When the University of California, Irvine, Graduate School of Management held its first ever Best New Venture Business Plan contest in June, the team of Dan Whissen and five other MBA students took the competition a step further.
“We incorporated it and quit our previous jobs,” Whissen said. “Whether the judges liked us or not, we were going to start this company. That showed our commitment.”
Not only did the team pick up the $20,000 first place award, it was also able to raise nearly a million dollars in seed money for the company, Intelligent Horizon Inc., a startup that concentrates on maintaining data warehouses. Much of that came from the tech investors that also were the judges of the contest.
“The recognition was tremendous. The investors told us, ‘If I’m willing to vote for you, I’m willing to invest in you,'” Whissen said.
Now with 10 employees, Intelligent Horizon has outgrown its 1,000-square-foot Newport Beach office and is looking for a 3,000-square-foot facility.
The prize money also included $10,000 in second place money to a team proposing an online B2B venture called Qnetka that aims to connect managed property executives with personalized volume purchasing events, informational content and management tools.
“We saw exactly the kinds of plans and the enthusiasm that I see in real companies, and this was real life because many of the students plan to participate in these businesses and some are already up and running,” said Pete Ellis, who donated some of the prize money and also was a judge. “Being an evaluator in the competition allowed me to see first-hand how valuable this school is to the business community.” Other tech luminaries who donated prize money include Dwight Decker, chairman and CEO, Conexant Systems, Inc.; Don Beall, retired chairman and CEO, Rockwell International; William Link, managing director, Palladium Venture Capital; Ted Smith, chairman, FileNET Corp.; and Kevin Daly, CEO, ATL Products, Inc.
The contest is one way that UCI’s Graduate School of Management is encouraging its students to think about forming companies.
The school also has set up a trailer with computers and complete Internet access. The trailer, called I3, was begun with a $150,000 donation from Safi Quereshey, a co-founder of AST Computers who now runs Irvine Ventures.
“It’s like Hewlett and Packard’s garage,” said David Blake, dean of the graduate school. “It’s a space for our students to develop new ideas. It will be open 24 hours a day.”
Blake said the school’s interweaving of technology with information has given it a niche that other MBA programs don’t have.
“Consequently, people like Darren (Whissen) are thinking aggressively,” Blake said.
Whissen was a manager at Proxicom Inc.’s office in San Francisco before he decided to come to UCI’s MBA program.
“UCI is the only MBA school that offers classes on data warehousing. That’s a huge market,” Whissen said.
Last June’s start-up contest, the first one held at UCI, is modeled on similar contests held at MIT, Stanford and Dartmouth. Eleven teams participated and each was required to have at least one business student enrolled in a course on Business Planning for Entrepreneurs, taught by C. Kaye Schoonhoven and Gary Naumann.
Besides Whissen, other MBA students on the winning team include Alok Kapur, JC Schnabl, Steve Vengrow, Josh Levine and Ramez Barsoum, almost all of whom are in the new company.
Whissen, 27, is now the CEO and president of Intelligent Horizon. He estimates that data warehousing is a $140 billion industry. He said consulting companies are earning $250 an hour on implementing data warehouses, but they are less interested in maintenance because the margins are not as great. But he figures maintenance of warehouses is still an $8 billion-a-year industry and there’s room for his company.
Whissen is on a one-year sabbatical from the MBA program and says he’ll return to finish. But even if he doesn’t, he says, it has been worth it.
“From a student’s perspective, the fastest way to get to market was to go to MBA school,” he said. “It’s a great resource of talented and motivated people and the training and the education that the professors bring. For me, going to MBA school made perfect sense.” n
