On Wednesday, February 13th, sixteen University of Oregon students embarked upon a trip to Seattle to embrace the entrepreneurial spirit of the Pacific Northwest’s largest city. The learning experience was sponsored by Lundquist Center for Entrepreneurship and organized by the LCE MBA Student Advisory Board. Over the course of the next three days, the students, led by LCE Managing Director Randy Swangard, met with nine organizations that were blazing their own trail in the business marketplace.
The organizations that participated included:
Greenworks Realty, the first real estate agency to specialize in green and community focused housing (www.greenworksrealty.com)
Day one started with presentations at Executive Hotel Pacific with Ben Kaufmann, founder of Greenworks Realty, sharing about how he used his passion of embracing the community spirit to create his vision for green based housing and communities. Then Krishna Nadella, CEO of MicroGREEN Polymers, a company formed with prize money won at UO’s 2001 New Venture Championship (www.venturechampionship.com), explained how his company could make plastics up to 95% lighter with no loss of shape or strength. MicroGREEN is currently designing the world’s lightest coffee cup. Michael Tovar and Renee Gastineau of Reklaim, Inc., then came by to talk about how Reklaim takes used tires and extracts oil, rubber, and steel to be re-used while generating electricity in the process. In line with the founder’s vision, Reklaim is opening plants in former manufacturing towns to create jobs that were once lost.
The LCE then hit the road and crossed the bridge to Bellevue, WA, to meet with Jonathan Roberts and Chris Howard of Ignition Partners. Ignition Partners is one of the leading venture capital companies in Seattle focused on a wide variety of investments from technology to social networking to bio-fuels. John and Chris shared their insights into venture financing, due diligence and trends in investment deals. .
The day full of lessons and advice from Seattle’s business leaders, created the perfect environment for LCE social event held that evening at Pike Brewery and Restaurant.
Day two began with Todd Humphrey, CEO of CleverSet, detailing the company’s lifecycle from startup to acquisition. Todd’s insights were timely given Cleverset’s recent acquisition by a large technology company headquartered in Boston. Next, Dave Purdy of Play Network gave a brief but fascinating insight into service contacts and recurring revenue streams at the electronic media firm’s Redmond campus. Play Network continues to work at the edges of digital media and merchandising with customers such as Gap, Banana Republic, Under Armour and Citicorp.
Over sandwiches at Farestart, Rebecca Ehrlichman introduced students to a semi-sustainable non-profit business model. FareStart is a food service operation dedicated to using restaurant and catering activities to enhance the skills of the homeless thus producing quality products and employable graduates.
Following lunch, Accelerator Corp VP, David Schubert, introduced MBA students to Lee Hood’s recently conceived biotech incubator VC firm. Accelerator investors have a proven track record of identifying and building best-of-class new technologies and companies.
The day concluded with General Biodiesel CEO and serial entrepreneur, Yale Wong, speaking about the potential for energy startups in China.
Overall, LCE MBA students were treated to an interesting mix of high tech, biotech, green, non-profit, and venture capital companies. CleverSet, MircroGREEN and Farestart were the student’s favorite presenters and everyone involved deemed the trip a resounding success.
On Wednesday, February 13th, sixteen University of Oregon students embarked upon a trip to Seattle to embrace the entrepreneurial spirit of the Pacific Northwest’s largest city. The learning experience was sponsored by Lundquist Center for Entrepreneurship and organized by the LCE MBA Student Advisory Board. Over the course of the next three days, the students, led by LCE Managing Director Randy Swangard, met with nine organizations that were blazing their own trail in the business marketplace. 