On a campus where environmental sustainability has been put at the forefront, student entrepreneurs are trying their hand at green solutions.
Dozens of University students are competing in the Michigan Clean Energy Venture Challenge, in which student teams from Michigan universities and colleges create an environmentally friendly business. The competition — which began in September and is now underway for the fourth year — has changed the elimination process from previous years and increased the competition by adding twice as many teams.
Half the students who enter the competition — previously known as the Green Energy Prize — are University of Michigan students, according to Amy Klinke, assistant director of the University’s Center of Entrepreneurship. Klinke estimates there will be 75 to 90 students participating throughout the state this year.
During the six-month competition, teams are paired with a professional mentor to develop ways to use clean energy in the students’ business plan and make their idea marketable to customers. Teams will work on their business models until the last day of the challenge on Feb. 17, 2012, when $100,000 in price money will be spread out among the winning teams.
For the first round, the initial teams that applied will be narrowed down to approximately 25 teams. In previous Clean Energy Venture Challenges, fewer teams were allowed to participate in this round.
Klinke said she is looking forward to the revamped skill building phase this year.
“Instead of going through a phase of eliminating teams, we want to give all the teams that make it … two days of intensive skill building where they learn about their customers, what problems they are solving and the basics of what a venture is,” Klinke said. “Then we give them intensive mentoring.”
Norm Rapino, a mentor-in-residence at Tech Transfer — the University’s office that helps technologies developed here to move to market — is mentoring in this competition for the first time this year and is excited about the challenge’s new format.
“That gives them a time to talk to customers, figure out what customers want, change and adapt to what the market says they should be doing,” Rapino said. “If you have the time, you can perfect that idea.”
Rapino added that mentors with entrepreneurial experience play an invaluable role in helping the student teams.
“If someone tells you how to play a sport, and you learn the rules and everything else, until you’ve played it, you don’t know how to do it. And to a degree, that’s the same way it is with an entrepreneur, a start-up,” Rapino said. “It helps to have a mentor who’s done it.”
Klinke said the Venture Challenge is unique in that it involves students from across the state. Rapino also said the competition encourages collaboration among many disciplines.
“The whole point is to create sort of an entrepreneurial eco-system in and among all the schools in Michigan,” Rapino said.
The teams will work on their ideas for developing companies this month, according to Klinke. As the process continues, teams can receive grants of $2,000 from the Center of Entrepreneurship to aid their ventures.
Rapino added that though it is a competition, the students’ work has an impact on real-world problems.
The students will work with investors from venture capital firms throughout the competition and will pitch their final ideas to the companies at the final event in February to see if they want to invest in their start-ups.
The main sponsors of this year’s competition include the University’s Center for Entrepreneurship, DTE Energy and The Kresge Foundation.
“It’s not just an exercise for fun or a classroom credit,” Rapino said. “This is a real venture to create jobs, to create economic activity.”
Rackham student Adam Byrnes, who is studying in the University’s Erb Institute, is competing in the challenge and said he is looking forward to working with the mentors so he and his team can learn as much as possible.
“We’ll do whatever it takes to make sure we learn the most that we can, and grow the business the best as we can and hopefully that will translate into winning,” Byrnes said.