Technology and Entrepreneurship, Fall 2008
Final Exam

The final exam for this class is at 9:30 a.m. on Thursday, December 4 in Brooks 141.

Breakfast will be served throughout the exam.  The form of the exam is four entrepreneurial forays.  Specifically, an entrepreneurial team will present their proposal to a team of venture capitalists.  The venture capitalists will challenge the team with questions and then will vote whether and how much to give the team and any constraints or changes that they want.  You may leave the room that we are working in during the sessions that you are not working, but not the building.

Tuesday will be a work session for the teams.  Attendance is mandatory.

The final exam constitutes 15% of your grade.  There will generally be a single grade for the entire team, but I will make adjustments if there is clearly an imbalance in the preparation and participation that I see.  Specific grading criteria are described in each of the role descriptions below.

Grades and comments will be emailed along with final grades.

Schedule (these are max times):  Experience is that the caucus times rarely take this long.

Sessions nominally start at 9:30, 10:15, 11:00, 11:45 but will be moved earlier as possible.

Roles

Entrepreneurs:  You are the team that is requesting funding from the venture capitalists.  You will give a 15 minute presentation of your idea followed by a 10 minute question period where the venture capitalists get to ask you questions.  You are to ask for a specific amount of money for specific purposes.

You should prepare the basic material defined in a business plan.  Eric and I will be available on Tuesday to help you make reasonable assumptions about the entrepreneurship.  You should invent any data that you do not have.  As long as your assumptions are reasonable, they will not be challenged.  You also may claim to have complete any task that you need.  Of course, if you claim it, someone can ask you questions about it.  Because you are asking for money, you need a simple financial plan:  expenses and revenue for your chosen time frame.  Remember that the venture capitalist will want to be assured of sustainability because they want to make money on this deal.

You may use a PowerPoint presentation or talk through the material.  If you are not going to use presentation slides, you may want to provide the venture capitalists written material.  Absorbing data without anything visual can be very difficult.

You will be graded on the creativity of your entrepreneurship, your understanding of the different aspects that need to be covered and inventive ways to attack the questions.  When questions are asked by the venture capitalists, answers should be given by different team members in turn.  If this is not happening naturally, I will intervene.  (This in fact is the only time that I will intervene.)   I, of course, expect you to incorporate technology into your plan in as many phases as is logical:  consider especially analysis, marketing, and product.  You will not be graded on whether or not you get funding if the reason for the lack of funding is that the venture capitalists do not believe in the idea.  If, however, they do not fund you because you have missed key parts of the entrepreneurial process (for example you have no financial statement), that is reason to lose points.

Venture Capitalists: You are the team that is providing funding.  Your task is to listen to the focus group presentation and the entrepreneurs' presentation and then to ask probing questions and summarize the strengths and weaknesses of their plan.  This is your money and you may be as demanding or lenient as you want. 

You are free to interrupt them during their presentation to follow up on specific points but your broader questions can be asked in the 10 minute follow up.  You will then be expected to give a short summary of the key points that you heard, critique the project, and decide whether or not to fund it and if you are going to fund it, how much. Note that you will have caucus time between each of the segments.

You will be graded on your recognition of the important aspects that should be covered and your analysis of the viability and practicality of the different aspects.  I will be looking for you to identify the holes and flaws in the plan and for solid logic behind your final decision but will not grade you on whether or not I would have made the same decision.

Teams

 

Team Antigua	Team Barbados	Team Curacao	Team Dominica
Aspen Blackmon	Trent Ball	Taylor Burton	Kendra Fleming
Tyson Ehlinger	Brandon Copeland	David Fisher	Kevin Hogan
Sean Johnson	Lee Gay	Maggie Hayes	Phoebe Roberts
Larsen Jones	Qin Qin	Jeffery Houston	Alfonso williams
Austin Lomax	Vinny Tagliatela	Ashley Mogul	Jack Xie
Lauren McCay	Scotty Thompson	Ryan Myrick

Assignments

The Entrepreneurships

Food Planning:  It seems that there are more people ever who have special diets and food constraints or preferences.  There are people who are diabetic, those on various weight-loss plans, and people with allergies ranging from peanuts to lactose and wheat.  Imagine that you have food constraints and are about to go out for dinner.  How do you know what you can eat?  The purpose of this entrepreneurship is to address this problem while making money.

The concept is really simple. 

·    Create a website where people can identify what their constraints are and the restaurant at which they plan to eat.  The site will give them a detailed list of what they can and cannot eat (including any particular instructions that they need to give the waitperson).

In   There are a number of different business models that I can think of. 
(1) Supported by advertising
(2) Supported by health products that you sell along with this service
(3) Restaurants pay to be included in your website
(4) Users register and pay a monthly fee. 

In   Key to this entrepreneurship is which of the models you choose.  In fact, there may be some other models, but these are the ones that most quickly come to mind.

Movie Theater:  With so many options for watching movies at home, it is time for some serious innovations in movie theaters if they are going to survive.  Clearly the draws of seeing the movie earlier and on a large screen remain but that may not be enough. 

The basic idea that has been used by some theaters is to make the environment more home-like.  Some ideas: 

• There are theatres that have sitting areas such as sofas that you would have as home.
• Others have waitpersons who will bring you food or drinks.
• Other theaters are connected to restuarants and bars. 

Your theatre may use these types of innovations or any other ideas that will set you apart from other movie theaters.  

Specific questions that you need to consider include

• How large a theater should it be?
• What will the admissions costs be? 
  
• Will you market it as a movie theater with a difference or as something else that happens to show movies?
  

Summer Experiences:  There are a plethora of exciting opportunities for students over the summer -- so much so that the choices are overwhelming.  How could you make it easier for students to find a good match?  Oppurtunities should include educational, service, internships, travel, and experiential ones.  A good service will need to evaluate what the student's goals are and what is important to help them succeed.  For example, do they need some work experience for the graduate work that they want to do?  Do they need oppoutunities to help build their resume?  Or would an international experience serve them better?

Note that some of these options are for-profit and some are not.  One can imagine getting financial support from the for-profits, but the non-profits could be harder. 

The business should probably also handle financial issues for the students.  Financial issues include not just what the cost is, but also scholarship opportunities and ways to raise money if they are looking at a service opportunity.

There are clearly two approaches to this service that could be taken:  a web site or a personal service.  Another option could be to have both, with the web site a free service and the personal service for fee.

Questions that you need to address include

• What will your business model be?
• Exactly what services you will offer
• How will you work with the different organizations that you might be recommending?  A significant issue is to avoid any appearance of  bias.
  

Smart Dorm Room: You've heard of many "smart" devices, such as the smart phone, the smart car, and the smart house.  This entrepreneurship is looking at building a smart dorm room.  Based on my experience with students, it appears tht many of you can use help staying organized. 

What electronics would you bring to your dorm room to make your life easier? Think about things to help you get up on time, remember meetings, make sure that you have the materials you need for classes, remember to sign up for tix, …

Consider some scenarios:

You are studying for a test that you are allowed to bring in one page of notes.  You rush off to class, only to discover that you left the piece of paper where you were last studying it --“ lying on your bed.  Your dilemma:  be late for class with your paper or take the test without your notes.

You borrowed a book from a friend and promised to return it when you saw them at the library this afternoon.  You live on South Campus, your friend lives in Granville, and you remember that you forgot the book as you are leaving class in Murphey and heading to the library.

Your class has a strict attendance policy and you can't afford to miss class.  The alarm clock doesn't seem to always do the job.  You need a replacement mom who won't let you forget.

There are a lot of details that you need to work out about the smart drm room: 

• Is the system sold in pieces or as a package?
• What types of electronic reminders do you want to use?  They can be post-its, stickers, paper clips, larger clips, or some combination of them.
• What kind of tracking device is best for you?
• What kind of signalling system should be used?  Should there be multiple options?  Should they be part of the package or simply a connection to an existing device in your dorm room (light, computer, music, television, ...)?

You also need to think about the way to sell this.  Should you be trying to sell this as an after market option or should you be working with universities to install the system?