Future Entrepreneurs Get Down to Business

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JENNIFER LUDDEN, host:

Long before Donald Trump and "The Apprentice" reality show, business schools sponsored competitions for students. There are dozens of them across the country. For many would-be entrepreneurs, they offer a shot at the dream of creating a company, maybe even one that saves lives. From Seattle, NPR's Wendy Kaufman reports.

WENDY KAUFMAN reporting:

More than $100,000 in prize money is at stake at the University of Washington's Business Plan Competition. Seventy teams from across the state of submitted ideas for start-up companies. Now the competition is down to the final four.

(Soundbite of applause)

Unidentified Woman #1: Therapeutic Monitoring Systems.

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Unidentified Woman #1: Soren Systems.

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KAUFMAN: One of the finalists, a company called Atheroson, wants to use ultrasound technology to quickly and inexpensively determine whether a patient has coronary heart disease.

Dr. DAVID DUPREE (President and CEO, Atheroson): Is my mike on?

I'm an emergency physician, and before we introduce our team and get going on this, I'd like to tell you a story.

KAUFMAN: David Dupree, MD, is Atheroson's president and CEO. His team, like the other finalists, has 30 minutes to make its pitch in the final round.

Dr. DUPREE: Imagine you're out mowing your yard, and all of a sudden you have crushing substernal chest pain and your wife looks at you and says, `You don't look so good.' You're white, you're sweaty, you're pasty, and the next thing you know, you're this guy and you're rolling down to Overlake Hospital.

KAUFMAN: The slide presentation is extremely professional, hardly surprising, since his team is comprised of grad students with countless advanced degrees and real-life experience in chemical engineering, accounting, biomedical devices and nanotechnology. Indeed several of the most impressive business plans presented here focused on technology. They reflect the increased integration of business entrepreneurship with engineering, computer science and medicine.

As Atheroson team members continue their presentation to the judges, they tell them that their $2,500 ultrasound device would save billions of dollars in unnecessary and invasive medical tests. But their assertions do not go unchallenged. The judges, entrepreneurs and venture capitalists, put the team on the hot seat.

Unidentified Woman #2: Shouldn't you be more in line with a portable defibrillator in terms of costs? You know, did you look at demand curves at a $10,000 price point vs. a $25,000?

KAUFMAN: The judges' questions and the kinds of answers they get are very different from those in the dot-com day, suggests Christopher Klem, director of the University of Washington's Center for Technology Entrepreneurship.

Mr. CHRISTOPHER KLEM (University of Washington): The venture people are a lot tougher, the angels are a lot tougher. They're a lot more sophisticated. There were some excellent questions that came back to this team. They were tough, but it's that level of really boring in and pushing hard and just not accepting pie in the sky as an answer.

KAUFMAN: The judges must have liked what they heard. Atheroson is awarded the grand prize of $25,000. The company's chief operating officer is Fettah Kosar.

Mr. FETTAH KOSAR (COO, Atheroson): For a company like us, $25,000 would be great.

KAUFMAN: But beyond the money, he values the coaching and the guidance the team has received.

Mr. KOSAR: In the judge panels there are, you know, scientists, investors, lawyers, so you get very good feedback, and so now you can take that feedback and fine-tune your presentation, because this presentation is going to become our selling piece when we are trying to sell our business idea to investors.

KAUFMAN: This real-world experience lies at the heart of business competitions. Robert Sullivan is an expert on entrepreneurship and dean of the new Graduate Management School at the University of California at San Diego. He cautions that success in the real world can be elusive.

Mr. ROBERT SULLIVAN (University of California at San Diego): We're not talking about huge numbers of successes, but very often individuals have developed the inspiration and that serial gene so that if it doesn't work this way, they'll be back in a while with the next idea and the next opportunity.

KAUFMAN: The winners of the University of Washington's competition in 2000, for example, saw their initial product fail, but they've moved on to help create and sell other start-ups. One has already sold for tens of millions of dollars.

Wendy Kaufman, NPR News, Seattle.

LUDDEN: This is NPR News.

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