VENTURE START-UP COMPETITION ANNOUNCES AWARDS

In a contest designed to encourage innovation, strategic thinking and risk taking among students who are launching their own businesses, UC Irvine's Graduate School of Management has awarded a total of $30,000 to the winners of its first New Venture Start-up Competition.

The competition is an outgrowth of an expanding program in the business school that focuses on new venture development and innovation in the digital economy.

The first-place prize -- $20,000 in seed money -- went to Intelligent Horizon, a B2B business intelligence service provider (BISP) offering data warehouse application maintenance and management services, as well as end-to-end hosted data warehouse solutions, through an application service provider delivery model.

MBA students Darren Whissen, Alok Kapur, JC Schnabl, Steve Vengrow, Josh Levine and Ramez Barsoum received the top award for a company designed to help businesses reduce costs and improve the performance of their decision-support systems.

The $10,000, second-place award went to an online B2B venture called Qnetka that connects managed property industry professionals with personalized volume purchasing events, informational content and management tools.

The team includes business school graduate students Brett Johnson, James Beasley, Mark Tacconelli and Nanu Trivedi, as well as Michael Guntersdorfer of UCI's Department of Information and Computer Science.

A third-place honorable mention went to the MBA students who created Curry Connection, an Internet retailer/wholesaler of exotic foods and cooking accessories. The team members are Sean Boyle, Daniella Jones, Sunil Marolia, Minh Trang and Steve Zimmerle.

"The involvement of our students and the business community in this competition is further proof of the energy and excitement in Orange County around the idea of business building," said David H. Blake, dean of UCI's Graduate School of Management. "Our students are fully aware of the many opportunities they have to create and implement new business ideas.

"The combination of a first-rate education, a supportive environment in the county, and their own drive and creativity means that Southern California can count on a continuing stream of high-potential start-ups coming out of the business school at UCI."

Pete Ellis, owner of Jubilee Investments in Corona del Mar and one of the competition judges, said: "There is a lot of talent in the UCI Graduate School of Management program. Being an evaluator in the competition allowed me to see first-hand how valuable this school is to the business community."

Darren Whissen, who led the first-place team, said the competition -- combined with his MBA courses -- significantly advanced his team's efforts to launch a business: "The UCI business school's information and technology emphasis and entrepreneurial support provided the foundation and structure necessary to successfully launch Intelligent Horizon.

"The competition was an excellent venue for us to polish our business plan, sharpen our presentation skills and prepare ourselves for negotiations with investors."

The competition was launched in January, and the 11 participating teams consulted regularly with faculty and advisors from the business community as they prepared to make presentations to a panel of judges in May. Advisors and judges included venture capitalists, private investors, entrepreneurs and executives from major corporations.

Each team was required to have at least one business student enrolled in the Business Planning for Entrepreneurs course taught by C. Kaye Schoonhoven, professor of organization and strategy, and Gary Naumann, adjunct faculty member.

The competition is modeled after similar contests held at business schools such as those at MIT, Stanford and Dartmouth, where Schoonhoven taught before arriving at UCI in 1998.

The New Venture Start-up Competition is just one example of a surge in business-building activities at the UCI Graduate School of Management, which is ranked 22nd internationally by Financial Times and among the nation's top 50 business schools by Business Week magazine and U.S. News & World Report.

The school's comprehensive focus on how the interplay of information and technology drives business decisions gives students an edge in creating digital economy companies.

A team from UCI recently placed first in Hummer Winblad Venture Partners' business plan competition, winning $5 million in venture capital funding in a contest involving some 250 other business schools, including Wharton, the University of Chicago, Harvard and Berkeley.

In addition, a number of MBA students in UCI's Class of 2000 are starting their own Internet companies, and alumni have launched such businesses as Homegopher.com, huddle247.com, 1hope.com, egoose.com and eLink Commerce, among many others.

For information about UCI's Graduate School of Management, see gsm.uci.edu

Contact UC Irvine Graduate School of Management, Sherry Angel, 949-824-2310, ssangel@gsm.uci.edu