Eric Elias, who graduated with a degree in finance in 2007, took part in the competition in his senior year, but ran into technical issues that kept his group from being successful. This year, he was a member of SoMoLend—a peer-to-peer lending website that was one of the three teams to win this year’s start-up competition sponsored by the University’s Skandalaris Center for Entrepreneurial Studies. The prize was a $50,000 investment from the center.

The site, which Elias’ team is pitching to different regional investors over coming weeks, aims to link lending institutions to local businesses.

“It’s kind of like micro-lending, but for communities,” explained Ken Harrington, director of the Skandalaris Center. “It allows people to potentially form those relationships in a local economy … it serves a function that we’ve lost with the institutionalization of banks.”

The win in this year’s competition allowed SoMoLend to hire Elias as a full-time team member, as its director of product management.

“It was a $50,000 award, and we basically turned over that award to make a hire,” said SoMoLend Founder and CEO Candace Klein. “So we now have a full time employee committed to improving our technology and maximizing our customer experience.”

This year was the first time that three different teams won the competition, with the Skandalaris Center awarding more than $150,000, about double the normal amount. Harrington said many students took part in the competition, including one student team that won a $5,000 cash prize.

“I suspect probably 50% [of the participants] were students,” he said. “A lot of the teams are supported by students.”

Although the business is based in Cincinnati, Elias said it will continue to have a hold in the St. Louis community.

“I think our product development is going to happen in Cincinnati but the company and the platform we’re building will continue expanding, including working with St. Louis area investors as well as lending institutions,” he said.

Elias’ involvement in the St. Louis entrepreneurial community has included lecturing at the Nexus Leadership Program and serving as a mentor at the recent StartUp Weekend St. Louis, where individuals and teams met downtown to develop novel web-based or mobile applications in groups.

Junior Stan Rosenthal, a member of the Washington University Technology Entrepreneurs (WUTE) who worked with Elias over the weekend to develop an application to contact Congress-people through Twitter, said Elias has come to speak with the group and is continuing to stay in contact.

“We had an event last week where we had three alumni fly in to talk about their start-up—Schoology—so Eric came to that,” Rosenthal said. “We’re planning on continuing on our StartUp Weekend project [and] he’ll definitely keep in the loop with WUTE events.”

Executive MBA student Stanislav Samarin initiated his plan, PulmoCAD, with a business partner in June 2010. The business will offer software that will be used in conjunction with scans to make lung cancer diagnosis less invasive for patients.

Samarin says that this sort of medical technology is necessary because lung cancer is so common and fatal.

The business aims to make diagnosing lung cancer easier and reduce the number of false positive diagnoses.

The annual competition brings students from top-ranked graduate-level business programs together to pitch their startups to business experts.

Although PulmoCAD did not make it to the semifinals, the team achieved third place in the competition’s Shark Tank round and won $600.

This is not PulmoCad’s first competition experience. The business won $20,000 in the Olin Cup competition this year, and Samarin hopes to raise more seed money to get his business rolling.

Although PulmoCad has already conducted some tests that show that the technology is effective, it must undergo further testing before it can go through the FDA approval process.

Samarin hopes that the product will be ready for FDA approval in about a year, but says that the business needs additional funding of approximately $300,000 to get to that point.

He says the company is applying for research and business grants to raise the funds.

Of the approximately 500 teams that applied to participate in the competition, 42—from schools ranging from Johns Hopkins University to Northwestern University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology—were chosen to compete at Rice.

“I must say this is an incredible experience. It is a very competitive event; there were more than 500 submissions. Pre-selection is very strict,” Samarin said.

Though many schools send teams to the competition every year, Samarin was unable to find any Washington University alumni who had ever participated in the competition.

He said the competition was a valuable experience, that it helped the company to network with medical technology professionals and taught him how to tailor his business plan to a given set of specifications.

“For any competition you participate in you learn a lot from the professionals,” Samarin said. “You have to rethink the approaches you are taking; it is really difficult in startup world where companies change strategies very often. It is really a valuable experience.”

Nalin Kutta, a student at the Washington University School of Medicine, and Matthew MacEwan, a doctoral student in biomedical engineering, won for their company idea, NanoMed.

NanoMed creates a synthetic surgical mesh of electrospun nanofiber materials that are capable of repairing and replacing the tough protective membrane surrounding the brain and spinal cord.

“I think that the students presented it as the best opportunity in the competition,” said II Luscri, the student services coordinator of the Skandalaris Center for Entrepreneurial Studies. “The presentation was top notch.”

This year’s Olin Cup hosted 49 ideas, the most in the competition’s 25 years.

Kutta and MacEwan will receive $50,000, which will serve as seed money for their start-up company.

The second-place winner’s idea was also in the medical field. Its three founders created PulmoCad, computer-assisted diagnostic software that helps in the early diagnosis of lung cancer.

In the past, ideas for websites and even ear buds have won the competition.

The Olin Cup has also seen an upswing in environmentally friendly ideas, according to Luscri. This year, an idea for windmills in residential areas was proposed, as well as one for a food recycling service.

Luscri is pleased that the applicants to the Olin Cup have been steadily increasing over the years.

“Part of that is because now is a great time for entrepreneurship, part of it is the dynamic of our students here, and the fact that our programs across campus are interdisciplinary, so it’s for anyone in any program,” Luscri said. “It’s a competition that’s not easy to win, but going through the process is great for anyone interested in entrepreneurship.”

The Olin Cup Competition is a cross-campus entrepreneurship competition that began in 1988 and has been providing seed investment for teams that are affiliated with Washington University, either as students, alumni, faculty or staff. The competition is organized by the Skandalaris Center for Entrepreneurial Studies.

This year, four of the six teams are composed of current students while the other two are made up of alumni.

The Olin Cup awards $75,000 annually, and awards are typically split $50,000 for the first-place team, $20,000 for the second-place team and $5,000 for the top student team, regardless of rank.

II Luscri, student services coordinator at the Skandalaris Center, says that the cross-campus aspect of the competition allows medical students, law students and business students to come together to form a cohesive business plan.

“Teams that are formed that are interdisciplinary are really fun to see,” Luscri said.

The competition has grown from 38 entries in 2008 and 45 entries in 2009 to 49 entries this year, an all-time high.

“It’s good to see the number of entries up. But what’s more important is the quality of entries has gone up as well,” Luscri said. “Because the entries are better, it’s harder to decide.”

Human Canvas, the group behind creating a semi-permanent tattoo that would fade after a period of time, is among the six finalists.

The team consists of doctoral students, professional MBAs, an MBA and an undergraduate engineer. Lucy Li, a doctoral neuroscience student in the Division of Biology and Biomedical Sciences of the Washington University School of Medicine, says that she was inspired by a process she came across in her work: Dye can be injected through the mouth to the brain, where it can spread.

Li thought that this idea could be applied to the concept of tattoos.

Li says that the diverse backgrounds of her team members have allowed each teammate to bring his or her own strength to the project.

“I’m really appreciative of the big team because they all have their special insights into this venture. For the MBA students, they [know] how to do marketing, how to do sales, how to do financials, how to do business models,” Li said.

But she said that she was also surprised by her teammates’ wide breadth of knowledge.

“My other teammates, besides knowledge in their fields, know a lot about business,” Li said. “We have to learn so fast and have picked up so many things in this competition.”

Luscri says that the quality of the entries reflects the seriousness of the intentions of the entrants. Many past winners have gone on to start their own companies or are in the process of starting their own companies.

QuadConnect won the $5,000 student prize in last year’s competition and will be launching next semester. QuadConnect is a platform that offers an event filtering and searching system for campus communities.

Morgan DeBaun, QuadConnect’s co-founder and chief operating officer, says that the experience of writing a business plan and of pitching the business before an audience of CEOs and business members is invaluable.

“The competition really allowed our company to get guidance and seek feedback on our idea and concept,” DeBaun said.

DeBaun says that the cash prize was helpful in alleviating funding pressure since many start-ups are often funded out of the founders’ own pockets.

“$5,000 gives a lot of flexibility in being able to hire lawyers and with outsourcing the technical or design work we needed,” DeBaun said.

Teams are now preparing their business plans, which are due Jan. 4, 2011, and their final presentations are Jan. 20. Winners will be announced Feb. 3.

Robert Freling speaks on the installation and use of solar energy in developing areas of the world. Freling’s talk was a part of the Assembly Series and was sponsored by Engineers Without Borders and the Skandalaris Center for Entrepreneurial Studies. (Matt Mitgang | Student Life)

Robert Freling, the executive director of the Solar Electric Light Fund since 1997, spoke in Graham Chapel on Thursday afternoon as part of the Assembly Series. Following the speech, the Olin Cup Idea Bounce took place.

Freling has journeyed on behalf of the organization (SELF) throughout much of the world—traveling to parts of Latin America, the South Pacific, Africa and Asia—in an attempt to provide solar energy to backwater impoverished villages.

SELF, a nonprofit development aid organization, hopes to “provide solar power and wireless communications to a quarter of the world’s population living in energy poverty.” It accomplishes this by going into small rural communities far removed from energy sources and giving individual houses, schools and essential buildings small solar panels-enough to supply electricity several hours a day. Other projects SELF is involved in include the creation of solar powered water pumps and irrigation systems for areas of the world with prolonged dry seasons.

Freling acknowledged that ending energy scarcity is an endeavor far beyond the capabilities of his organization. “There are groups that have sprung up in the past five, 10 years that have, in one way or another, copied or emulated some of the work that we’ve done in the past, and I applaud that,” he stated. “Let a thousand flowers bloom because 2 billion people without power, you know, we need all the help we can get.”

Part of Freling’s speech focused on the relationship between SELF and Partners in Health (PIH), the health care organization founded by Paul Farmer, subject of the best-seller “Mountains Beyond Mountains,” by Tracy Kidder.

“The first time I met Paul [in 2006], he said, ‘We’re really happy about what you guys are doing in Rwanda, but what about Haiti? Don’t forget about Haiti,’” Freling said. “This became like a mantra every time I saw Paul…Finally, in August of last year, we electrified the first of 10 P.I.H. health centers [in Haiti].”

Freling went on to say that, thankfully, the centers survived the quake and were being used to treat a large number of victims of the current earthquake. Partners in Health currently has plans to convert all of its health centers—currently running on diesel generators—to solar power, installed by SELF. Freling hopes to do the same with many other nonprofits around the world.

He closed by showing part of a movie highlighting SELF’s goals and accomplishments, focusing on Africa, and then took questions.

The event was open to the public and featured a diverse audience, ranging from students to senior citizens.

Crowd reaction to Freling appeared positive, with several attendees praising his organization and speech. Students, professors and attendees posed several questions regarding his organization, the challenges they have faced, and their current stance on the Haitian catastrophe.

“He was amazing,” said William Swanson, a sophomore. “He talked about a lot of stuff that people don’t think about and also had a lot of information that we didn’t know about before.”

The Olin Cup Competition is co-sponsored by Olin Business School and several corporate sponsors from the community to help and encourage young entrepreneurs to create successful and viable business ventures.

This year, 45 teams entered the competition, an increase from last year’s 38 teams.

On Nov. 2, in the first round of the competition, 18 semifinalist teams were selected after submitting an executive summary, which mapped out specific details of their business plans.

“Both the quantity and quality of the entries this year has definitely increased,” said II Luscri, student services coordinator of the Skandalaris Center. “We spend a week with the executive summaries. It’s not an easy decision to make. We don’t have a strict number about how many teams we allow or don’t allow. Each judge stack ranks the teams 1 to 45.”

The business ideas submitted this year include Equity Benefits, a pre-employment screening device that solves discrimination problems; Eyelten Therapeutics, which develops therapies to treat age-related macular degeneration; InkBlot, a software solution that cuts student printing costs; LockerDome, a networking platform for amateur sports; and Visipo, a monitoring system that detects, confirms and cites offenders who talk, text and drive.

The second round is called a public “elevator pitch.”

“[The elevator pitch is a] 2-minute description about their idea; what would you say to somebody if you got caught in an elevator with them for two minutes?” Luscri said.

The event is open to the public, and audience members will be able to judge the event. The person that most closely matches the judges’ results of ranking the teams will win $250 in prize money.

The final round will take place on Jan. 21, 2010, and will consist of a 15-minute business plan presentation followed by a 15-minute question and answer session.

“We have about 25 experts [judging] from the community, some affiliated with the University, but mostly from Angel Investor network, Venture Capital network, Successful Entrepreneurs and the regional Commerce and Growth Association,” Luscri said.

Last year’s winner was VirtualNerd, an interactive online tutoring service that targets high school students struggling in math and science and that was developed by entrepreneur Josh Salcman and current University Ph.D. candidate Leo Shmuylovich.

“The biggest weakness with [teaching] videos is that people are unable to ask questions while watching the video,” Shmuylovich said. “We built a Web site that allows you to interact with the video [with] access to links and problems that have solutions to common questions and problems.”

The VirtualNerd Web site has been established with video tutorials, but the actual tutor videos won’t begin until early December, Shmuylovich added.

“The Olin Cup was a really fantastic opportunity for us,” Shmuylovich said. “Our executive summary was ranked somewhere along the bottom, and our elevator pitch was somewhere in the top-middle. I think that really speaks to the value of the competition. There’s so much feedback and opportunities for asking questions.”

Shmuylovich’s advice to current teams is to have a thorough financial plan that details how money that someone else has invested in the team will be used.

He believes the judges were most impressed with their considerations of potential pitfalls and how to get past them.

“The competition gave us a lot of confidence, and having confidence in the face of adversity is a very important thing in business,” Shmuylovich said. “The Olin Cup opens a lot of doors because people automatically know who you are; people from outside are offering to invest and help out.”