Description
In this particular elucidation regarding entrepreneurial finance at chicago gsb.
they would have been able to put more time into it if they had
been able to take it for course credit,” Steven Kaplan said. The
following year, the GSB offered it as a course. “We got more
entries from teams that were able to work harder on their
plans, and we’ve been doing it that way ever since,”he said.
The New Venture Challenge kicks off each fall with a
networking event where students can meet past participants
and judges, faculty, professionals, and other current students
to exchange ideas and find or form a team. Teams must
include at least one GSB student. During winter quarter,
teams submit executive summaries; about 30 are chosen to
advance. GSB students must enroll in the course Developing
a New Venture during spring quarter, where they face two
I
t wasn’t long after professor Steven Kaplan began teaching
entrepreneurial finance at Chicago GSB that students
decided they wanted to compete. Entrepreneurship was
hot, and they wanted a chance to simulate the real-world
battle for funding. In 1996, a group told Kaplan the GSB
should have a business plan competition. “I said, ‘It sounds
great. If you do most of the leg work, I’ll find you some judges
and some financing,’”recalled Kaplan, Neubauer Family Pro-
fessor of Entrepreneurship and Finance and faculty director
of the Michael P. Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship.
Seeded by Edward L. Kaplan, ’70 (no relation to Steven
Kaplan), the first contest was hosted in spring 1997 by the
GSB. “The first one was good, but the students said afterward
When Chicago GSB students competed in the Edward L. Kaplan New Venture Challenge in
May, it marked the 10th year for the annual business plan competition, which has
launched 25 new companies that have drawn more than $50 million in funding. Working
with participants from all over the University of Chicago community, more than 70 GSB stu-
dents have gained first-hand knowledge of the rigors of entrepreneurship. Some will find
themselves among accomplished alumni who’ve successfully launched firms. All of them
will know what it takes. By Patricia Houlihan
Chicago GSB Spring 2006 18 19 Spring 2006 Chicago GSB
Feature New Venture Challenge
I996-2006
THE EDWARD L. KAPLAN, ’70
The Entrepreneurs:
Read the stories of
eight New Venture
Challenge participants
beginning on page 21.
THE WHIZ KID
NAME: Karan Goel, AB ’04, MBA Class of 2006
COMPANY: PrepMe / prepme.com
CHI CAGO CONNECTI ON: First competed in the New
Venture Challenge as an undergraduate in the College
21 Spring 2006 Chicago GSB Chicago GSB Spring 2006 20
Feature New Venture Challenge
rounds of rigorous questioning from venture capitalists,
private investors, and established entrepreneurs.
“They get a huge amount of valuable feedback by present-
ing in those two rounds,” Kaplan said. Teams also get coach-
ing from Kaplan; Ellen Rudnick, ’73, clinical professor of
entrepreneurship and executive director of the Polsky
Center; Waverly Deutsch, clinical assistant professor of
entrepreneurship; and Robert Rosenberg, ’97 (XP-66), lec-
turer in entrepreneurship and assistant vice president in the
University of Chicago Office of Research and Argonne
National Laboratory. Additionally, each team is matched
with a mentor—a professional investor or entrepreneur—
who guides them for several weeks. The combination of
feedback and personal attention “is a pretty strong pack-
age,”Kaplan said.
JUDGING THE CHALLENGE
Top venture capitalists and entrepreneurs—many of whom are alumni—have
offered their expertise as judges for the New Venture Challenge. The following
individuals recently have served as judges over multiple years.
In May, teams submit a complete business plan. Between
8 and 10 teams advance to the final competition, where they
have 15 minutes to present their plan to a panel of seasoned
venture capitalists who award $50,000 in prize money to the
top three teams.
Regardless of who wins, the New Venture Challenge pre-
pares all the student participants for the real world, Kaplan
said. “In three months, you make huge progress in figuring
out whether you have a viable business or not,” he said.
“I’ve not seen a better process.”
To learn more about the New Venture Challenge and entre-
preneurship at the GSB, check out the eight participants pro-
filed on the following pages.
For results from the 2006 Edward L. Kaplan
New Venture Challenge, visit ChicagoGSB.edu.
Collin Anderson, ’96,
Neuros Technology International, LLC
Frank Ballantine, Sachnoff & Weaver, Ltd.
Cynthia Bayley, MBA ’97, PhD ’00 (Biological
Sciences Division), Elixir Pharmaceuticals
Steve Beitler, Dunrath Capital
Ellen Carnahan, ’84,
WilliamBlair Capital Partners LLC
Frederick Dotzler, ’72, De Novo Ventures
Gerald Gallagher, ’69, Oak Investment Partners
Kathryn Gould, ’78, Foundation Capital
Kurt Keilhacker, ’89, TechFund Capital
Karen Kerr, PhD ’95 (chemistry), Agile Equities
Richard Kimball, ’83,
Technology Crossover Ventures
Venetia Kontogouris, ’77, Trident Capital
Mark Koulogeorge, MK Capital Company
Michael Lazarus, Weston Presidio
Joe Mansueto, AB ’78, MBA ’80,
Morningstar Inc.
Bret Maxwell, MK Capital Company
Robert McCormack, ’68, Trident Capital
William Miller, ’67,
Miller Strategic Consulting LLC
William Mulligan, ’79, Primus Venture Partners
Joseph Neubauer, ’65, ARAMARK Corporation
Guy Paul Nohra, ’89, Alta Partners
John Oxaal, ’81, Sevin Rosen Funds
Michael Polsky, ’87, Invenergy LLC
Douglas Reed, Vector Fund Management LP
John Rutledge, ’94 (XP-63),
Oxford Capital Group
Immanuel Thangaraj, AB ’92, MBA ’93,
Essex Woodlands Health Ventures
James Tyree, Abbott Laboratories
John Van Dyke Jr., ’69, Pionetics
Robert Zieserl, KB Partners LLC
Source: The Michael P. Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship
B
y the time Karan Goel entered the New Venture
Challenge as an undergraduate in the College at the Uni-
versity of Chicago, he had already begun his career as an entre-
preneur. In seventh grade, he bought chewing gum in bulk at
Sam’s Club and sold it at a profit to the other kids. In eighth
grade, he and some friends started a teen-oriented Web site.“In
tenth grade, we presented the plan to venture capitalists. That
was during the Internet boom. They said we should drop out of
highschool,”Goel said.“Luckily, we didn’t do that.”
Goel entered the NewVenture Challenge his freshman year
in college, joining a team called Changing World Foods. He
returned the following year as a sophomore with his own
startup, myTrak, an online tool to manage college application
materials, and made the semifinals. The experience would
prove valuable. “The New Venture Challenge taught me you
can’t just say, ‘This is a cool idea; let’s do it.’ You have to do
market research, talk to people who would be your customers
and suppliers, and figure out whether you can make it work.”
In 2005, as a first-year MBA student, Goel entered the compe-
tition for the third time. The team created PrepMe, a premium
online SAT and ACT test preparation service that creates
unique courses for students based on their individual
weaknesses. The courses are written by recent top scorers and
combined with online tutoring from Stanford and University
of Chicago students. With adaptive learning technology,
PrepMe continually adjusts a student’s course based on his
most recent results, letting the student focus on areas where
he or she needs tomake the greatest improvement.
Goel met his business partners on the Princeton Review
message board; Stanford grad Avichal Garg is a product
manager at Google, while Caltech grad and Rhodes scholar
Joseph Jewell coauthored Up Your Score: The Underground
Guide to the SAT. “It took us a while to develop the product.
What the New Venture Challenge helped us do was figure out
who the target market was and why they’d buy it,” he said.
Among the team’s advisors are Jean-Pierre Dubé, associate
professor of marketing, and Robert Nagel, ’63, chairman and
partner of CEO Partners in north suburban Winnetka.
“The final competition was the first time that Avichal, Joe,
and I hadbeen in the same place at the same time,”Goel said.
Their business plan not only won first place in the New Ven-
ture Challenge, it also landed Goel on the cover of Fortune
Small Business. From a field of 82 business plans,
PrepMe captured first prize in the magazine’s third
annual FSB Student Showdown. The resulting
publicity caused a boom in PrepMe sales, which
Goel is managing from the ARCH New Business
Incubator at the Hyde Park Center as he completes his MBA.
“I want to make sure we grow at a pace where we can continue
to provide an amazing experience to everyone,”he said. “Long
term, that’s what’s going to make us successful.”
PLANTING THE SEED
The seed funding for the New
Venture Challenge was a gift
from Edward L. Kaplan, ’70,
founder of Zebra Technologies.
Kaplan received the GSB’s
inaugural Distinguished
Entrepreneurial Alumnus
Award in 1996.
“The New Venture Challenge taught me you can’t
just say, ‘This is a cool idea; let’s do it.’”—Karan Goel
Number of companies launched: 25
M
a
tth
e
w
G
ils
o
n
C
h
ris
G
u
ille
n
and we kept pushing forward.” Eventually, Vicarious received
funding froma group of seasoned direct marketers, including
Ted Spiegel, who had run marketing for Spiegel Catalog, and
some of the managers at the market research firm Leo J.
Shapiro & Associates, including Leo Shapiro, AB ’42, PhD ’56,
and Owen Shapiro, AM ’90, MBA ’96. Several investors were
GSB alumni, Moyer said. “They all really believed in the con-
cept, and as a result, they were going to fund our proof-of-
concept stage.”
But a partnership with a company in the veteri-
nary industry ultimately stalled Vicarious Commu-
nications. “The investment group wasn’t willing to
stay with it,”he said.
After Vicarious, Moyer joined GVWHoldings, an investment
firm that launched Workhorse Custom Chassis in 1999. Moyer
served as vice president of brand strategy until the company
was purchased by International Trucks in 2005. Now CEO at
Collectica.com, Moyer is seeking funding for the social net-
working Web site. The firm was among finalists in the 2006 New
Venture Challenge; team members include current evening stu-
dent Kevin Knapp, AB ’89.“Starting a business is a no-lose situa-
tion,” Moyer said. “Succeed and you enjoy enormous upside
potential. Fail and you become smarter for the next time.”
M
ichael Moyer was kicking around several ideas for new
businesses when he enrolled in a class on small business
enterprise taught by Waverly Deutsch, clinical assistant professor
of entrepreneurship.“It was an excellent class. It was like a game
where you started your own business, with a new assignment
every week—make a sale, raise money. I had about five ideas,
and the one I liked best was Vicarious—direct marketing soft-
ware that allows manufacturers and retailers of veterinary prod-
ucts and services to collaborate on marketing,”he said.
“I did it as a case study for her class and then I developed it
further for the 2003 New Venture Challenge,” Moyer said.
With team member Alyson Tesler, ’04, Vicarious Communi-
cations took first place. Moyer began seeking funding,
drawing on his experience in the competition. “I had no idea
how to raise money for a business before the New Venture
Challenge. This helped me understand the process,”he said.
He relied on the feedback the judges had provided about his
presentation skills. “It helped me learn a significant amount
about how I come across to people,”he said. “I got frank, direct
feedback from the judges. Later on, I presented the business
plan about 100 times to venture capitalists and angels. If they
didn’t like my plan, they just didn’t call me back.”
Months into the firm’s first year, Becki Lindley, ’97 (XP-66),
a lecturer in the GSB’s Management Lab, joined Vicarious as
chief operating officer. Still, funding proved elusive. “It took
me about a year longer than I’d thought it would,” Moyer
said. “The New Venture Challenge put the wind in our sails,
Chicago GSB Spring 2006 22 23 Spring 2006 Chicago GSB
THE CASE STUDY
NAME: Michael Moyer, ’04
COMPANY: Collectica.com
CHI CAGO CONNECTI ON: Several early investors were
Chicago GSB alumni
THE ACCIDENTAL
ENTREPRENEUR
NAME: Jake Crampton, ’98
COMPANY: MedSpeed / medspeed.com
CHI CAGO CONNECTI ON: The angel investors included
Chicago GSB alumni
J
ake Crampton had successfully launched a business—a
language training school in Mexico City—before coming
to Chicago GSB. Still, he had no plans to return immediately
to entrepreneurship. He wanted to work as a consultant and
even did his summer internship at Bain & Company. But in
his second year, he took a course on new venture strategy
taught by James Schrager, clinical professor of entrepreneurship
and strategic management. “The term project my group
developed for it was MedSpeed. Professor Schrager said, ‘This
looks like it might be something real. I think you guys need to
enter this into the New Venture Challenge.’ And off we went.”
MedSpeed, which began by providing courier services for
diagnostic laboratories in the Chicago area, won first place in
the 1998 New Venture Challenge. The victory gave Crampton
and his cofounder Steve Muscarello the tools to launch the
business. For example, learning how to raise money was a
direct result of successfully presenting their business plan to
judges at the New Venture Challenge, he said. “The process
of going through the ringer got us ready to go out there,”
Crampton said.“It gave me the confidence to say,‘This is worth
a million dollars of your money.’ That’s a big deal.”
They closed their funding in June 1999 and started the
business. Crampton, as CEO, oversaw seven employees, a
number that has grown to 50 as business continues to grow.
MedSpeed now picks up and delivers items ranging from lab
specimens to blood products to medical records for clinical
labs, hospitals, blood banks, and institutional pharmacies in
Chicago, central Illinois, and the Indianapolis area. Although
Crampton and his cofounder have come up with a half-dozen
more ideas for new businesses, they have no plans
to launch any other ventures—at least outside of
MedSpeed—anytime soon. “Part of our job is to
say, ‘We built an organization that has certain
capacities and certain relationships in various
industries. What parallel businesses could we
stream off of this?’ We’re going to try hard
at MedSpeed to practice a lot of internal
entrepreneurship,” he said. “That’s a heavy initia-
tive as we look ahead—not just to take Medspeed’s business
plan as it has existed, but taking it to the next two or
three steps.”
“The New Venture Challenge put the wind in our sails,
and we kept pushing forward.”—Michael Moyer
“The process of going through the ringer got us
ready to go out there. It gave me the confidence to
say, ‘This is worth a million dollars of your money.’”
—Jake Crampton
Feature NVC
Amount of venture capital that
has funded NVC companies:
$50 million
Average number of student teams
who enter the competition: 60
D
a
n
D
r y
D
a
n
D
ry
THE
INVESTMENT
BANKER
NAME: José Dinis, ’00
COMPANY: Univercité
CHI CAGO CONNECTI ON: Learned about the GSB as an
undergraduate exchange student in the College
Kanthack honed the business plan for the New Venture
Challenge, an experience that proved invaluable. “The judges
would ask questions like, ‘Do you know about this competitor?’
It helped us focus and refine our business plan, and it saved us
from making a lot of mistakes along the way,” he said. As a
result, brightroom tied for second place.
In seeking funding, Kanthack called upon the contacts he
made as a student. As a co-chair of the Entrepreneurship and
Venture Capital Group (now the EVP group), he helped host
the first Willis Stein Entrepreneurial Edge Confer-
ence. He also was the first participant in the
Elfman-Wareham Private Equity and Venture
Capital Lab, earning course credit for interning
with Trident Capital, a private equity firm in
Chicago. “I had a chance to meet a lot of people
and keep them up-to-speed on what I was doing.
Ultimately, a lot of those folks became investors,” he said. Of
brightroom’s 25 individual investors, about 80 percent were
alumni or had a connection to the GSB, Kanthack said.
After five years of watching brightroom grow, Kanthack
and his partners are ready for their next challenge.“I think I’m
best at taking an early vision, crafting it, creating a business
around it, and starting it up,”he said.
25 24
Feature NVC
Chicago GSB Spring 2006 Spring 2006 Chicago GSB
W
ith two parents who owned their own businesses,
Sol Kanthack knew he was going to be an entrepre-
neur. As a first-year student at Chicago GSB, he entered the
New Venture Challenge with a biotech venture. “We did pretty
well and I really enjoyed the process,” he said. The next year,
he entered again with brightroom, a Web event photography
company.“When the competition took place, we were already
doing events and generating revenue,”he said.“We were actually
executing the business plan.”
Kanthack had met Burch LaPrade, one of his business
partners, during his summer internship at Flyswat, which
had just been launched by Ray Krouse, ’99, and John Rodkin,
MBA ’05, JD ’05. (See “The Three-Time Finalist,” page 27.)
As one of the first students chosen for the Entrepreneurial
Internship Program, he was supported by the Polsky Center
and the Kauffman Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership
during the summer.
He and LaPrade kept in touch over the fall, kicking around
the idea of taking photos at running events, putting them
online, and marketing the images through e-mail. They
called the company brightroom and launched it on a small
scale in February 2000, partnering with an event management
firm to shoot a 5K race in Chicago. “We proved that people
would view and order the pictures,”he said.
W
hen José Dinis first came to the University of Chicago
in 1995, he was an undergraduate exchange student
from École Superieure des Sciences Économiques et Commer-
cials. A future investment banker, he took note of Chicago
GSB’s reputation for finance. After stints at Goldman Sachs in
London and later at BNP Paribas, he enrolled in the Full-Time
MBA Program.
It was 1999, a heady time for entrepreneurs launching dot-
com businesses. “It was something everybody was talking
about,” Dinis said. “With some friends at Chicago, I began
thinking about an Internet venture in the education indus-
try.”He found himself drawn to the courses offered by Steven
Kaplan, Neubauer Family Professor of Entrepreneurship and
Finance, and James Schrager, clinical professor of entrepre-
neurship and strategic management. The New Venture Chal-
lenge course provided an opportunity to try his hand at
entrepreneurship, and Dinis decided to take advantage of it.
“I was still thinking about investment banking, but I decided
this time at Chicago was a unique point in my career.”
He competed in the 2000 New Venture Challenge with
Univercité, which supplied online supplemental education
for French students in grades kindergarten through 12. “The
experience opened our minds,” he said. “A lot of us had
worked in big companies and did not have the insights of
what it was like to work for a smaller company or have an
entrepreneurial drive to develop a project,”he said.
Univercité finished fourth, but the team went on to place
second in the Bain Start-Up Challenge. Despite the plan’s suc-
cess, the team realized the dot-com bubble was about to burst
and decided not to seek funding. The NVC experience “helped
me better analyze the viability of my own project, so I avoided
investing too much of my personal wealth and time in some-
thing that wasn’t viable,”he said.
Dinis continued to focus on education and discovered the
French company Acadomia provided personal tutoring. To
convince executives to enter into a partnership with him,
Dinis drew on what he had learned at the GSB. “To build this
partnership with this new company and justify my role as
a partner was not easy. What helped me a lot were all
the meetings we had had with outside people for the
New Venture Challenge and all the classes I had about
how to develop a partnership within companies.”
He became CFO at Acadomia. As the firm grew, he launched
his own company as well, a house cleaning service called Shiva
that now employs about 2,000 maids throughout France. Then
Acadomia merged with Shiva, creating the largest home
services company in France. Dinis said the company hopes
to expand into areas like gardening and child care.
Although he thought his destiny was to be an investment
banker, he said, “When I was in Chicago, I decided to open up
my mind, and it was really useful. I wouldn’t have done that
without the Chicago experience.”
“I had a chance to meet a lot of people and keep them
up-to-speed on what I was doing. Ultimately, a lot of
those folks became investors.”—Sol Kanthack
“The experience opened our minds.”—José Dinis
THE
WELL-CONNECTED
ENTREPRENEUR
NAME: Sol Kanthack, ’00
COMPANY: brightroom / brightroom.com
CHI CAGO CONNECTI ON: Met his business partner while
interning for a firm launched by GSB alumni—winners
of a previous New Venture Challenge; 80 percent of his
original investors were alumni or had a GSB connection
Average number of judges at the
daylong finals event: 20
Total cash prizes that winners
share each year: $50,000
D
a
n
D
r y
A
n
n
a
C
lo
p
e
t
THE BIOTECH
STARTUP
NAME: Ana-Maria Nicolau, ’05
COMPANY: Midway Pharmaceuticals
CHI CAGO CONNECTI ON: Team members included faculty
from the University of Chicago Hospitals and the University
of Chicago Division of Biological Sciences Department of
Medicine
THE THREE-TIME
FINALIST
NAME: John Rodkin, MBA ’05, JD ’05
COMPANY: ClickShift / clickshift.com
CHI CAGO CONNECTI ON: Started his first business, Flyswat,
with Ray Krouse, ’99, after meeting Krouse at Admit Weekend
Nicolau said she appreciated the detailed feedback. “For exam-
ple, the judges would say, ‘You’re not going to get money if you
don’t help me understand your path to market without any
flaws. Without that, I’m not going to invest in your business.’”
Midway Pharmaceuticals won first place. That success
enabled the team to place in competitions that followed: the
Global Startup@Singapore Business Plan Competition, the
Rice University Business Plan Competition, and the MOOT
CORP Competition at the University of Texas at Austin.
“Without going through the New Venture Chal-
lenge, we would never have been able to stand up at
an international competition, defend our business
plan, and ask for money,”Nicolau said.
Midway Pharmaceuticals was incorporated early
in 2005.“We’re looking to raise about $8 million for
clinical studies and to get on the path to market.
The whole process takes many years and a lot of money,” said
Nicolau, who works at a management consulting firm. “We’re
also looking at partnering with corporations, and with state
agencies that are trying to incubate biotech companies.
“We’re still in the process of trying to decide on the best
partnerships for us to develop this product and bring it
to market.”
J
ohn Rodkin has the distinction of being the only person
to compete in the finals of the New Venture Challenge
three times. “I think you probably learn more by not being
successful,”he said.“But you definitely learn by doing.”
Before Rodkin even enrolled at Chicago GSB, he was ready
to launch a business. At Admit Weekend in April 1997, he met
Ray Krouse, ’99, and learned they shared the same goal. They
became roommates and then business partners, creating
Flyswat, an Internet browser extension that generated contin-
uously updated links on an open Web page. When they
entered Flyswat in the New Venture Challenge in 1998, Rodkin
was in his first year at the University of Chicago Law School.
The company came in fourth. Rodkin and Krouse decided
to use what they’d learned from the judges, successfully
sought funding, and launched the firm.“You get a good handle
on how to talk about a business plan and what other people
care about,” Rodkin said. In September 1998, he dropped out
of school to run Flyswat. The move paid off when they sold
the company to NBCi in 2000 for $120 million.
Rodkin stayed on as vice president of product for NBCi,
then took a year off to consider his next move. In 2002, Rod-
kin returned to Chicago as a second-year law student and
entered the 2003 New Venture Challenge with Green
Hedges, an insurance product aimed at hedging declining
home value risk. That plan won second place and is a long-
term project that Rodkin continues to work on. “When you
have to get laws changed in several states and deal with a lot
of regulatory hurdles, you can’t just raise a couple million
dollars and go do it,”he said.
In fall 2003, Rodkin reentered business school. The following
summer, he worked at U.S. Venture Partners, which had fund-
ed Flyswat, and when he returned to Hyde Park in fall 2004, he
continued to consult on a handful of projects for USVP. He
also entered the New Venture Challenge for the third time
with F2 (now called ClickShift), which helps companies man-
age complex online marketing campaigns. Gathering reams
of online data, such as how a shopper buys from a
Web site or fills out a form, ClickShift helps clients
determine how to spend advertising dollars across
various types of Internet advertising. Rodkin’s
company won second place.
“We signed our first customer in May 2005. I
moved to San Francisco after graduation, which was June 12,
started meeting with venture capitalists June 13, and had term
sheets at the end of the following week,” he said. Rodkin suc-
cessfully sought $6 million in funding from U.S. Venture Part-
ners and El Dorado Ventures to launch the firm.
“Our biggest problem at this point is growing the company
fast enough to meet the client demands,”he said.
A
na-Maria Nicolau brought her experience in the phar-
maceutical industry and an interest in entrepreneur-
ship to Chicago GSB, hoping to apply both of them to the
New Venture Challenge. “I wanted to see how I could lever-
age my health care background and learn entrepreneurship
by starting up a company in health care,” she said. At an
information session hosted by the Polsky Center for Entre-
preneurship in October 2003, she discovered Midway Phar-
maceuticals. A biotech company, its aim is to commericalize
treatments that prevent necrotizing enterocolitis (a disease
that causes destruction of the bowel in infants) and keep
some inflammatory bowel diseases from flaring up. “I
decided it was the right opportunity for me,”she said.
The classroom experience was exactly what Nicolau had
been looking for. “I wanted to understand how to start a
business—the process of developing a business plan, raising
money. This was all very new to me, and the New Venture
Challenge was an amazing opportunity to learn that.”
Collaboration was important. Team members included
Robert Durden, ’05, and Dhiren Jhaveri, ’05; CEO Rifat
Pamukcu, former CEO of Cell Pathways; John Alverdy,
professor of surgery at University of Chicago Hospitals; and
Eugene Chang, Martin Boyer Professor of Medicine, and
Elaine Petrof, instructor, from the University of Chicago Divi-
sion of Biological Sciences Department of Medicine. Midway
Pharmaceuticals advanced through the qualifying rounds, and
27 Spring 2006 Chicago GSB Chicago GSB Spring 2006 26
Feature NVC
“Without going through the New Venture Challenge,
we would never have been able to stand up at an
international competition, defend our business
plan, and ask for money.”—Ana-Maria Nicolau
Hours of pro bono legal advice
NVC winners may receive: 16
“Our biggest problem at this point is growing the
company fast enough to meet the client demands.”
—John Rodkin
Number of GSB students who
must be part of senior management
to qualify for the NVC: 1
D
a
n
D
ry
S
te
v
e
C
a
s
tillo
THE BOUTIQUE
RETAILER
NAME: Jeff Wilcoxon, ’04
COMPANY: Bobtail Ice Cream & Coffee Co. /
bobtailsodafountain.com
CHI CAGO CONNECTI ON: The team’s advisor became its lead
investor when the firm was launched
worked for Rutledge, performing due diligence on the deal
and refining the business plan for Bobtail. “I wrote a case
based on the entrepreneurial experience I had that summer,
and on the tie to my family business, too,” Wilcoxon said. A
full-time student, he also enrolled in two evening courses at
the GSB to accelerate his studies so they could open the store
in the spring.
Business has been very good. The firm opened a second
store on January 2 and the team is always looking at new
opportunities. “I’m so excited by what I’m doing now in the
startup phase, I can definitely see myself investing in another
concept, helping someone the way John helped us,
or starting my own company again one day,”
Wilcoxon said. “At the same time, I might decide
that we’ve really built an enterprise here, and it will
be fun to keep running Bobtail for a long time.
“We’re committed to Bobtail. We’re not opening 20 stores
tosell in five years. We want to build a lasting enterprise.”
C
reating Bobtail Ice Cream & Coffee Co.’s business plan
for the New Venture Challenge took up most of their
first year at Chicago GSB for Jeff Wilcoxon and Christopher
Hill, ’04. Building, opening, and running the upscale ice
cream parlor on Chicago’s north side took up most of their
second year. “When we graduated, we had already been oper-
ating for three months,”said Wilcoxon.
The idea for Bobtail came from Wilcoxon’s family business
in Ohio; they entered the competition with a team named
Soda Jerk’s. “When you enter, you just want this awesome
experience building a business plan,” he said. “Three weeks
into it, when people start saying, ‘Wow, you really do have a
good idea and you could do this,’ you dial up the amount of
effort you put into it.”
Soda Jerk’s made it to the finals. “At that point, we were
encouraged. After several judges told us, ‘You should find
money and do this,’ Chris and I were determined to start
the company.”
Part of Bobtail’s early success can be attributed to John
Rutledge, ’94 (XP-63), president and cofounder of the Oxford
Capital Group. He was introduced to Wilcoxon and Hill by
Steven Kaplan, Neubauer Family Professor of Entrepreneurship
and Finance, and served as a strategic advisor to the team.
After the New Venture Challenge, Rutledge became lead
investor and CEO.
Wilcoxon was chosen for the Entrepreneurial Internship
Program supported by the Polsky Center and the Kauffman
Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership. Over the summer, he
Chicago GSB Spring 2006 28
Feature NVC
“When we graduated, we had already been
operating for three months.”—Jeff Wilcoxon
Average number of times finalist teams
pitch their plan to actual investors: 3
D
a
n
D
r
y
doc_271929530.pdf
In this particular elucidation regarding entrepreneurial finance at chicago gsb.
they would have been able to put more time into it if they had
been able to take it for course credit,” Steven Kaplan said. The
following year, the GSB offered it as a course. “We got more
entries from teams that were able to work harder on their
plans, and we’ve been doing it that way ever since,”he said.
The New Venture Challenge kicks off each fall with a
networking event where students can meet past participants
and judges, faculty, professionals, and other current students
to exchange ideas and find or form a team. Teams must
include at least one GSB student. During winter quarter,
teams submit executive summaries; about 30 are chosen to
advance. GSB students must enroll in the course Developing
a New Venture during spring quarter, where they face two
I
t wasn’t long after professor Steven Kaplan began teaching
entrepreneurial finance at Chicago GSB that students
decided they wanted to compete. Entrepreneurship was
hot, and they wanted a chance to simulate the real-world
battle for funding. In 1996, a group told Kaplan the GSB
should have a business plan competition. “I said, ‘It sounds
great. If you do most of the leg work, I’ll find you some judges
and some financing,’”recalled Kaplan, Neubauer Family Pro-
fessor of Entrepreneurship and Finance and faculty director
of the Michael P. Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship.
Seeded by Edward L. Kaplan, ’70 (no relation to Steven
Kaplan), the first contest was hosted in spring 1997 by the
GSB. “The first one was good, but the students said afterward
When Chicago GSB students competed in the Edward L. Kaplan New Venture Challenge in
May, it marked the 10th year for the annual business plan competition, which has
launched 25 new companies that have drawn more than $50 million in funding. Working
with participants from all over the University of Chicago community, more than 70 GSB stu-
dents have gained first-hand knowledge of the rigors of entrepreneurship. Some will find
themselves among accomplished alumni who’ve successfully launched firms. All of them
will know what it takes. By Patricia Houlihan
Chicago GSB Spring 2006 18 19 Spring 2006 Chicago GSB
Feature New Venture Challenge
I996-2006
THE EDWARD L. KAPLAN, ’70
The Entrepreneurs:
Read the stories of
eight New Venture
Challenge participants
beginning on page 21.
THE WHIZ KID
NAME: Karan Goel, AB ’04, MBA Class of 2006
COMPANY: PrepMe / prepme.com
CHI CAGO CONNECTI ON: First competed in the New
Venture Challenge as an undergraduate in the College
21 Spring 2006 Chicago GSB Chicago GSB Spring 2006 20
Feature New Venture Challenge
rounds of rigorous questioning from venture capitalists,
private investors, and established entrepreneurs.
“They get a huge amount of valuable feedback by present-
ing in those two rounds,” Kaplan said. Teams also get coach-
ing from Kaplan; Ellen Rudnick, ’73, clinical professor of
entrepreneurship and executive director of the Polsky
Center; Waverly Deutsch, clinical assistant professor of
entrepreneurship; and Robert Rosenberg, ’97 (XP-66), lec-
turer in entrepreneurship and assistant vice president in the
University of Chicago Office of Research and Argonne
National Laboratory. Additionally, each team is matched
with a mentor—a professional investor or entrepreneur—
who guides them for several weeks. The combination of
feedback and personal attention “is a pretty strong pack-
age,”Kaplan said.
JUDGING THE CHALLENGE
Top venture capitalists and entrepreneurs—many of whom are alumni—have
offered their expertise as judges for the New Venture Challenge. The following
individuals recently have served as judges over multiple years.
In May, teams submit a complete business plan. Between
8 and 10 teams advance to the final competition, where they
have 15 minutes to present their plan to a panel of seasoned
venture capitalists who award $50,000 in prize money to the
top three teams.
Regardless of who wins, the New Venture Challenge pre-
pares all the student participants for the real world, Kaplan
said. “In three months, you make huge progress in figuring
out whether you have a viable business or not,” he said.
“I’ve not seen a better process.”
To learn more about the New Venture Challenge and entre-
preneurship at the GSB, check out the eight participants pro-
filed on the following pages.
For results from the 2006 Edward L. Kaplan
New Venture Challenge, visit ChicagoGSB.edu.
Collin Anderson, ’96,
Neuros Technology International, LLC
Frank Ballantine, Sachnoff & Weaver, Ltd.
Cynthia Bayley, MBA ’97, PhD ’00 (Biological
Sciences Division), Elixir Pharmaceuticals
Steve Beitler, Dunrath Capital
Ellen Carnahan, ’84,
WilliamBlair Capital Partners LLC
Frederick Dotzler, ’72, De Novo Ventures
Gerald Gallagher, ’69, Oak Investment Partners
Kathryn Gould, ’78, Foundation Capital
Kurt Keilhacker, ’89, TechFund Capital
Karen Kerr, PhD ’95 (chemistry), Agile Equities
Richard Kimball, ’83,
Technology Crossover Ventures
Venetia Kontogouris, ’77, Trident Capital
Mark Koulogeorge, MK Capital Company
Michael Lazarus, Weston Presidio
Joe Mansueto, AB ’78, MBA ’80,
Morningstar Inc.
Bret Maxwell, MK Capital Company
Robert McCormack, ’68, Trident Capital
William Miller, ’67,
Miller Strategic Consulting LLC
William Mulligan, ’79, Primus Venture Partners
Joseph Neubauer, ’65, ARAMARK Corporation
Guy Paul Nohra, ’89, Alta Partners
John Oxaal, ’81, Sevin Rosen Funds
Michael Polsky, ’87, Invenergy LLC
Douglas Reed, Vector Fund Management LP
John Rutledge, ’94 (XP-63),
Oxford Capital Group
Immanuel Thangaraj, AB ’92, MBA ’93,
Essex Woodlands Health Ventures
James Tyree, Abbott Laboratories
John Van Dyke Jr., ’69, Pionetics
Robert Zieserl, KB Partners LLC
Source: The Michael P. Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship
B
y the time Karan Goel entered the New Venture
Challenge as an undergraduate in the College at the Uni-
versity of Chicago, he had already begun his career as an entre-
preneur. In seventh grade, he bought chewing gum in bulk at
Sam’s Club and sold it at a profit to the other kids. In eighth
grade, he and some friends started a teen-oriented Web site.“In
tenth grade, we presented the plan to venture capitalists. That
was during the Internet boom. They said we should drop out of
highschool,”Goel said.“Luckily, we didn’t do that.”
Goel entered the NewVenture Challenge his freshman year
in college, joining a team called Changing World Foods. He
returned the following year as a sophomore with his own
startup, myTrak, an online tool to manage college application
materials, and made the semifinals. The experience would
prove valuable. “The New Venture Challenge taught me you
can’t just say, ‘This is a cool idea; let’s do it.’ You have to do
market research, talk to people who would be your customers
and suppliers, and figure out whether you can make it work.”
In 2005, as a first-year MBA student, Goel entered the compe-
tition for the third time. The team created PrepMe, a premium
online SAT and ACT test preparation service that creates
unique courses for students based on their individual
weaknesses. The courses are written by recent top scorers and
combined with online tutoring from Stanford and University
of Chicago students. With adaptive learning technology,
PrepMe continually adjusts a student’s course based on his
most recent results, letting the student focus on areas where
he or she needs tomake the greatest improvement.
Goel met his business partners on the Princeton Review
message board; Stanford grad Avichal Garg is a product
manager at Google, while Caltech grad and Rhodes scholar
Joseph Jewell coauthored Up Your Score: The Underground
Guide to the SAT. “It took us a while to develop the product.
What the New Venture Challenge helped us do was figure out
who the target market was and why they’d buy it,” he said.
Among the team’s advisors are Jean-Pierre Dubé, associate
professor of marketing, and Robert Nagel, ’63, chairman and
partner of CEO Partners in north suburban Winnetka.
“The final competition was the first time that Avichal, Joe,
and I hadbeen in the same place at the same time,”Goel said.
Their business plan not only won first place in the New Ven-
ture Challenge, it also landed Goel on the cover of Fortune
Small Business. From a field of 82 business plans,
PrepMe captured first prize in the magazine’s third
annual FSB Student Showdown. The resulting
publicity caused a boom in PrepMe sales, which
Goel is managing from the ARCH New Business
Incubator at the Hyde Park Center as he completes his MBA.
“I want to make sure we grow at a pace where we can continue
to provide an amazing experience to everyone,”he said. “Long
term, that’s what’s going to make us successful.”
PLANTING THE SEED
The seed funding for the New
Venture Challenge was a gift
from Edward L. Kaplan, ’70,
founder of Zebra Technologies.
Kaplan received the GSB’s
inaugural Distinguished
Entrepreneurial Alumnus
Award in 1996.
“The New Venture Challenge taught me you can’t
just say, ‘This is a cool idea; let’s do it.’”—Karan Goel
Number of companies launched: 25
M
a
tth
e
w
G
ils
o
n
C
h
ris
G
u
ille
n
and we kept pushing forward.” Eventually, Vicarious received
funding froma group of seasoned direct marketers, including
Ted Spiegel, who had run marketing for Spiegel Catalog, and
some of the managers at the market research firm Leo J.
Shapiro & Associates, including Leo Shapiro, AB ’42, PhD ’56,
and Owen Shapiro, AM ’90, MBA ’96. Several investors were
GSB alumni, Moyer said. “They all really believed in the con-
cept, and as a result, they were going to fund our proof-of-
concept stage.”
But a partnership with a company in the veteri-
nary industry ultimately stalled Vicarious Commu-
nications. “The investment group wasn’t willing to
stay with it,”he said.
After Vicarious, Moyer joined GVWHoldings, an investment
firm that launched Workhorse Custom Chassis in 1999. Moyer
served as vice president of brand strategy until the company
was purchased by International Trucks in 2005. Now CEO at
Collectica.com, Moyer is seeking funding for the social net-
working Web site. The firm was among finalists in the 2006 New
Venture Challenge; team members include current evening stu-
dent Kevin Knapp, AB ’89.“Starting a business is a no-lose situa-
tion,” Moyer said. “Succeed and you enjoy enormous upside
potential. Fail and you become smarter for the next time.”
M
ichael Moyer was kicking around several ideas for new
businesses when he enrolled in a class on small business
enterprise taught by Waverly Deutsch, clinical assistant professor
of entrepreneurship.“It was an excellent class. It was like a game
where you started your own business, with a new assignment
every week—make a sale, raise money. I had about five ideas,
and the one I liked best was Vicarious—direct marketing soft-
ware that allows manufacturers and retailers of veterinary prod-
ucts and services to collaborate on marketing,”he said.
“I did it as a case study for her class and then I developed it
further for the 2003 New Venture Challenge,” Moyer said.
With team member Alyson Tesler, ’04, Vicarious Communi-
cations took first place. Moyer began seeking funding,
drawing on his experience in the competition. “I had no idea
how to raise money for a business before the New Venture
Challenge. This helped me understand the process,”he said.
He relied on the feedback the judges had provided about his
presentation skills. “It helped me learn a significant amount
about how I come across to people,”he said. “I got frank, direct
feedback from the judges. Later on, I presented the business
plan about 100 times to venture capitalists and angels. If they
didn’t like my plan, they just didn’t call me back.”
Months into the firm’s first year, Becki Lindley, ’97 (XP-66),
a lecturer in the GSB’s Management Lab, joined Vicarious as
chief operating officer. Still, funding proved elusive. “It took
me about a year longer than I’d thought it would,” Moyer
said. “The New Venture Challenge put the wind in our sails,
Chicago GSB Spring 2006 22 23 Spring 2006 Chicago GSB
THE CASE STUDY
NAME: Michael Moyer, ’04
COMPANY: Collectica.com
CHI CAGO CONNECTI ON: Several early investors were
Chicago GSB alumni
THE ACCIDENTAL
ENTREPRENEUR
NAME: Jake Crampton, ’98
COMPANY: MedSpeed / medspeed.com
CHI CAGO CONNECTI ON: The angel investors included
Chicago GSB alumni
J
ake Crampton had successfully launched a business—a
language training school in Mexico City—before coming
to Chicago GSB. Still, he had no plans to return immediately
to entrepreneurship. He wanted to work as a consultant and
even did his summer internship at Bain & Company. But in
his second year, he took a course on new venture strategy
taught by James Schrager, clinical professor of entrepreneurship
and strategic management. “The term project my group
developed for it was MedSpeed. Professor Schrager said, ‘This
looks like it might be something real. I think you guys need to
enter this into the New Venture Challenge.’ And off we went.”
MedSpeed, which began by providing courier services for
diagnostic laboratories in the Chicago area, won first place in
the 1998 New Venture Challenge. The victory gave Crampton
and his cofounder Steve Muscarello the tools to launch the
business. For example, learning how to raise money was a
direct result of successfully presenting their business plan to
judges at the New Venture Challenge, he said. “The process
of going through the ringer got us ready to go out there,”
Crampton said.“It gave me the confidence to say,‘This is worth
a million dollars of your money.’ That’s a big deal.”
They closed their funding in June 1999 and started the
business. Crampton, as CEO, oversaw seven employees, a
number that has grown to 50 as business continues to grow.
MedSpeed now picks up and delivers items ranging from lab
specimens to blood products to medical records for clinical
labs, hospitals, blood banks, and institutional pharmacies in
Chicago, central Illinois, and the Indianapolis area. Although
Crampton and his cofounder have come up with a half-dozen
more ideas for new businesses, they have no plans
to launch any other ventures—at least outside of
MedSpeed—anytime soon. “Part of our job is to
say, ‘We built an organization that has certain
capacities and certain relationships in various
industries. What parallel businesses could we
stream off of this?’ We’re going to try hard
at MedSpeed to practice a lot of internal
entrepreneurship,” he said. “That’s a heavy initia-
tive as we look ahead—not just to take Medspeed’s business
plan as it has existed, but taking it to the next two or
three steps.”
“The New Venture Challenge put the wind in our sails,
and we kept pushing forward.”—Michael Moyer
“The process of going through the ringer got us
ready to go out there. It gave me the confidence to
say, ‘This is worth a million dollars of your money.’”
—Jake Crampton
Feature NVC
Amount of venture capital that
has funded NVC companies:
$50 million
Average number of student teams
who enter the competition: 60
D
a
n
D
r y
D
a
n
D
ry
THE
INVESTMENT
BANKER
NAME: José Dinis, ’00
COMPANY: Univercité
CHI CAGO CONNECTI ON: Learned about the GSB as an
undergraduate exchange student in the College
Kanthack honed the business plan for the New Venture
Challenge, an experience that proved invaluable. “The judges
would ask questions like, ‘Do you know about this competitor?’
It helped us focus and refine our business plan, and it saved us
from making a lot of mistakes along the way,” he said. As a
result, brightroom tied for second place.
In seeking funding, Kanthack called upon the contacts he
made as a student. As a co-chair of the Entrepreneurship and
Venture Capital Group (now the EVP group), he helped host
the first Willis Stein Entrepreneurial Edge Confer-
ence. He also was the first participant in the
Elfman-Wareham Private Equity and Venture
Capital Lab, earning course credit for interning
with Trident Capital, a private equity firm in
Chicago. “I had a chance to meet a lot of people
and keep them up-to-speed on what I was doing.
Ultimately, a lot of those folks became investors,” he said. Of
brightroom’s 25 individual investors, about 80 percent were
alumni or had a connection to the GSB, Kanthack said.
After five years of watching brightroom grow, Kanthack
and his partners are ready for their next challenge.“I think I’m
best at taking an early vision, crafting it, creating a business
around it, and starting it up,”he said.
25 24
Feature NVC
Chicago GSB Spring 2006 Spring 2006 Chicago GSB
W
ith two parents who owned their own businesses,
Sol Kanthack knew he was going to be an entrepre-
neur. As a first-year student at Chicago GSB, he entered the
New Venture Challenge with a biotech venture. “We did pretty
well and I really enjoyed the process,” he said. The next year,
he entered again with brightroom, a Web event photography
company.“When the competition took place, we were already
doing events and generating revenue,”he said.“We were actually
executing the business plan.”
Kanthack had met Burch LaPrade, one of his business
partners, during his summer internship at Flyswat, which
had just been launched by Ray Krouse, ’99, and John Rodkin,
MBA ’05, JD ’05. (See “The Three-Time Finalist,” page 27.)
As one of the first students chosen for the Entrepreneurial
Internship Program, he was supported by the Polsky Center
and the Kauffman Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership
during the summer.
He and LaPrade kept in touch over the fall, kicking around
the idea of taking photos at running events, putting them
online, and marketing the images through e-mail. They
called the company brightroom and launched it on a small
scale in February 2000, partnering with an event management
firm to shoot a 5K race in Chicago. “We proved that people
would view and order the pictures,”he said.
W
hen José Dinis first came to the University of Chicago
in 1995, he was an undergraduate exchange student
from École Superieure des Sciences Économiques et Commer-
cials. A future investment banker, he took note of Chicago
GSB’s reputation for finance. After stints at Goldman Sachs in
London and later at BNP Paribas, he enrolled in the Full-Time
MBA Program.
It was 1999, a heady time for entrepreneurs launching dot-
com businesses. “It was something everybody was talking
about,” Dinis said. “With some friends at Chicago, I began
thinking about an Internet venture in the education indus-
try.”He found himself drawn to the courses offered by Steven
Kaplan, Neubauer Family Professor of Entrepreneurship and
Finance, and James Schrager, clinical professor of entrepre-
neurship and strategic management. The New Venture Chal-
lenge course provided an opportunity to try his hand at
entrepreneurship, and Dinis decided to take advantage of it.
“I was still thinking about investment banking, but I decided
this time at Chicago was a unique point in my career.”
He competed in the 2000 New Venture Challenge with
Univercité, which supplied online supplemental education
for French students in grades kindergarten through 12. “The
experience opened our minds,” he said. “A lot of us had
worked in big companies and did not have the insights of
what it was like to work for a smaller company or have an
entrepreneurial drive to develop a project,”he said.
Univercité finished fourth, but the team went on to place
second in the Bain Start-Up Challenge. Despite the plan’s suc-
cess, the team realized the dot-com bubble was about to burst
and decided not to seek funding. The NVC experience “helped
me better analyze the viability of my own project, so I avoided
investing too much of my personal wealth and time in some-
thing that wasn’t viable,”he said.
Dinis continued to focus on education and discovered the
French company Acadomia provided personal tutoring. To
convince executives to enter into a partnership with him,
Dinis drew on what he had learned at the GSB. “To build this
partnership with this new company and justify my role as
a partner was not easy. What helped me a lot were all
the meetings we had had with outside people for the
New Venture Challenge and all the classes I had about
how to develop a partnership within companies.”
He became CFO at Acadomia. As the firm grew, he launched
his own company as well, a house cleaning service called Shiva
that now employs about 2,000 maids throughout France. Then
Acadomia merged with Shiva, creating the largest home
services company in France. Dinis said the company hopes
to expand into areas like gardening and child care.
Although he thought his destiny was to be an investment
banker, he said, “When I was in Chicago, I decided to open up
my mind, and it was really useful. I wouldn’t have done that
without the Chicago experience.”
“I had a chance to meet a lot of people and keep them
up-to-speed on what I was doing. Ultimately, a lot of
those folks became investors.”—Sol Kanthack
“The experience opened our minds.”—José Dinis
THE
WELL-CONNECTED
ENTREPRENEUR
NAME: Sol Kanthack, ’00
COMPANY: brightroom / brightroom.com
CHI CAGO CONNECTI ON: Met his business partner while
interning for a firm launched by GSB alumni—winners
of a previous New Venture Challenge; 80 percent of his
original investors were alumni or had a GSB connection
Average number of judges at the
daylong finals event: 20
Total cash prizes that winners
share each year: $50,000
D
a
n
D
r y
A
n
n
a
C
lo
p
e
t
THE BIOTECH
STARTUP
NAME: Ana-Maria Nicolau, ’05
COMPANY: Midway Pharmaceuticals
CHI CAGO CONNECTI ON: Team members included faculty
from the University of Chicago Hospitals and the University
of Chicago Division of Biological Sciences Department of
Medicine
THE THREE-TIME
FINALIST
NAME: John Rodkin, MBA ’05, JD ’05
COMPANY: ClickShift / clickshift.com
CHI CAGO CONNECTI ON: Started his first business, Flyswat,
with Ray Krouse, ’99, after meeting Krouse at Admit Weekend
Nicolau said she appreciated the detailed feedback. “For exam-
ple, the judges would say, ‘You’re not going to get money if you
don’t help me understand your path to market without any
flaws. Without that, I’m not going to invest in your business.’”
Midway Pharmaceuticals won first place. That success
enabled the team to place in competitions that followed: the
Global Startup@Singapore Business Plan Competition, the
Rice University Business Plan Competition, and the MOOT
CORP Competition at the University of Texas at Austin.
“Without going through the New Venture Chal-
lenge, we would never have been able to stand up at
an international competition, defend our business
plan, and ask for money,”Nicolau said.
Midway Pharmaceuticals was incorporated early
in 2005.“We’re looking to raise about $8 million for
clinical studies and to get on the path to market.
The whole process takes many years and a lot of money,” said
Nicolau, who works at a management consulting firm. “We’re
also looking at partnering with corporations, and with state
agencies that are trying to incubate biotech companies.
“We’re still in the process of trying to decide on the best
partnerships for us to develop this product and bring it
to market.”
J
ohn Rodkin has the distinction of being the only person
to compete in the finals of the New Venture Challenge
three times. “I think you probably learn more by not being
successful,”he said.“But you definitely learn by doing.”
Before Rodkin even enrolled at Chicago GSB, he was ready
to launch a business. At Admit Weekend in April 1997, he met
Ray Krouse, ’99, and learned they shared the same goal. They
became roommates and then business partners, creating
Flyswat, an Internet browser extension that generated contin-
uously updated links on an open Web page. When they
entered Flyswat in the New Venture Challenge in 1998, Rodkin
was in his first year at the University of Chicago Law School.
The company came in fourth. Rodkin and Krouse decided
to use what they’d learned from the judges, successfully
sought funding, and launched the firm.“You get a good handle
on how to talk about a business plan and what other people
care about,” Rodkin said. In September 1998, he dropped out
of school to run Flyswat. The move paid off when they sold
the company to NBCi in 2000 for $120 million.
Rodkin stayed on as vice president of product for NBCi,
then took a year off to consider his next move. In 2002, Rod-
kin returned to Chicago as a second-year law student and
entered the 2003 New Venture Challenge with Green
Hedges, an insurance product aimed at hedging declining
home value risk. That plan won second place and is a long-
term project that Rodkin continues to work on. “When you
have to get laws changed in several states and deal with a lot
of regulatory hurdles, you can’t just raise a couple million
dollars and go do it,”he said.
In fall 2003, Rodkin reentered business school. The following
summer, he worked at U.S. Venture Partners, which had fund-
ed Flyswat, and when he returned to Hyde Park in fall 2004, he
continued to consult on a handful of projects for USVP. He
also entered the New Venture Challenge for the third time
with F2 (now called ClickShift), which helps companies man-
age complex online marketing campaigns. Gathering reams
of online data, such as how a shopper buys from a
Web site or fills out a form, ClickShift helps clients
determine how to spend advertising dollars across
various types of Internet advertising. Rodkin’s
company won second place.
“We signed our first customer in May 2005. I
moved to San Francisco after graduation, which was June 12,
started meeting with venture capitalists June 13, and had term
sheets at the end of the following week,” he said. Rodkin suc-
cessfully sought $6 million in funding from U.S. Venture Part-
ners and El Dorado Ventures to launch the firm.
“Our biggest problem at this point is growing the company
fast enough to meet the client demands,”he said.
A
na-Maria Nicolau brought her experience in the phar-
maceutical industry and an interest in entrepreneur-
ship to Chicago GSB, hoping to apply both of them to the
New Venture Challenge. “I wanted to see how I could lever-
age my health care background and learn entrepreneurship
by starting up a company in health care,” she said. At an
information session hosted by the Polsky Center for Entre-
preneurship in October 2003, she discovered Midway Phar-
maceuticals. A biotech company, its aim is to commericalize
treatments that prevent necrotizing enterocolitis (a disease
that causes destruction of the bowel in infants) and keep
some inflammatory bowel diseases from flaring up. “I
decided it was the right opportunity for me,”she said.
The classroom experience was exactly what Nicolau had
been looking for. “I wanted to understand how to start a
business—the process of developing a business plan, raising
money. This was all very new to me, and the New Venture
Challenge was an amazing opportunity to learn that.”
Collaboration was important. Team members included
Robert Durden, ’05, and Dhiren Jhaveri, ’05; CEO Rifat
Pamukcu, former CEO of Cell Pathways; John Alverdy,
professor of surgery at University of Chicago Hospitals; and
Eugene Chang, Martin Boyer Professor of Medicine, and
Elaine Petrof, instructor, from the University of Chicago Divi-
sion of Biological Sciences Department of Medicine. Midway
Pharmaceuticals advanced through the qualifying rounds, and
27 Spring 2006 Chicago GSB Chicago GSB Spring 2006 26
Feature NVC
“Without going through the New Venture Challenge,
we would never have been able to stand up at an
international competition, defend our business
plan, and ask for money.”—Ana-Maria Nicolau
Hours of pro bono legal advice
NVC winners may receive: 16
“Our biggest problem at this point is growing the
company fast enough to meet the client demands.”
—John Rodkin
Number of GSB students who
must be part of senior management
to qualify for the NVC: 1
D
a
n
D
ry
S
te
v
e
C
a
s
tillo
THE BOUTIQUE
RETAILER
NAME: Jeff Wilcoxon, ’04
COMPANY: Bobtail Ice Cream & Coffee Co. /
bobtailsodafountain.com
CHI CAGO CONNECTI ON: The team’s advisor became its lead
investor when the firm was launched
worked for Rutledge, performing due diligence on the deal
and refining the business plan for Bobtail. “I wrote a case
based on the entrepreneurial experience I had that summer,
and on the tie to my family business, too,” Wilcoxon said. A
full-time student, he also enrolled in two evening courses at
the GSB to accelerate his studies so they could open the store
in the spring.
Business has been very good. The firm opened a second
store on January 2 and the team is always looking at new
opportunities. “I’m so excited by what I’m doing now in the
startup phase, I can definitely see myself investing in another
concept, helping someone the way John helped us,
or starting my own company again one day,”
Wilcoxon said. “At the same time, I might decide
that we’ve really built an enterprise here, and it will
be fun to keep running Bobtail for a long time.
“We’re committed to Bobtail. We’re not opening 20 stores
tosell in five years. We want to build a lasting enterprise.”
C
reating Bobtail Ice Cream & Coffee Co.’s business plan
for the New Venture Challenge took up most of their
first year at Chicago GSB for Jeff Wilcoxon and Christopher
Hill, ’04. Building, opening, and running the upscale ice
cream parlor on Chicago’s north side took up most of their
second year. “When we graduated, we had already been oper-
ating for three months,”said Wilcoxon.
The idea for Bobtail came from Wilcoxon’s family business
in Ohio; they entered the competition with a team named
Soda Jerk’s. “When you enter, you just want this awesome
experience building a business plan,” he said. “Three weeks
into it, when people start saying, ‘Wow, you really do have a
good idea and you could do this,’ you dial up the amount of
effort you put into it.”
Soda Jerk’s made it to the finals. “At that point, we were
encouraged. After several judges told us, ‘You should find
money and do this,’ Chris and I were determined to start
the company.”
Part of Bobtail’s early success can be attributed to John
Rutledge, ’94 (XP-63), president and cofounder of the Oxford
Capital Group. He was introduced to Wilcoxon and Hill by
Steven Kaplan, Neubauer Family Professor of Entrepreneurship
and Finance, and served as a strategic advisor to the team.
After the New Venture Challenge, Rutledge became lead
investor and CEO.
Wilcoxon was chosen for the Entrepreneurial Internship
Program supported by the Polsky Center and the Kauffman
Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership. Over the summer, he
Chicago GSB Spring 2006 28
Feature NVC
“When we graduated, we had already been
operating for three months.”—Jeff Wilcoxon
Average number of times finalist teams
pitch their plan to actual investors: 3
D
a
n
D
r
y
doc_271929530.pdf