Projects show spirit of entrepreneurship

Robert Henry Becker Arizona Daily Wildcat Peter Coors (center), chief executive officer and vice chairman of Coors Brewing Co., received the UA's Executive of the Year award, given by the College of Business and Public Administration, at the Westin La Paloma Friday. Coors and 350 students and business executives from around the country were present for the awards ceremony.

"These are all businesses that are very likely to succeed. Even if you don't win, you still have the chance to meet the private investors and bankers that are here," said M'Liz Robinson, a business administration graduate student.

For Robinson and the 43 other students in the Berger Entrepreneurship Program in the College of Business and Public Administration, the competition was the culmination of a year spent learning techniques and generating ideas for marketing and launching an operable business.

Throughout the year, students in the program worked in teams to create an entire business plan that included marketing strategies, fund raising, expansion ideas and plans for start-up operations.

Tom BoBo, a geological engineering senior, and Brian Norton, a business administration graduate student, won the competition with their business plan for SPLIT Engineering, a software system to help mines improve efficiency and productivity.

The software is already in operation in several mines, BoBo said.

"I was so amazed that we won. Each of the other presentations were so well done," he said.

Chris McGuire, vice president and director of the Berger foundation and one of six competition judges, said he was impressed with each of the finalists.

"Each plan had a different viability. SPLIT's idea was such that it was the most viable," he said.

A judging panel of business executives and BPA faculty chose four finalist teams last week from 25 business plans created by the class during the year.

The other finalists were:

• Ben Williams, BPA senior, and Josh Eskin, a doctoral candidate in optical sciences who promoted PanOpTech, a digital camera company.

• Entrepreneurship seniors James Walbom and Joe Del Giorgio, who created Absolutely Horses.com, an Internet advertising company for the horse industry.

• M'Liz Robinson and Matt Lincoln, business administration graduate student, who introduced Molecular Ventures, a company which produces three-dimensional educational software.

Robinson said each of the finalists were in different stages of development.

"Some programs have been developed only in the past several months, others are the product of several years work," she said.

The winners received $400 from the Arizona Business Gazette and $1,000 from BLR Data. The other three finalist teams each received $200 from the Arizona Business Gazette and $500 from BLR Data.

The entrepreneurship program is organized for the Berger Foundation by the Karl Eller Center for the Study of the Private Market Economy in the business college.

Luis Trujillo, assistant at the Karl Eller Center, said applicants are admitted to the one-year program in the spring and some teams start working on their business plans during the summer.

"The program is for undergrads and MBA students. Some students from the technical programs are also admitted," Trujillo said. "We accept them based on their ideas."