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COLLEGE PARK — -
Forget the poor economy: Yesterday was a day for start-up dreaming at the University of Maryland.
More than 500 people turned up for the university's ninth annual technology start-up boot camp. It was a full day of speakers and sessions dedicated to helping the university grow as a regional powerhouse for innovation and business incubation. The audience was dotted with graduate and undergraduate students, venture capitalists and local entrepreneurs. and faculty members, some of whom are involved in their own start-up businesses.
When asked at the beginning of the day how many were interested in starting up their own companies, about half the audience members raised their hands. One of the sessions featured Michael Chasen, founder and chief executive officer of Washington-based Blackboard Inc., a public company that sells software to education institutions.
His advice: If you think you have a good idea, "you need to tell every single person you can." He described how he and his partner, early in their venture, went to every entrepreneurial event they could attend in the Washington area, pitched their start-up and networked to attract their first investors.
Another bit of advice he shared: "Running your own company literally takes all of your time. If you want to start your own company, you're working all the time. That means you've got to do something you're passionate about."
Speakers such as Chasen and other chief executives and investors addressed a largely ambitious crowd of young entrepreneurs throughout the day. Many of the participants were undergraduates and graduate students connected to the business school, the engineering school and the Maryland Technology Enterprise Institute, which hosted the boot camp.
One of the students was Gregory Waldstreicher, 20, a junior accounting major from Stamford, Conn., who's looking to take his startup - Refill Manager LLC - to the next level. He and a high school buddy started the company to give physicians a cheaper alternative for connecting their offices to pharmacies, so they can quickly fill prescriptions for patients.
They started the company in July 2008 and have managed to raise $10,000 in seed investment from the University of Maryland, he said. They run their company from their dorm rooms - Waldstreicher at Maryland and his co-founder at New York University - and use Web technologies, such as video chat, to stay connected. They have 19 physicians in eight states as clients - whom they drew by buying cheap ads on the search engine Google.com.
"We had very little in our budget from marketing," he said.
Another graduate student, Evan Ulrich, 27, was there looking for advice on how to advance his own start-up, after his breakthrough research resulted in a patent-pending design for a single-wing helicopter, or monocopter. The doctoral student from Frederick was challenged by his dean to come up with a design for a monocopter that was based on a maple seed leaf - which can be seen gently fluttering to earth as it falls from a tree.
After countless hours in a lab and 100 versions, he was able to build a small craft - with one rotor - that could take off from a stationary position and hover, and be controlled remotely. The university holds the intellectual property rights to the invention, but Ulrich has exclusive licensing rights to it. "I'm interested in starting a business," said Ulrich, who finishes his graduate program in May.
Initially, Ulrich said, he thinks the monocopter would be a hit with toy and hobby enthusiasts. Down the road, he sees potential defense- and science-related applications for the technology, such as small surveillance crafts to low-altitude hovering satellites. "I'd like to not make weapons," Ulrich said, but spying and biological threat detection are other possibilities.
More than 500 people turned up for the university's ninth annual technology start-up boot camp. It was a full day of speakers and sessions dedicated to helping the university grow as a regional powerhouse for innovation and business incubation. The audience was dotted with graduate and undergraduate students, venture capitalists and local entrepreneurs. and faculty members, some of whom are involved in their own start-up businesses.
When asked at the beginning of the day how many were interested in starting up their own companies, about half the audience members raised their hands. One of the sessions featured Michael Chasen, founder and chief executive officer of Washington-based Blackboard Inc., a public company that sells software to education institutions.
His advice: If you think you have a good idea, "you need to tell every single person you can." He described how he and his partner, early in their venture, went to every entrepreneurial event they could attend in the Washington area, pitched their start-up and networked to attract their first investors.
Another bit of advice he shared: "Running your own company literally takes all of your time. If you want to start your own company, you're working all the time. That means you've got to do something you're passionate about."
Speakers such as Chasen and other chief executives and investors addressed a largely ambitious crowd of young entrepreneurs throughout the day. Many of the participants were undergraduates and graduate students connected to the business school, the engineering school and the Maryland Technology Enterprise Institute, which hosted the boot camp.
One of the students was Gregory Waldstreicher, 20, a junior accounting major from Stamford, Conn., who's looking to take his startup - Refill Manager LLC - to the next level. He and a high school buddy started the company to give physicians a cheaper alternative for connecting their offices to pharmacies, so they can quickly fill prescriptions for patients.
They started the company in July 2008 and have managed to raise $10,000 in seed investment from the University of Maryland, he said. They run their company from their dorm rooms - Waldstreicher at Maryland and his co-founder at New York University - and use Web technologies, such as video chat, to stay connected. They have 19 physicians in eight states as clients - whom they drew by buying cheap ads on the search engine Google.com.
"We had very little in our budget from marketing," he said.
Another graduate student, Evan Ulrich, 27, was there looking for advice on how to advance his own start-up, after his breakthrough research resulted in a patent-pending design for a single-wing helicopter, or monocopter. The doctoral student from Frederick was challenged by his dean to come up with a design for a monocopter that was based on a maple seed leaf - which can be seen gently fluttering to earth as it falls from a tree.
After countless hours in a lab and 100 versions, he was able to build a small craft - with one rotor - that could take off from a stationary position and hover, and be controlled remotely. The university holds the intellectual property rights to the invention, but Ulrich has exclusive licensing rights to it. "I'm interested in starting a business," said Ulrich, who finishes his graduate program in May.
Initially, Ulrich said, he thinks the monocopter would be a hit with toy and hobby enthusiasts. Down the road, he sees potential defense- and science-related applications for the technology, such as small surveillance crafts to low-altitude hovering satellites. "I'd like to not make weapons," Ulrich said, but spying and biological threat detection are other possibilities.
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