
  3. Forced the creation of new organizational structures—the bureaucracy that comes from existing organizational structures hurts the ability to change the way you think about something.
  4. Required enormous risk taking.

Watch the video below for more highlights from his talk, including how the Human Genome Project transformed biology, implications of P4 Medicine, and his thoughts on the future of systems biology.

Dr. Leroy Hood from Foster School of Business on Vimeo.

Leroy Hood was one of UW Foster School of Business Dean Jim Jiambalvo’s guest speakers at the annual Leaders to Legends Breakfast Lecture Series, which include notable leaders in an array of industries from greater Seattle and around the country.


Posted by masses - February 20th, 2013 - 0 comments - Permalink


Can vending machines be innovative? Definitely.

Paul DavisPaul Davis, CEO of Coinstar, spoke at the Foster School of Business’s Leaders to Legends Breakfast Series in November 2012. His talk focused on how Coinstar has reinvented itself to become a leader in the automated retail space—otherwise known as kiosks—through innovation.

One of the largest and best-known parts of Coinstar’s business is Redbox, the popular automated movie DVD kiosk business. Redbox comprises more than 80 percent of Coinstar’s revenue. Redbox’s business model centers on value, simplicity and convenience, and it’s been highly successful. It’s a $2 billion business and there are over 42,000 Redbox kiosks in the U.S.

In addition to Redbox, Coinstar is involved in eight other companies. These companies, like Redbox, embody value, simplicity, and convenience. A perfect example is Rubi, a new twist on vending machine coffee. Coinstar is launching this in partnership with Seattle’s Best Coffee, which is owned by Starbucks. Rubi utilizes French press technology and offers single cup brewing—beans are ground on the spot—that starts at $1 a cup. It offers affordable, high quality coffee from a vending machine.

Other Coinstar properties include Alula, which allows you to turn gift cards into cash at 70-85 percent of the value of the card, and Eco ATM, which allows you to get cash for your cell phone on the spot. They’re looking at expanding this to all electronics.

Coinstar looks for innovative opportunities in the automated retail space in myriad places. It holds big-idea competitions within the company, talks to venture capitalists and private equity firms, holds white-board competitions at universities, and utilizes a nation-wide innovator network.

Coinstar has also developed criteria and a process for finding new companies. It only considers businesses that can scale or expand outside of the U.S. and that are capable of $100 million in revenue. All of the ideas are also consumer-tested before being seriously pursued. And once an idea is vetted, Coinstar hires an entrepreneur with deep domain expertise to launch and grow the company. The entrepreneur is given four years to do this and his or her compensation is tied to the success of the company. This systematic approach is paying off. All but one of the ideas Coinstar has pursued have succeeded; industry standard is typically a 25 percent success rate.

Coinstar has been steadily rising on Fortune’s “Fastest-Growing Companies” list for the past few years. Despite critics, they are successfully reinventing—or rather inventing—the automated retail space. Look for Coinstar products in all kinds of kiosks near you.

Since giving this talk, Paul Davis announced he will retire from Coinstar. Scott Di Valerio, currently CFO of Coinstar, will become CEO in early April.

Paul Davis was one of UW Foster School of Business Dean Jim Jiambalvo’s guest speakers at the annual Leaders to Legends Breakfast Lecture Series, which include notable leaders in an array of industries from greater Seattle and around the country.


Posted by masses - February 13th, 2013 - 0 comments - Permalink


Foster finance workshop explores the ABCs of HFTs

Guest post by Jonathan Brogaard, an Assistant Professor of Finance at the Foster School

Jonathan BrogaardIs high frequency trading good or bad for financial markets? In January, the Foster School Department of Finance and Business Economics hosted a high-level summit to discuss how the increasing automation of financial markets is affecting investors, market volatility and order execution.

The discussion brought together Foster finance faculty and senior executives from local investment firms.

As an early investigator of this emerging topic in finance, I was asked to present the leading academic findings.

First, a bit of definition. High frequency trading (or HFT) is the fastest subset of computer-based algorithmic trading. HFTs act either as market makers or exploit inefficiencies in the market. They buy and sell constantly, hold very little inventory at any given time, and end each day with zero positions. In short, they run a volume business, picking up fractions of a penny over and over and over again. This leads to regular—and sometimes extravagant—profitability.

But HFTs are shrouded in mystery. Little is known about these firms and their algorithms that dominate market trading. HFTs are obtuse and generally unregulated. And they have been linked to scary events such as the flash crash of May 6, 2010.

A small group of academics, including myself, study the effect of HFTs on market quality—how well markets operate. The consensus of our findings is that, on average, HFTs are improving the quality of markets. That is, they are adding to price discovery (making prices more informative), increasing liquidity (making more shares available to be bought and sold), and decreasing spreads (the price difference between what a buyer and a seller will pay).

But what are traditional investors experiencing in the markets? Our workshop guests voiced a variety of opinions on HFTs, and shared experiences that will help me and other researchers fine-tune our measurements to better reflect the realities of an increasingly computerized market.

We certainly share their concerns about the lack of understanding around high frequency trading. We have much to learn. Do HFTs increase or decrease the risk of flash crashes? What is their presence doing to investor confidence? Are they beneficial in the market for smaller stocks?

We tend to fear what we don’t know. But high frequency trading is certainly here to stay. So we’re working diligently to shed light on this powerful new force in the financial markets.


Posted by masses - February 8th, 2013 - 0 comments - Permalink


Jepson School 20th anniversary

Guest post by Bruce Avolio, Executive Director of the Center for Leadership and Strategic Thinking and Marion B. Ingersoll Professor of Management

image003

I recently attended the Jepsen School’s 20th anniversary celebration in Richmond Virginia. The Jepsen School was the first school in USA to focus specifically on leadership as an undergraduate major as its main thrust and did so taking a broad humanities perspective. They have now graduated over 1,000 students who approach leadership with a very, very broad mindset from the great books of literature and history to the R.O.I. focus of corporations.

During one presentation at the conference, we talked about a program called Shakespeare Behind Bars. From its website, “Now in its 18th year, Shakespeare Behind Bars is the oldest program of its kind in North America. SBB programming serves incarcerated adults and youth using exclusively the works of William Shakespeare.” So try to imagine someone from the African American gang in a correctional institution working with someone from the white supremacist gang on Hamlet. That is exactly what happens, and this program has participants with a significantly lower recidivism rate, lower rate of violence and infractions, etc. So next time someone is in a brainstorming session with you, and they suggest something so out of the range as Shakespeare Behind Bars must have been when it was first proposed, I suggest you suspend your judgment!


Posted by byarlay - February 6th, 2013 - 0 comments - Permalink


Students present business strategy in Chinese

Business Language Competition - Kanghee Jeon, Alex Birch, Benjamin ChowCase competitions are an incredible skill builder for undergraduate business students – they require students to work as consultants on a real company and business challenges, they are given limited resources and time to create a solution, and then they are asked to present these solutions to a panel of corporate judges. Now, imagine doing this in a second language. This Fall, three Certificate of International Studies in Business (CISB) students studying Mandarin as a second or third language competed in the Chinese Track of the BYU Business Language Case Competition.

Kanghee Jeon, Alex Birch, and Ben Chow spent two weeks studying a case written in Chinese on Pepsi Company and preparing their presentation and executive summary all in Chinese. The team considered three countries in which Pepsi Company might expand. After assessing various economic factors, their solution was to enter the Chinese market. Their plan was to “penetrate not only beverages but also the food market which could be Pepsi’s competitive advantage over Coca Cola Company,” said Kanghee.

The team competed in three rounds at Brigham Young University, and they received outstanding feedback from the judges about the depth of their analysis and solution. Judges commented that they “loved how the presentation started with recommendations instead of analysis,” and that the students had a “great understanding of Chinese culture and financial environment” as well as “great leverage on business terms.”

One of the UW student competitors, Kanghee Jeon, said “I was very excited to do the case competition in a second language (or third for me).  Even though I was worried about my Chinese language skills, while preparing for the competition, I learned lots of new vocabulary and phrases. I am a lot more confident in speaking in Chinese after the competition. Additionally, it was a great opportunity for me to meet judges and other students from different schools.”

Kanghee would highly recommend participating in a business language competition to other students: “This is such a unique experience … You will get to build your teamwork, problem solving, time management, leadership, and language skills. It was challenging, but very rewarding!”


Posted by khatch - February 4th, 2013 - 0 comments - Permalink


From Norway to Foster to Boeing: a conversation with MBA alum Hans Aarhus

Hans Aarhus bio pictureHans Aarhus is the director of Estimating and Pricing for Boeing’s 787 program. He received his MBA from the Foster School in 1989 and is a member of the Global Business Advisory Board.

In 2011 you were named Director of Estimating and Pricing for Boeing’s 787 program after serving as the Director of Financial Planning for the program. Tell us about your new role.

In my new role, I’m responsible for all of the estimates that are done on the 787 program.  These estimates can be broken down in a couple of different categories: the engineering changes that are being considered for the airplane, customer requested changes to the airplane, new derivative airplanes being studied and any production system investment under consideration.   All of these estimates require my team to reach out to all of the different organizations that would have impacts due to the proposed changes, including engineering, procurement, production and support.  Most of these estimates get presented in a business case format that includes a number of financial metrics and considerations.  We also work with our pricing organization for estimates that include pricing considerations with our customers.

I also have responsibility for all systems, processes and tools that support our function in our day to day activities.

What was it like to come to the US from Norway to study at UW? Did you plan to stay in the US after earning your MBA?

It was a great opportunity that also included quite a culture shock.  I had not been to the US before and I still recall very vividly the first day which included the I5-I405 Hwy interchange coming out of Seatac, the downtown skyline and Bellevue Mall.  My impression was, “wow everything is bigger in the US.”The first couple of days on the UW campus were also very impressive in regards to the sheer size of the campus and all of the great architecture of the buildings. My first quarters were certainly influenced by the fact that English is my second language and some of the challenges it drives.  I also recall the excitement I always had talking to friends and relatives back in Norway in regards to my experiences that UW offered including my first Husky football game with 60,000 plus fans in the stands.I did not have any plans whatsoever to stay in the US in the beginning but that changed very quickly when I ran into a student from Oregon in the McMahon dining room in the spring of 1986.  A very long and great story but here we are 25 years into our marriage with 2 great sons.

How has your global experience helped you in your various positions?

I think the global experience has been very important for me throughout my Boeing career.  English being my second language has always made me pay very close attention when other people are communicating so I end up doing a little more listening than talking, which I have found to be a good thing.  I also think having a global experience enables you to recognize that most people come from different cultures and the more you understand about their background and can take that into consideration, the more productive your interactions will be.

What would you tell students about the world of global business?

The world is becoming a smaller and smaller place every day.  By that, I mean that advances in transportation and technology enable a much simpler way to connect with people around the world.  It is paramount for us to recognize this and embrace it.  The quicker you can adapt yourself to operate and efficiently interact with people in all of the different cultures, the more successful you will be.

I think the UW is an excellent place to start that journey. You have a tremendous opportunity at UW to really reach out to the diversity that the school has to offer. Taking advantage of these opportunities will put you ahead of a lot of your peers that you will be compared to and compete with as you progress in your school work and your professional career.


Posted by svernam - January 30th, 2013 - 0 comments - Permalink


Umeå!

 Guest post by Bruce Avolio, Executive Director of the Center for Leadership and Strategic Thinking and Marion B. Ingersoll Professor of Management

photo (1)Up until two weeks ago, Umeå, Sweden, was just a dot on the global map to me.

Since going there, it has become a place of special significance for me.

Working with the Center for Leadership, Umea, whose tag line is, “science that is useful,” we held a conference for 400+ delegates focusing on leadership, creativity and innovation.  We also participated in a TEDx event, at which I lectured for 16 minutes….full stop on “Showing up for Leadership…Ta Dah!”  What strikes you about Umea and the folks who reside there is that they seem to realize they are building a very special city.  This may be due in part to the world renowned design college there and also because Umea will become the capital of European culture in the next year.

Umeå. Wow!

At the design college, I saw a full classroom where the floor operated as an iPad.

Umeå. Wow!

We talked about the importance of using science to support leadership development with executives, coaches, trainers, etc.

We explored leadership in a country that has not been in a war for over 250 years.

Umeå & Sweden. Wow!

And I met some new best friends, some great new colleagues, and sopped up the energy of Umeå at -27 centigrade. Also, at an officer’s quarters (sometimes Swedish and sometimes Russian depending on the state of wars a couple of centuries ago) turned restaurant, turned museum, we witnessed the standoff between the use of wine and beer in enhancing one’s cuisine. The beer guy talked of blatant discrimination against beer in restaurants, where the wine list was two pages long and beer got two lines! That night, in a far off place at -27 centigrade the beer guy ruled!

 


Posted by byarlay - January 29th, 2013 - 0 comments - Permalink


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