CEO encourages participation in Governor’s Cup
If you want to compete in this years Governor’s Cup business plan competition, get started now – good business plans can take months to develop, said Rahul Bhargava, chair of the managerial sciences department.
Individuals and teams of up to five need to make their commitment to the competition by Feb. 15 and turn in their plan by March 17. The competition, open to undergraduate and graduate students, awards $200,000 in prizes. A panel of judges select the best plans.
Rishi Tiwari, a University of Nevada, Reno student that competed and won in last year’s Governor’s Cup with her interdisciplinary team NanoVation Inc., spent weeks creating the business plan for their product Energy Harvester, a product that converts wasted vibration energy into useful electrical energy. She found the competition to be very beneficial.
“We worked very hard for it,” Tiwari said. “We had weeks of sleepless nights and discussions. Each team member contributed a lot toward it.”
Dave Archer, CEO of Nevada’s Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology, which host the event, said most teams in previous Governor’s Cup competitions were engineering, technical and business teams. Archer encourages teams from other fields such as journalism, arts and medicine to enter business plans related to their fields.
“It doesn’t have to be technical,” Archer said. “It’s really only limited by the student’s imagination.”
Bhargava noted how beneficial the Governor’s Cup Competition is to students interested in entrepreneurship as it forces students to learn key values about planning out a business.
“This is providing a great opportunity for students to get their business plan funded,” Bhargava said. “It also gives students an opportunity to get feedback. Some of the judges are venture capitalists and provide excellent feedback.”
Bob Goff, Governor’s Cup judge and president of Sierra Angels investment group, gave advice for students at a meeting between previous Governor’s Cup winners and investors at the Siena Hotel in Reno Tuesday.
“Students should pick a project that they are passionate about,” Bob Goff said. “They should put themselves in the shoes of investors and consumers.”
Last year, 44 teams competed in the Governor’s cup. UNR students dominated the competition by taking first, second and third place in the graduate competition and second and third place in the undergraduate competition.
The Governor’s Cup sponsors will take the take this year’s first and second place undergraduate and graduate students to Las Vegas on May 14, 2008, to compete in the first-ever Tri-State Reynolds Cup. Students will compete against Governor’s Cup winners from Arkansas and Oklahoma for $90,000 in additional cash prizes.
Bhargava said that this competition could provide the opportunity for Nevada students from technical backgrounds work with students with business backgrounds to create new innovative companies.
“I think (it) would be very useful if we can have engineering students and business students working together to work on more high-end jobs,” Bhargava said. “We don’t have very many high end jobs in Nevada.”
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