Farley Center for Entrepreneurship Builds Relationships with Entrepreneurs in Home Security

LiveWatch Security, LLC, moved its fast growing home security systems business to Evanston in 2011 because of the city’s proximity to one of the premier thought leadership centers in the country: Northwestern University. Two Northwestern University Alumni formed a perfect team to bridge academia and entrepreneurship at Northwestern University to an Evanston business.

According to LiveWatch Security CEO, Brad Morehead, “While many leading Universities graduate top tier talent, few can match Northwestern’s multi-disciplinary collaboration and innovation that Professor Michael Marasco has created at the Farley Center for Entrepreneurship. Students at Northwestern University with a variety of backgrounds can experience the entire innovation and business life cycle from idea generation, development, launch and fundraising. Courses like NUvention Web train engineers, computer science majors and graduate business students together to gain real world experience rarely seen in a university setting.”

LiveWatch saw the talent that the Farley Center was developing and began an informal internship program working with a group of students active at the McCormick School of Engineering at Northwestern University. Projects began as collaborative ideas between the company and the student interns. In several cases, these projects progressed quickly to longer-term success stories. Today, LiveWatch Security is actively working with six Northwestern University students, most of whom developed their talents through Professor Michael Marasco’s NUvention Web class.

Externship opportunities like this give students a chance to showcase what they have learned in the classroom by working with companies like LiveWatch Security’s SafeMart.com, the country’s fastest growing provider of wireless security systems and alarm monitoring.

LiveWatch Security and The Farley Center for Entrepreneurship at Northwestern University are creating an environment where students, the university, customers and entrepreneurs can all benefit. Students are incubating innovative concepts while LiveWatch Security is leading a $20 billion home security industry revolution using ground-breaking ideas and technologies developed in collaboration with Northwestern University’s outstanding future alumni.

 

Northwestern Students Compete at MIT Clean Energy Prize 2011

On May 3rd Northwestern’s own S2E Solar was one of 25 semi-finalists in the MIT Clean Energy Prize competition. Five teams in five different categories competed to go on for the grand prize, which was awarded on May 9th. The competition was open to student teams from universities across the country.

The categories included Transportation, Clean Non-Renewables, Renewables, Energy Efficiency, and Deployment. S2E Solar, which makes high-efficiency, low-cost transparent conductors for thin film solar cells, competed against four other solar teams in the Renewables category. While the category was over saturated with solar-based technologies, there were plenty of interesting companies. The category winner, Ubiquitous Energy, has developed ultra-lightweight, ultra-flexible solar cells that can be deposited on paper or textiles.

Stand out teams in other categories included PK Clean, which can transform plastic waste into fuel, and the grand prize winner, CoolChip Technologies, which has developed a technology to address thermal management issues at computing and data centers.

The day consisted of a closed judging round, as well as a three hour poster showcase open to the public. The poster showcase gave teams the chance to speak with a wide variety of industry people, make contacts, and share their companies with the general public. A reception after the days events allowed teams and judges to mingle and network. The clean tech landscape in Boston is robust, and the event drew a large and enthusiastic crowd, making it fertile ground for entrepreneurs, investors, and those interested in the future of energy and clean tech innovation.

S2E Solar will go on to compete as a finalist on May 24th in Northwestern’s NUVC competition.

 

Northwestern Students Compete at 2011 Rice Business Plan Competition

The Rice Business Plan Competition (RBPC), one of the largest business plan competitions in the US, held its awards banquet on Saturday, April 16th, 2011. 700+ attended the banquet, where $1.3 Million in prizes was awarded to the winners of the competition. TNG Pharmaceuticals of the University of Louisville took the Grand Prize. The event marked the eleventh year of RBPC and was hosted by the Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship and Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Business at Rice University.

Teams were able to compete in six categories: life sciences, information technology, energy, green tech, social ventures and other technologies. The competition process involved 15-minute business plan presentations, with the top six competitors vying for the grand prize valued at $642,000.

Northwestern sent two teams to the competition: Neuvel, which won $700 and got 2nd place in the Shark Tank Round- Flight 2, and San + CO, which won $500 and received 4th place in the Shark Tank Round – Flight 3.

 

Northwestern University Venture Challenge Semi-Finals

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Northwestern University Venture Challenge (NUVC) recently held its semi-finals on April 25^th.  NUVC, a student-run competition, serves as a platform for entrepreneurial students who want to participate in the experience of building a business idea from scratch. Ideas that are allowed to be submitted to the competition must fit into one of five functional tracks: Health Care and Biomedical Science Technologies, Energy and Sustainability, Information Technology, and Media/Journalism Social Enterprise Products and Services.  

Participants in the competition have access to early-stage investors and veteran entrepreneurs as well as faculty. The Semi-final round was the second of three rounds, during which the twenty-three teams that had passed round one were judged in two stages by a panel of VCs and entrepreneurs, by presenting a three minute elevator pitch and answering questions from the judges. The competition is fierce, and only six teams were chosen to move onto the final round, which will be held at the Entrepreneur@NU Conference on May 24^th. Here are the profiles of the six teams who are finalists:

AccuFlow Diagnostics

AccuFlow Diagnostics is a developer of rapid, low-cost and highly sensitive lateral flow assays for screening of high prevalence diseases at the point of patient care. CerviaDx represents AccuFlow’s entry into the $18.7B point-of-care healthcare market segment, utilizing a patented high-sensitivity assay to screen and stage cervical cancer lesions. CerviaDx technology delivers analytical detection comparable to large instrument-based diagnostics within 30 minutes at less than a tenth of the cost per test and without needing any capital equipment. AccuFlow has developed prototype devices for its platform technology and is now seeking funding for feasibility studies and pilot unit delivery.

Higher Realm Photonics

Using recent advances in nanoscience, Higher Realm Photonics has created an energy-efficient and compact version of the conventional ‘mask aligner’—one of the most crucial pieces of equipment used in manufacturing of nanoscale devices, such as light-emitting diodes (LEDs), microelectromechanical systems (MEMS), microprocessors, and many other technologies. Compared to conventional mask-aligners, the product is compact, low-cost, consumes far less electricity, and uses environmentally friendly materials. It has successfully been deployed at the Odom Laboratory at Northwestern University for 15 months and has been used for the production of >500 micro- and nanoscale devices, with feature sizes as low as 100 nm.

S2E Solar

S2E SolarTM makes “transparent conductor” solar cell components that enable solar energy to be lower cost than grid electricity.  The transparent conductor industry is approaching $10B, and the solar industry is currently $38B and rapidly increasing, providing substantial growth potential.  The foundational IP behind the company’s product, S2E Solar FilmTM, was developed at Northwestern University.  Founder Jon Servaites is finishing his PhD at Northwestern in Materials Science and Engineering, researching thin film solar cells in the Tobin Marks Group, where this foundational IP was invented.

 Functional Jewelry

In the United States, jewelry is a ~$50 billion per year, highly fragmented market. Recently, traditional jewelry business has been losing market share to unique, innovative jewelry products sold from smaller retail shops and online-only vendors. Separately, the scientific race to address climate change has led to the creation of a novel material type: crystals that can absorb greenhouse gases. Both beautiful and functional, these crystals are ideally suited as jewelry for the environmentally conscious.

TicketSnagger.com

TicketSnagger.com is a secondary market for event tickets that reverses the dynamic of other markets by allowing buyers to set prices at which they would be willing to buy tickets and allowing sellers to close deals by accepting offers and initiating the ticket transfer. The buyers would be committed to their offer prices so that when/if a seller accepts, that offered price will automatically be charged. This system will allow buyers to purchase tickets below face value and allows sellers to always be able to recoup the value of their tickets, creating a demand driven secondary market.

Present Bee

Present Bee alleviates gift-giving pains with a smart solution that helps users give better gifts with less stress and more social proof. Its platform provides users with access to the most personally relevant and popular gift ideas for anyone in their social network. Present Bee combines: (1) Algorithm-generated gift ideas to connect people to products they will love, (2) the ability to get gifting advice from friends and family, and (3) the option to purchase expensive gifts seamlessly as a group.

 

Calling all NU Students! Dow Sustainability Innovation Student Challenge

For the third year in a row, Northwestern students have the chance to compete for $10,000 in the Dow Sustainability Innovation Student Challenge. The challenge rewards three students or student groups with the most innovative approaches to meeting human needs in areas such as sustainable infrastructure, sustainable freshwater supply and distribution, climate change and energy efficiency. Students will be judged by NU faculty based on excellence in research, innovative thinking, and the use of interdisciplinary approaches.

Kimberly Gray, a professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, worked with NU Development to establish this relationship with Dow. She says, “We are grateful to the Dow Chemical Company Foundation for partnering with us in this international effort to promote sustainability.” Northwestern prize winners will join winners from five other universities around the world: Cambridge, Peking, Tufts, Michigan, and Sao Paolo.

The highest scoring proposal in last year’s challenge was from former NUvention Energy student Jon Servaites, for his work in enhancing the efficiency of organic photovoltaic solar cells. The deadline for applications this year is May 16th. Prizes will be awarded on May 25th. Winners will prepare a poster and short presentation for a local awards ceremony, and may participate in a regional awards event hosted by Dow.

You can find more information on the challenge here.

 

Kellogg Green Week!

Monday, April 25th was the kick off of Kellogg’s Green Week. The Environmentally Sustainable Business Club (ESBC) has prepared a week of speakers and events focused on opportunities in the emerging landscape of sustainable business. Monday night’s topic was “Entrepreneurship, Sustainability and Environmental Commodities Trading.” The speaker, Steve McDougal (Kellogg ’95), co-founded 3Degrees, a company that helps its clients buy, sell and market environmental commodities. These commodities include Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs) and verified carbon offsets.

A REC represents 1 MWh of renewable electricity generated and delivered to the grid. 3Degrees commits to buying a certain number of RECs from a renewable energy facility, such as a wind or solar farm, then sells those RECs to its customers. The customers, which include Starbucks and Whole Foods, are directly supporting the financing of renewable energy projects while adhering to their own sustainability commitments. Many of the companies that buy RECs from 3Degrees cannot have their own renewable facilities (you won’t see solar panels on the roof of a Starbucks in the Loop), so purchasing RECs is a way to support the development of clean energy resources. McDougal said the U.S. REC market has helped the solar and wind markets grow by 600% since 2002.

3Degrees also sells verified carbon offsets. A carbon offset represents 1 MWh of greenhouse gas emissions that are prevented or destroyed. A carbon offset doesn’t necessarily have to be energy-related; for example, a sustainable forestry project that has been third-party verified could generate carbon offsets. A company would buy carbon offsets from 3Degrees if they wanted to specifically offset greenhouse gas emissions, as from a large fleet, for example.

Environmental commodities trading has received considerable criticism, primarily because it is often perceived as a way for large, polluting companies to “atone” for their environmental sins without doing anything to change their practices. It is also a mostly unregulated market (although it’s becoming increasingly more so), and critics point out the opportunity for scammers. However, the environmental commodities market has also created a tangible financial reward for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and has been instrumental in channeling funds to renewable energy projects. McDougal pointed to a number of renewable energy projects they work with that wouldn’t have been financed but for the sale of RECs.

And it’s good business. 3Degrees has gone from a $10M company in 2007 to $22M in 2010, McDougal said. It has a growing list of partners that include major companies, nonprofit organizations and government agencies. In fact, Northwestern University has purchased RECs from 3Degrees for 30% of its electricity usage.

We’re looking forward to more interesting events for Green Week. You can find the schedule and more information here: http://kellogg.campusgroups.com/esbc/green-week-2011/

 

NUvention:March Web Presentations

The NUvention: Web presentations took place recently in March. There were many interesting projects presented, all of which are detailed below:

Suggenda is an online event planning tool which builds off the idea that current event planning tools are inefficient and do not work well when planning a dinner together with friends. It also addresses the issue that many restaurants face in terms of bringing in new diners and filling in seats during non-peak hours. Suggenda’s solution is to offer a way to play matchmaker between restaurants and potential diners, providing a platform for restaurants to directly see the discussion on convenient dining times provide deal offers based on what they see, providing consumers with what they say is easy and fun social event planning.

AlumSocial is a website which deals with the problematic aspects of multiple alumni networks, outdated directories, and job searches by providing a single platform for alumni to find information, connect with networking contacts, and find friends with common interests through affinity groups. AlumSocial also engages with the university side, aiming to allow universities to manage and measure the alumni engagement experience

DiSCO5:01 is a photo-driven social application for smart-phones designed for people and their friends to communicate and collectively capture memories while they’re on the go. It is designed to make communication more interactive and engaging, redefining the way people communicate.

Sweetperk.com is a web-based service that allows small businesses to manage promotions by allowing business owners to create and manage promotions online, replacing paper coupons, cutting down waste, and partnering with business improvement districts. Consumers will be able to redeem these promotions using their mobile devices. Ultimately, Sweetperk.com’s goal is to encourage people to live life local.

Storytree works off the notion that there is currently platform for player collaboration in social gaming, despite the fact that there are over 100 million users on games like Farmville. What Storytree does is to allow gamers to competitively create and share stories, turning them from content consumers to content producers. According to the makers of Storytree, “everyone likes a good story”, and their product provides an opportunity for real collaboration.

MassiveStart targets the inefficiencies of the job search: according to them, as it stands currently, recruiters are receiving hundreds of resumes from unqualified candidates, qualified programmers are getting lost in this deluge, and project managers aren’t getting the employees they need. MassiveStart aims to create a social community designed to allow users on both sides of the job search to interact with each other, providing a place for programmers to showcase their talents and giving recruiters a chance to see what developers can actually produce, combining the best aspects of sites such as LinkedIn and Facebook on one professional platform.

Mood.dj is aimed at streamlining the digital music consumption process. According to the creators, the way people consume music is determined by their mood/desired mood, and the current system of manually created playlists is inefficient, as playlists constantly need to be updated and they do not always match up to the activity at hand. Mood.dj is a music application that delivers custom music from users’ personal libraries to go along with their current mood by reading their personal iTunes library, tagging their music automatically using databases and an intelligence machine, and generating a mood-based list of songs, saving the consumer time and energy.

Peer Points

Peer Points is a loyalty program designed to enable repeated engagement between businesses, customers, and customer groups. It is designed to tackle the problem that many stores face in trying to reach a wider consumer base, as many “deal” type models focus on one-time bargain hunters, social check-in apps cannot verify actual purchases, and consumers want to be rewarded for their loyalty without necessarily carrying multiple loyalty cards.

 

Best Course of 2011 (Inc. Magazine)

Most entrepreneurs possess deep knowledge of their industries. So why shouldn’t entrepreneurship classes be just as specialized? That’s the logic behind NUvention, a group of classes that focuses on three verticals: medical devices, energy, and Internet businesses.

NUvention, a series of interdisciplinary classes spearheaded by Michael Marasco at the Farley Center, has been featured as one of the best courses of 2011 in America by Inc. magazine.

“We take advantage of the fact that we’re interdisciplinary,” says Michael Marasco, director of Northwestern’s Farley Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation. “The business students talk about business plans and marketing; the medical students talk about the clinical area; the law students talk about bylaws and articles of incorporation.”

The first course, NUvention: Medical Innovation, was offered in 2008 and brought together 82 graduate students from four schools (McCormick, Kellogg, Feinberg and the School of Law) to develop medical technology and create businesses around that technology. The class observed doctors and surgeons, got mentoring from industry leaders and eventually went on to file 11 provisional patents. Since then we have launched two variations of that course: NUvention: Web where students create and launch a web business and is also the only course to have both undergraduate and graduate students from every school in the University and; NUvention: Energy where energy research from Northwestern and Argonne National Laboratory are developed into viable businesses.

The NUvention series of classes had over 150 students in 2011.

To read the entire magazine article click here.

 

NUvention Energy 2011

On March 11^th, 2011 seven teams of would-be energy entrepreneurs pitched businesses as their final presentations for NUvention Energy.  The course brings together students in engineering, business, law and other graduate and undergraduate disciplines to form interdisciplinary teams that work on projects in energy innovation. These projects stem from faculty and student research at Northwestern, as well as research from Argonne National Lab, and advisory board partners, such as the Center for Neighborhood Technology and ComEd. Students pitched to a judging panel made up of industry experts, entrepreneurs, and clean tech investors. They received valuable feedback and advice on their business plans and how to move forward with their businesses. Congratulations to all the teams for a great quarter!

Projects from the Winter quarter NUvention Energy class included:

SiNode

The highest scoring team this quarter worked on lithium ion battery technology. The business, SiNode, commercializes a new silicon-based anode that combines the high capacity of silicon for Li storage with the high conductivity of graphene in a composite structure based on nanotechnology. This anode provides a 30% increase in energy density for the total battery, is low cost compared to competitors, and highly scalable. SiNode plans to license their technology to component and battery manufacturers.

Members of the winning team - SiNode

EVIDENT

Second place went to the team working on electric vehicle charging infrastructure. EVIDENT uses proprietary software analytics capabilities to identify optimal locations for electric vehicle charging stations. The company plans to sell site selection services to municipalities, electric vehicle supply equipment companies, and national retailers. Their model combines core predictive data, client and site specific requirements, and proprietary algorithms to allow customers to make informed and cost-effective decisions about EV infrastructure locations.

Urban Sustainability Scans

The Urban Sustainability Scans team will offer its clients, municipalities, the opportunity to become more environmentally sustainable, create jobs, and save money. The team, in partnership with the Center for Neighborhood Technology, will perform a scan on a municipality for a fee, using public data and proprietary models. The scan focuses on key areas of environmental concern, such as transportation, buildings and land use. The final product will be a report detailing opportunities for areas of improvement with a quick ROI, a plan for implementation, and opportunities for grants, subsidies, or additional sources of revenue.

Materials Nexus

The computational materials innovation team focused on encouraging the commercialization of new materials key to clean technologies. They propose to do this by providing a platform that would reduce the time necessary for research and development of these materials. Their company, Materials Nexus, aggregates and organizes valuable data from academic collaborators while providing an interface between researchers and industry, accelerating the pace at which vital new technologies can be developed.  For a fee, users have access to the database, which provides powerful search, visualization, and data mining tools, enabling users to easily find materials that meet their needs.

Model-T Solar

The solar team worked on developing thin film solar modules that provide the highest return on investment for utility-scale solar developers. They partnered with Argonne National Laboratory, who pioneered their technology. The company, Model-T Solar, boasts solar technology that includes improved efficiency, low cost due to the use of widely available raw materials, and ease of scalability.

The judging panel asking questions during a team presentation

RUN GREENER

This team focused on creating a system to motivate people to reduce energy consumption and develop more energy efficient behaviors. Their business, RUN GREENER, is a year-long reward system that allows users to earn points through engaging in energy efficient behavior. Users participate through a contest website and can redeem their points for attractive prizes provided by partner companies. RUN GREENER plans to contract with energy utilities, providing them with a program to reduce energy consumption, encourage behavior change, and ease the mounting burden on the grid.

SmartBridge

This team worked on a project to drive behavior change in the way people interact with smart grid technology. SmartBridge is a social gaming platform that allows users to take full advantage of smart grid technology by encouraging them to use energy more efficiently. Customers will be able to compare their utility usage with friends and family, track their energy use and carbon footprint, receive energy saving tips, and then redeem their energy savings for reward points, which can be used purchase products from partner companies.

 

Summer@Highland Info Session

Interested in starting your own company?

Have questions about entrepreneurship & venture capital?

Want to work for some of the hottest startups?

Michael Gaiss, SVP of Boston-based VC firm Highland Capital Partners will be on Northwestern’s campus this week. He will be talking about Summer@Highland, an incubator program for university-affiliated entrepreneurs to advance their startup initiative or company to the next level. The program provides them with a financial stipend and complimentary work space in Boston or California with no equity stake in exchange for participation. He will also be recruiting all engineering disciplines for his portfolio companies. The event details are:

Date: Friday, April 1 2011

Time: 2:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m.

Location: McCormick/TECH M164

If you or your student team would like to meet with him after the event, email a short project description to Alison Howard: AHoward@hcp.com.

Highland Capital Partners is a venture capital firm focused on building companies in the communications, consumer, digital media, healthcare and information technology markets. For more information check out: www.hcp.com.