Stanford University's Global Entrepreneurs Challenge and Accenture Announce Winners of the First Global Entrepreneur Challenge Competition
Accenture Awards $75,000 in Prizes
PALO ALTO, Calif. —June 26, 2000 — The Business Association of Stanford Engineering Students (BASES), Stanford’s premier student entrepreneurship group and Accenture, today announced winners of the Global Entrepreneurs Challenge. Joel Friedman, senior partner with Accenture Technology Ventures presented awards in four categories to the student entrepreneurs from around the world, capping a week of panel discussions and networking sessions facilitated by Silicon Valley business leaders.
Accenture senior partners and former Stanford graduates, including Larry Leisure, managing partner of Accenture’s Global Dot-Com Launch Centres, directed three open forums on topics such as global Internet businesses and team building. As one of the lead sponsors, Accenture contributed $75,000 in prize money to the recipients in the following four award categories: Disruptive Technologies, Elegance of Business Strategy, Positive Social Impact and Global Market Potential.
"We are pleased to have been a part of the Global Entrepreneurs Challenge and are very proud of what all the students have accomplished. Rarely do you have this kind of talent from around the world under one roof -- this has truly been an exciting week" said Brian Johnson, a lead partner with Accenture’s Chicago Dot-Com Launch Centre. "The competition was fierce and everyone performed like world-class entrepreneurs."
The award for Disruptive Technologies, presented to the team with the most innovative product that defines a significant new market or transforms an existing one and the award for Elegance of Business Strategy, given to the team that has developed a compelling solution to a tangible market need were both presented to Homan Igehy and Farid Nemati of T-RAM with Stanford University. T- RAM is a revolutionary memory that can provide the high speed of SRAM at the high density of DRAM. Previously T- RAM had won the Stanford BASES $50,000 E-Challenge Business Plan Competition.
The award for Positive Social Impact, presented to the team that would positively affect the environment, promote peace, ameliorate poverty, or alleviate social injustice, was given to Latinarte.com of Argentina. Marina Kessler, Hernan Fligler and Georgette Montalvan accepted the award for Latinarte.com, an online community marketplace for Latin American art. Latinarte, awarded best Latin American start-up in last March’s Latin Venture 2000 in Miami, plans to compete next at NET2MIL, a nationwide competition for start-ups in Argentina.
EyeGen of MIT team won the Global Market Potential award presented to the team with a plan that is best suited to global markets. Zoran Zdravski and Kiril Alexandrov have developed a technology to make biomarkers a safer, more cost and time efficient alternative to radioactive or fluorescent probes. In May, EyeGen won the MIT $50,000 Entrepreneurship Competition.
"The global nature of the competition’s winners is really exciting" said Ted Acworth, chairman of the Global Entrepreneurs Challenge. "It verifies our beliefs that Silicon Valley is merely a state of mind, and that entrepreneurship can sprout in different regions all over the world. On behalf of the organizing team, congratulations to all of the winners."
About the Global Entrepreneurs Challenge
The Global Entrepreneurs Challenge was founded in 2000 at Stanford University to expand entrepreneurial horizons worldwide. Its mission is to provide a vehicle for winning student teams from the world’s top business plan competitions to congregate at Stanford and immerse themselves in a conference, focused on entrepreneurship, and competition that provides valuable insight from top entrepreneurs, business leaders, educators and venture capitalists from Silicon Valley and beyond. The business plan competition will pose an opportunity for the teams to win infrastructure products, working capital and consulting support to help turn their business plan into a real venture. For more information regarding the Global Entrepreneurs Challenge, please visit: www.echallenge.org.
About BASES
Business Association of Stanford Engineering Students (BASES) is the premier student run entrepreneurship organization at Stanford University. BASES was founded in 1996 with the premise of expanding the entrepreneurial infrastructure throughout Stanford. The organization has over 3,500 members that encompasses students from Stanford’s Engineering, Business, Law and Medical schools. BASES is responsible for some of the most popular and well-attended events held at Stanford, such as the Stanford E-Challenge, the Start Up Job Fair, and the weekly Industry Thought Leaders Seminar. And this year, BASES is launching the very first global business plan competition and conference—the Global Entrepreneurs Challenge. For more information about BASES and its events, please visit http://bases.stanford.edu.
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Roxanne Taylor
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Robert Koturbash
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