From: jpbonsen@MIT.EDU
Message-Id: <9405230204.AA08760@w20-575-36.MIT.EDU>
To: howie@MIT.EDU, emoy@MIT.EDU, miller@MIT.EDU, saint@MIT.EDU
Cc: jpbonsen@MIT.EDU, rdshydur@MIT.EDU, dcling@MIT.EDU, npdeluca@MIT.EDU,
        75060.1041@CompuServe.COM, owen@MIT.EDU
Subject: 1994 MIT $10K Final Results Press Release; Photos Available
Date: Sun, 22 May 94 22:04:02 EDT

SterWave Team Wins MIT $10K New Venture Competition

By Joost Bonsen (SB EE '92)
Chairman, 1994 MIT $10K Entrepreneurial Competition

SterWave, a student team drawn from the MIT Schools of Engineering,
Management, and Science, produced this year's David and Lindsay
Morgenthaler Grand Prize-winning business plan in the fifth annual MIT
$10K Entrepreneurial Competition.

In the $10K Competition, co-organized by the MIT Entrepreneurs Club
(e-club) and the Sloan New Ventures Association (NVA), a $10,000 cash
prize, along with several thousand dollars worth of in-kind legal and
accounting services and a "trillion bucks" worth of free advice, is
given to the team which produces the best business plan proposing the
most promising new venture.

The SterWave venture intends to commercialize a proprietary new
technology for sterilizing medical, laboratory, and industrial
supplies.  Currently, this multi-hundred million dollar per year
market is poorly served by technologies which are too slow, expensive,
dangerous, and damaging to the materials sterilized.  The SterWave
technology addresses each of these problems.

SterWave's well-rounded, record-size $10K team consists of Jason Chen
(SB MatSci '94), Alberto Haddad (SM Mgt '95), Owen Hughes (SB Bio
'86), Robert Lewis (Fellow Mgt '94), Khinlei Myint-U (SM Mgt '95),
Peter Nuytkens (PhD EE '94), Suzanne Oakley (SM Mgt '95), and Srikar
Srinath (SB EE '94).

The Judges had a very difficult, but they claim "most enjoyable," time
this year due to the "astonishing" quality of the plans.  Each of the
Finalists not only prepared a plan but also made significant progress
on working prototypes and mock-ups of their products.  This year's six
Finalists included SterWave and:

* HyperLearning, producing computer aided-interactive learning guides
for math, science, and engineering at both high school and college
levels, by John Chun (ScD NucE '94), Cris Eugster (PhD EE '93), and
Dan Wang (PhD NucE '93).

* New Frontiers Information Corporation, pioneering the emergence of
electronic markets with an online employment agency for technical
professionals, by Jay Coulson (SB CS '94), Andrew Heitner (SM ME '94),
Frank Leibly (SM EE '94), and Robert Ramstad (SM CS '92).

* Up&Comers Trading Card Company, marketing authentic action cards for
aspiring athletes that "look and feel" like professional athlete
cards, by Jason Farris (SM Mgt '94) and Robert Ward (SM Mgt '94).

* SenFlex, enabling flexible manufacturing and process control through
wireless technology, by Roland Ayala (SM LFM '95), Charles DeWitt (SM
LFM '95), Lance Haag (SM LFM '95), and Michael Rutz (SM LFM '95).

* MediaCast Technologies, developing software products to deliver
interactive multimedia content and internet access, by Paul Bosco (PhD
TMP '96), Charles Compton (SM EECS '95), Ye Gu (SM EE '94), and
Christopher Lefelhocz (SM CS '94).

The MediaCast team was honored with a $1,000 Sloan Product Development
and New Venture Track Prize for their well-done plan and much-needed
product.

The remaining Finalist teams each received a copy of books by MIT
Professors Ed Roberts (Entrepreneurship: Lessons from MIT and Beyond),
Glen Urban and John Hauser (Marketing), and MIT alumnus Gordon Bell
(High Tech Ventures), courtesy of the authors and the MIT
Entrepreneurs Club.

Furthermore, the Judges awarded the Semi-finalist team of Educational
Designs the Most Socially Relevant New Venture Prize for bringing
MIT's renowned 2.70 design contest to high schools nation- and
world-wide.  Team members Ross Levinsky (PhD ME '95), Andrzej
Skoskiewicz (SM ME '93), Jeff Reback (SB CS '94), and Janice Yoo (SB
PolSci '94) are working closely with 2.70 Professor Harry West and
have already supplied kits to high schools outside Massachusetts.

Open to all students, both undergraduate and graduate, regardless of
citizenship, from any of the five MIT schools, the $10K Competition
encourages student entrepreneurship and promotes cross-campus team
building.  Indeed, historically, the strongest teams are combinations
of technical and management student talent.

The MIT e-club and NVA help people form teams and write plans through
a combination of mixers, in-person and electronic
(e-club-request@mit.edu) networking, a resume book, the x3-2000 phone
info tree, and information sessions.  All interested potential
contestants pick up free Kits chock full of reference material,
pointers, resources and other tips for pulling together new businesses
and writing plans.

These $10K Contestant Kits are available in the Dean of Engineering
and Sloan Management offices starting in the fall semester.  Over the
January Independent Activities Period, the MIT e-club sponsors the
Nuts and Bolts of Preparing Business Plans organized by $10K Judge and
MIT alumnus Joseph Hadzima (SB Physics '73).  Early in the spring
semester, a brief Executive Summary of the proposed new venture is
due.

This February deadline for a short piece encourages people to get the
beginnings of their idea on paper and allows the $10K Judges to pick
the most promising and thought-through proposals for the Semi-final
round.  This year, 33 teams totaling nearly 70 people submitted
Summaries; by early March, the Judges asked nine teams to continue as
Semi-finalists and prepare fleshed-out Business Plans.

By the mid-April deadline, the Semi-finalists submit their full plans;
the Judges pick the Finalists on the basis of these plans and ask them
to come in for a short presentation and interview.  At the Awards
Ceremony, where the $10K Competition is hosted by the MIT Enterprise
Forum, the Grand Prize winners, along with the additional prize
winners, are announced.

The all-volunteer $10K Judging panel consists of Joseph Hadzima,
partner co-directing law firm Sullivan & Worcester's High
Technology/New Ventures Group; Christina Jansen, licencing officer at
the MIT Technology Licencing Office; Vince Cipollone, Matthew
Littlewood, and Mark Verdi of the Price Waterhouse Entrepreneurial
Services Center, Matthias Plum, founding partner of the venture
capital firm Copley Venture Partners, Russ Olive, senior lecturer on
entrepreneurship and the management of technology at the MIT Sloan
School of Management; and David Morgenthaler, founder and managing
partner of the venture capital firm, Morgenthaler Ventures.

The $10K Competition is possible through the sponsorship of the MIT
School of Engineering, the MIT Sloan School of Management, the MIT
Technology Licencing Office, Price Waterhouse, Copley Venture
Partners, the MIT Enterprise Forum, Ronald Trahan Associates, Sullivan
& Worcester, Thermo Electron Corporation, Draper Associates, the David
and Lindsay Morgenthaler Foundation, the Judges themselves, and other
generous donors of both time and money.

The Competition is a joint venture of the MIT e-club and the Sloan
NVA.  The 1994 organizing committee includes Joost Bonsen, Richard
Shyduroff, and Douglas Ling of the e-club, J.J. Laukaitis, Chris
Meyers, and Jim Macintosh of the NVA, and Krisztina Holly of Stylus
Innovation, 1991 $10K winner.  Both the e-club and the NVA sponsor
other activities promoting entrepreneurship at MIT and beyond.

Previous student contestants and winners of the $10K have gone on to
build real companies.  The 1993 $10K winner, Novus Packaging
Corporation of Jamaica Plain, MA introduced its PillowPak inflatable
packaging product at a Boston biomedical expo exactly one year after
winning.  Over the year Novus has been heavily involved in assessing
market needs, establishing a manufacturing facility, filing additional
patents, establishing a corporate identity, and continuously improving
the quality of PillowPak.  Novus is also developing a partnership
with a local packaging company and is finding investment for its
continued product development efforts.  Beta testing of PillowPak is
currently being conducted by customers; Novus expects initial orders
in mid-1994.

"The packaging market is brutal," says Novus' president Nicholas De
Luca (SB ME '93), "you've just got to find a niche and go for it."
Novus is currently targeting the polystyrene thermal protection market
which it estimates at $50 Million per year in the US, further
estimating the total US packaging market at $1.3 Billion.  "With our
primary technology developed in-house, we can shorten product
development cycles, and design with manufacturing in mind."  Novus is
currently developing other packaging systems which they plan to
introduce by early 1995.

The 1991 $10K winner, Stylus Innovation (formerly Dial-a-Fish) is now
shipping a new software product is called Visual Voice.  Visual Voice
is a custom control for Visual Basic that allows developers to build
sophisticated voice processing applications such as fax-on-demand,
interactive voice response (e.g., "touchtone banking"), and voicemail.

Stylus also has two new products coming out in May and June.  First,
they are porting the Visual Voice product to IBM Mwave-based boards,
inexpensive powerful hardware that's rapidly becoming widely
available.  Second, they are coming out with a new product Visual Fax.
Visual Fax will allow developers to build robust multi-line fax
applications in Visual Basic with Intel SatisFAXtion boards.

Stylus got to this point after licensing their barcode system to the
largest distributors of VeriFone for $8 Million.  (VeriFone is that
box you see in any store which confirms the validity of your credit
card.)  They retained rights to build software, and their first
software package focused exclusively on receiving barcode-to-
touchtone input.  Along the way they realized that they could make a
very useful software tool for general purpose voice processing
(e.g. interactive voice response).  They launched Visual Voice last
November and have been growing at 40% per month.  They currently have
a $1.5 Million/year revenue rate.

These past winners and other contestants in the $10K Competition have
gone on to start and build at least five companies.  With luck and
perseverance, perhaps SterWave and others from this year's $10K will
be successful as well.