The members of 135 teams of Massachusetts Institute of Technology student entrepreneurs learned the fate of their ventures last night as the semifinalists in MIT’s $50K Entrepreneurship Competition were announced at the Sloan School of Management.
A panel of 21 judges chose more than 30 semifinalists from the teams of undergraduate and graduate MIT students, according to an organizer of the competition.
One of the business plans chosen for the semifinals round included a plan to eliminate dead zones in cell phone coverage by plugging in a small box that would “light up” a room with a cellular signal and eliminate dropped calls and poor phone connection. Other plans proposed creating refuelable and portable power generators that could last 5-10 times longer than typical batteries for electronic products and building a system that would give up-to-the-minute parking, traffic and weather information.
Those business plans not chosen included a plan to make shoes to fit perfectly to an individual’s feet, a plan to provide college students with cheap ways to get around town and a plan for a global and wireless game network that would allow users to play interactive games with anyone at anytime and from anywhere.
Ian Eslick, an MIT alumnus and successful entrepreneur, encouraged the audience of entrepreneur teams to forge ahead despite setbacks. Eslick never made it to the semifinals of the competition when he entered in 1995 and 1996. However, he did created Silicon Spice, which created silicon chips for communication networks. Eslick sold Silicon Spice last August to Broadcom for $1.19 billion.
In recounting his own struggles from start-up to success, he said there is a lot of “blood, sweat and tears” involved in launching a business and he advised entrepreneurs to create good communication between employees and executives.
“An organization has a soul,” he said. “It’s the people that drive it and you need to spend time taking care of the nervous system of the organization.”
He also advised the entrepreneurs not to make themselves an indispensable part of their business.
“If you get hit by a car, then your baby’s going to die,” Eslick said.
Since the competition started over a decade ago, it has created over 2,000 jobs, $5.5-40 billion in market capital and many millionaires and “cool” products, according to a slide show presented last night.
MIT will award the winner the $50,000 prize in a ceremony on May 16.