UF trains entrepreneurs through 10-week training program

June 22, 2011

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Jane Muir believes that you need just the right amount of luck to start a successful business. Luck, that is, as an acronym for the words: Labor Under Correct Knowledge.

Muir, the associate director of the University of Florida’s Office of Technology Licensing, is one of the designers of a new 10-week entrepreneurship training program called “Startup Quest” that concluded in a recent event at the Gainesville Golf and Country Club.

The competitive program, which is one of the first of its kind in the U.S., was funded by Florida Works and was created in partnership with the UF Office of Technology Licensing. Participants included 13 teams of 83 well-educated, unemployed professionals. Each team was provided with a professionally established mentor to act as its hypothetical company’s chief executive officer and a licensable UF technology awaiting commercialization.

The teams, which consisted of four to seven participants each, were given the challenge of creating and presenting an investor pitch and detailed business plan and were given advice and guidance over the 10 weeks of preparation.

At the concluding event, each team’s self-selected spokesperson presented a culmination of their teamwork to a panel of early-stage investor judges. Teams were judged based on a variety of criteria and the top four highest-scoring teams received cash incentives, with the fifth-place team receiving a complimentary lunch from Gainesville Golf and Country Club.

Muir said the inspiration for the creation of the program developed from brainstorming discussions between Muir and Florida Works Executive Director Angela Pate. After learning of the large number of well-educated, talented and experienced people who are unemployed and unengaged in the community, they wanted to help.

“I woke up at 3 a.m. with the idea for competing teams writing business plans and creating business presentations,” Muir said.

She said the program had two goals: to give knowledge of entrepreneurship to these professionals and to actually successfully start some of these companies.

To achieve her first goal, Muir hired Gainesville entrepreneur David Massias to teach entrepreneurship classes to the participants for the duration of the program.

The content of the classes came from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Research Foundation and covered specific topics of entrepreneurship, such as how to write a marketing plan, how to create a financial plan, how to manage cash and how to sell a product, among others.

“I wanted everyone to have the opportunity to see that they could start a company and that they don’t have to wait for someone to offer them a position,” Massias said. “I wanted them to learn to use the resources in their community. Overall, I wanted to teach them to be innovative.”

When asked about any advice he may have given participants based on his own entrepreneurial experience, Massias said, “Life is all about community. It’s about developing relationships within the community, and entrepreneurship is just an excuse.”

Valuable guidance like Massias’ may have been a large contributing factor to the success of the team presentations at the concluding event. Many of the participants gratefully attributed their experienced mentors with their success.

Selvin Cray Jr., a member of the hypothetical team Endocorp, said he was amazed at how much he learned from his mentor in such a short time.

“I’m planning to start my own company in the future,” he said. “I will definitely use the knowledge I learned from my mentor. He was incredible.”

At the concluding event, each team’s number was randomly picked out of a hat to ensure fairness in the order of presentations, beginning with team number 10, that presented on Magnetic Self Assembly under the company title “Enterion: Innovative Medical Devices.”

The remaining teams presented on the following UF licensable technologies: Oxalate Detection Kit for Home and Clinical Lab Testing, Detection of Sinkholes or Anomalies Using Full Seismic Wave Fields, Wireless Heart Beat and Respiration Detector, An Air Contamination Detector for Carbon Dioxide Angiography (EC), Compounds for the Treatment of Obesity, Addition and Neuropsychiatric Disorders, Robotic Suction Endoscope for Traversing Small Intestine, Novel V-ATPase-Directed Bone Anabolic Agents, Improved System for Power Generation, Refrigeration and Water Extraction, Easy Unique Therapy for the Treatment of Obesity and Adjustable Middle Ear Prosthesis.

Team 12’s “Selfex Pharmaceuticals: Selective and Effective Therapeutic Solutions for Neurobiology” won fourth place, team 11’s “Remote Vitals” won third place, team five’s “Osteo-Worx,” won second place and team two’s “Tympani Biomedicals, Inc.” won first place.