ANNUAL REPORT2012 - 2013

-lumni

MANAGING DIRECTOR

ACADEMIC DIRECTOR

ASSISTANT DIRECTOR

ASSISTANT DIRECTOR

MENTORING DIRECTOR

WRITERS

DESIGNER

Scott R Petersen

Stephen W Liddle

Jeff Brown

Lauren Olsen

Jeffrey Howlett

Trevor Carver

Jordan Grimmer

Meredith Francom

Elizabeth Portanova

Jason Longhurst

REPORT

Rollins Center

ANNUAL2012-2013

CONTACT THE CENTERBrigham Young University

470 Tanner BuildingProvo, UT 84602

LearnEarnReturn.com

ROLLINS CENTER 2012-2013 ANNUAL REPORT IS PUBLISHED BY THE ROLLINS CENTER FOR

ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND TECHNOLOGY AT BRIGHAM YOUNG UNIVERSITY, PROVO, UTAH.

COPYRIGHT 2013 BY BRIGHAM YOUNG UNIVERSITY

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

PHONE: 801-422-7925EMAIL: cet@byu.edu

A MESSAGEFROM THE DIRECTORS

Student enthusiasm for Brigham Young University’s entrepreneurship program is at fever pitch. For the past four years we have been listed as a top ten national program by Entrepreneur magazine and the Princeton Review. However, rankings can account for only

so many metrics; in reality, our program may be, pound for pound, the best in the country. On what basis would we make this claim? By the sheer number of scalable student ventures launching out of the Rollins Center.

We don’t count the work of our efficient and capable Tech Transfer Office or professorial innovations. We don’t count businesses that boast seasoned non-student CEOs. And our program isn’t built around family or life-style type businesses. We are squarely focused on scalable ventures that come into being through student innovation: start-ups that are launched by students, led by students, and built by students. And we’ve established a repeatable cyclical program based upon four academic and experiential quadrants: 1) the idea stage, 2) the business model discovery and customer validation stage, 3) the launching stage, and 4) the scaling stage.

Our vision of “becoming the global leader in successful campus-inspired entrepreneurial ventures” has been built upon four pillars: world-class curriculum, networking and real-world events, acclaimed competitions, and the largest university mentoring network in the world.

In this report you will see how this vision has unfolded and how we are innovating and scal-ing our program further each year—just as we teach our students regarding the building of their own ventures.

We express sincere gratitude to our donors, to our dedicated and accomplished mentors who generously offer so much time to student teams, to our exceptional professorial and pro-fessional faculty, to our supportive deans and department chairs across campus, and to our motivated, inspired, and ethics-driven students. There is no shortcut to teamwork. We are per-sonally indebted—as is the university—to each stakeholder for working with us in harmony to achieve our lofty aims.

Scott R PetersenManaging Director

Stephen W Liddle, PhDAcademic Director

CET ANNUAL REPORT 3

THE ROLLINS CENTERVISION, MISSION, VALUES & MOTTO

VISIONBecome the global leader in successful campus-inspired entrepreneurial ventures

MISSIONInspire and prepare students to be world-class leaders in entrepreneurship and technology, foster interaction with successful role models, and support faculty

research

VALUES•Thecreationofscalableventuresthatmakeadifferenceintheworldandreward

their founders so they can be more influential•Technologyfluencythatleadstoinherentlyscalablehightechentrepreneurship•Creativityandinnovation—apioneeringspiritthatpervadestheBYUculture•Ethicalbehaviorandwork/lifebalancethatisconsistentwiththecultureofBYU•Thelargercommunityofentrepreneurshipthatsurroundsandsupportsthecore

of scalable ventures

MOTTOLearn, Earn, Return™

The Rollins Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology creates a supportive, nurturing environment for students of Brigham Young University who are interested in starting and growing tech and scalable ventures. We inspire the confidence, courage, and will to take the entrepreneurial first step. We create an environment that unleashes creativity, culti-vates vision and innovation, and teaches the governing principles that are the foundation of most successful enterprises. We provide mentors who guide students as they navigate these new waters. We establish courses, lecture series, competitions, conferences, work-shops, and other activities that nourish and sustain the entrepreneurial spirit in students.

The ultimate test of how we’re doing is measured by the number of long-term successful ventures that come from students within our sphere of influence. Intermediate measures include the number of students who hold equity in a tech or scalable start-up by the time they graduate, and—more immediately—the number of students participating in the learning and practice opportunities we offer.

INTRO

ROLLINS CENTER ANNUAL REPORT 3

DAYSTHE EQUIVALENT OF OVER 2,616 HOURS OF FREE MENTORING FOR STUDENTS

2012-2013

$400,000FOUR HUNDRED THOUSAND FOUR HUNDRED THOUSAND

STUDENTVENTURES

PRIZE MONEY WON AT GLOBAL COMPETITIONS

UNDERGRAD GRANTS &SCHOLARSHIPS INCREASED FROM $15,000 TO OVER $200,000 SINCE 2010

TOTAL ENROLLMENT IN ENTREPRENEURSHIP

COURSES

THE ROLLINS CENTER FOR ENTREPRENEURSHIP & TECHNOLOGY

BY THENUMBERS

TOTAL PRIZE MONEY AWARDED AT COMPETITIONS

$276,544

ENTREPRENEURSHIP FACULTY HAVE STARTED,

BOUGHT, OR RUN A SUCCESSFUL BUSINESS

NINE OF TEN

PARTNERSHIPS ESTABLISHED THROUGH

MENTORING

TOTAL REVENUE OF TOP 5 STUDENT

VENTURES IN 2013

$3.76M

IN COMBINED SEED FUNDING FOR

STUDENT VENTURES

$1 MILLIONMORE THAN

TOP GRADUATE PROGRAMS IN ENTREPRENEURSHIP, 2013

TOP UNDERGRAD PROGRAMS IN ENTREPRENEURSHIP, 2013

CET ANNUAL REPORT 5

INTRO

ROLLINS CENTER ANNUAL REPORT 5

THE ROLLINS CENTERFOUNDATION FOR SUCCESS

THE FOUR PILLARS

THE START-UP CYCLE

We have developed and re-fined world-class competi-tions that inspire student participation and provide early seed funding for BYU’s most-promising student ventures.

We engage with every col-lege and department on campus; we have built a community-wide network of students, professors, and professionals that regularly come together for network-ing and entrepreneurial events that aid students in forming teams and exploring their business ideas. This network is sup-ported by three student-led organizations: the Entrepreneur-ship Club, the Innovation Academy, and, from the engineering college, the Venture Factory.

We offer courses that are academic, experiential, and skills based that teach stu-dents the best principles, processes, and practices for successfully starting a new venture.

WORLD-CLASSCURRICULUM

New ventures succeed or fail not based upon money but, rather, “know-how.” Ac-cordingly, we have over 200 successful entrepreneurs who regularly offer mentor-ing services to student en-

trepreneurs and student teams and guide them through the critical hurdles of the startup process.

ROBUST MENTORING

SCALE

“What starts right has a much better chance of ending right.”

Our stated vision is to “be the global leader in successful campus-inspired entrepreneurial ventures.” We achieve this vision by focusing our efforts on the following four pillars.

QUALITY EVENTS & NETWORKING

ACCLAIMED COMPETITIONS

BECOME THE GLOBAL LEADER IN SUCCESSFUL CAMPUS-INSPIRED ENTREPRENEURIAL VENTURES

THE ROLLINS CENTER FOR ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND TECHNOLOGY

MAY–AUGSCALE: Students learn that premature scaling is the death of many companies. They are taught to wait until they have achieved material suc-cess before establishing repeatable best prac-tices, systems, and processes and before build-ing a larger sales force.

LAUNCH

FEB–APRIL

LAUNCH: Students launch their businesses when they have sufficiently tested and evalu-ated their business model; established sufficient traction with a reasonably developed product, service, or technology; and have already ac-quired paying customers who’ve given early feedback. The launch, as taught to students, en-tails early sales efforts (but not yet a scaled sales program), waiting upon serious traction to war-rant scaling and raising capital.

IDEA

SEP–OCT IDEA: We first focus on ideation, innovation, and differentiation with our students. At this stage, we place special emphasis on making sure the idea solves a major pain or exposes a significant opportunity.

MODEL

NOV–FEB

MODEL: This stage revolves around testing, learning, customer validation, pivoting, and the iterative process. Students interview real customers and stakeholders to discover and validate viable business models, pricing models, revenue streams, market channels, customer segments, and a go-

to-market strategy. By developing, building, and testing a minimum via-ble product in the marketplace, students explore new venture creation economically and improve their odds of succeeding.

Businesses fail not because of a lack of money but rather a lack of knowhow. BYU’s world-class entrepreneurship curriculum is designed to guide students through the process of starting new ventures from idea to launch. The curriculum is based in experiential learning and

focused on lean start-up principles. Below are a few examples of our unique and innovative courses.

Creating New VenturesThis course flips the traditional busi-

ness plan course on its head, instead teaching students how to identify their key assumptions and then test them in the field with low-cost, rapid experi-ments. As one of the first courses in the nation teaching this methodology (dis-cussed more broadly in books like The Lean Startup, Nail It Then Scale It, etc.), students are receiving the latest tools, which increase their chances of success.

Crocker Innovation FellowsThis groundbreaking interdisciplin-

ary innovation program is designed to reshape the career trajectory of twenty top BYU students from all disciplines

by teaching them the skills to innovate. Innovations and students from this ex-perience-based program have received national press coverage and hundreds of thousands of dollars in prizes and in-vestment.

Intro to EntrepreneurshipThis course focuses on self-discovery

and growth within the framework of essential entrepreneurial skills, includ-ing challenging the status quo, leverag-ing limited resources, operating within constraints, and solving problems. This intro course takes pre-major under-graduate students through each phase of company building.

Entrepreneurship through AcquisitionIn this course students become im-

mersed in learning about Search Fund teams, university-originated technol-ogy, and the interworkings of private equity investment firms. Students are trained to take target companies or uni-versity technologies through business model discovery and validation to test how commercially viable the business or technology is.

Entrepreneurial InnovationThis course focuses on the beginning

of the start-up life cycle, in essence, the how to of generating ideas, eliminating the bad ones, verifying customer pain, presenting the solution, and perform-ing a market analysis. Ideation, innova-tion, and differentiation are at the core of this class.

Entrepreneurial MarketingThe major premise of this course is

that the traditional strategies and tac-tics of Fortune 500 companies simply don’t work for start-ups. The course is the result of a 10-year study that com-pares and contrasts why some start-up companies succeed and why others don’t.

AUGUST 2012

Idea

WORLD-CLASS CURRICULUM

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CET ANNUAL REPORT 7

SEPTEMBER 2012

On 19 September 2012, hundreds of BYU students packed into room 3220 of the Wilkinson Student

Center in anticipation of the kickoff to BYU’s new flagship entrepreneurship competition, the Miller New Venture Challenge. Formerly known as the BYU Business Plan Competition, the event was completely redesigned from start to finish. Students seemed to under-stand the import of the change and the atmosphere in the room was elec-trifying.

The new competition format in-cludes four phases that help students take their ideas from conception to launch.

Phase one kickedoff in early Octo-ber with the Big Idea Competition. Stu-dents submitted written summaries of their business ideas and the top thirty ideas advanced to the finals—a sixty-second elevator pitch to a group of investors. The top four pitches won a $250 prize.

Phase two encompassed most of the academic year and ended with the Business Model Competition.

This competition, pioneered by BYU professor Nathan Furr, focused strictly on the key tasks of testing ideas in the field and developing validated busi-ness models. This phase also included training workshops that helped stu-dents learn and apply the lean start-up

process.“The Business Model Competition

rewards students who go through the process of validating assumptions,” stated John Hyde, Miller NVC student director. “At that point they’ve been vetted and evaluated in the market-place so they will be investment ready.”

Phase three included participation in the Miller NVC Final. This competi-tion took the validated business mod-els and helped student teams prepare to launch and scale their ventures. “It rewards sales and traction,” stated Scott Petersen, managing director of the Rollins Center. The Miller NVC ul-timately named eight winners—each awarded at least $15,000 to grow their business.

In an effort to further develop their business models and become investor ready, winning teams were invited to participate in the Rollins Center Found-ers Launchpad, a summer skills accel-eration program which provided them with co-working space in addition to skills-based training and mentoring. Program participants developed their businesses over the summer which culminated in an investor’s demo day on 4 October 2013.

“Because of this new competition,” said Petersen, “more BYU students than ever will realize their entrepre-neurial dreams.”

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Miller FamilyMiller NVC Endowment

Larry and Gail Miller’s impact and legacy in the state of Utah and at BYU is far reach-ing. In addition to overseeing more than seventy business enterprises, Larry taught entrepreneurship classes at BYU for almost twenty years.

“The class I took from Larry changed the course of my life and is a large reason why I’m doing what I’m doing today,” says Adam Edmunds, founder of Allegiance.

The brand new Larry & Gail Miller New Venture Challenge is the latest contribu-tion to that legacy. The competition is con-tinuing to bless the lives of BYU’s student entrepreneurs.

“At the beginning of the Miller New Ven-ture Challenge we were in two stores and by the end we were in over 400,” says Derek Rowley, co-founder of FiberFix. “That suc-cess would not have been possible without the competition.”

The Miller’s generous gift has positioned the Rollins Center as a leader throughout the world.

“The Miller family donation has enabled our center to take a leadership role in not only the US, but around the world and is helping us to achieve our vision of becom-ing the global leader in campus-inspired entrepreneurial ventures,” says Scott Pe-tersen, managing director of the Rollins Center.

ROLLINS CENTER ANNUAL REPORT 7

MILLER NVC KICKOFF

OCTOBER 2012

Idea

Founded in 2011, Entrepre-neurship Week (E-week) is a time for innovators at BYU to make connections, receive

guidance, and discover new ideas. To inspire students, the Rollins Center in-vited three successful entrepreneurs to be part of a discussion panel to kickoff the week’s festivities.

The trio of start-up tycoons—former BYU students Dave Bateman, Mick Ha-gen, and Garrett Gee—shared experi-ences and lessons they learned while launching their companies and encour-aged those in attendance not to wait.

“It’s never easier to start a business than when you are in college,” said Da-vid Bateman, Property Solutions found-er and CEO. “Find your focus early and hit the ground running.”

Bateman said he applied this lesson learned at BYU in developing each of his start-up companies—find someone who has a problem, find a way to solve it for them, and charge them for it.

In 2002 Bateman won the BYU Stu-dent Entrepreneur of the Year award for his first start-up. He used the profits to start his current company, Property So-lutions, which won the 2003 Business Plan Competition and 2003 Fortune Magazine MBA Showdown competi-tion and has since gone on to achieve notable success.

Both of Bateman’s start-ups have been web-based, and he encourages students to learn as much about coding as possible.

“Many people fail because they can’t clear the technical hurdle,” Bateman says. “If you’re a business person and you figure that out, you’ve increased your likelihood of success.”

Zinch creator and Provo native Mick Hagen agreed.

“If I could start again I would have spent more time really honing my pro-gramming skills,” he explained. “I would have spent more time learning how to execute.”

Hagen is currently working on his second start-up, Undrip, an app-based company that personalizes social media to bring forward the most relevant con-tent. He related the importance of seiz-ing the opportunity of a start-up now.

“While you’re young and don’t have many big responsibilities, go swing for the fences,” he stated. “It’s hard, but it’s also rewarding. That’s why I do it—I love it.”

Scan CEO, Garrett Gee, also feels the rewards outweigh the sacrifices necessary to get a company started. Gee’s company took off after he cre-ated an app, QR Code City. In just eigh-teen months the app scored 20 million downloads. Today, the company has evolved to include other technologies and continues to connect the real world with the digital universe in fun ways.

“When people say they want to do a start-up, all the hard times come rush-ing back to me,” he said. “It’s almost hard for me to encourage them to do it. But, the more I think about it I realize the only thing harder than working day in, day out would be not doing what I’m passionate about. This is the time to learn who you are and what you love to do.”

E-WEEK KICKOFF

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E-WEEK

CET ANNUAL REPORT 9

One of the events of E-Week featured Founders, Rollins Center donors, on panels discussing a variety

of topics including building the perfect team, how to divide equity between business partners, finding investors, go-to-market strategies, and protect-ing your business idea.

At the team-building panel dis-cussion Eric Blyel, CEO at Enterbridge Technologies, gave advice to students about surrounding themselves with trusted advisors. “When you’re the CEO people rarely challenge you, but you need someone who will hold you ac-countable,” he explained. “You need someone who will tell you, ‘This is crazy.’”

Barry Smith, CEO of Megellan Health, encouraged students to never give up when looking for investors.

“If you’re not persistent in the face of adversity and don’t have personal strength, forget about it,” Smith says. “We have all seen the wall of flames we thought we could never get through; successful people march through with conviction.”

Jan Newman, partner at Sage Creek Partners and a go-to-market strate-gies panelist, counseled students that, “A company’s leadership team and a strong sales emphasis—rather than fo-cusing on raising money—is the best approach for early stage companies. It’s all about how you can get it out there and make the cash register ring.”

You know the saying: it’s not what you know,but who you know. This idea drove a thousand people, from students to seasoned professionals, to the second annual Entrepre-

neur & Venture Ecosystem Networking nighT.The EVENT, co-hosted this year by both the Rollins Cen-

ter for Entrepreneurship and Technology and Grow Utah Ventures, is the largest of its kind in Utah and is held an-nually as part of BYU’s Entrepreneurship Week festivities.

In all, more than six hundred students and four hun-dred community and business professionals were present. Attendees were divided up into four categories to help facilitate networking opportunities, including student entrepreneurs, community entrepreneurs, institutional investors, and accredited investors.

Booths representing companies and organizations that support Utah’s entrepreneurial ecosystem surrounded the BYU Hinckley Alumni Center’s assembly hall where the EVENT took place.

Jeff Rust, president of Corpo-rate Alliance, a company that helps individuals and businesses build successful relationships, was pres-ent to provide networking advice to the attendees. “I believe when you come to an event like this you should have a goal,” Rust says. “How many new connections are you go-ing to make tonight? And what will the value of those connections be?”

Overall, the EVENT offered guests the opportunity to make valuable connections to help start or grow their companies which in turn builds Utah’s burgeoning en-trepreneurial ecosystem. To these budding entrepreneurs Rollins Cen-ter managing director Scott Peters-en offers his advice: “Relationships rule the world, and this is where it all starts.”

E-WEEK PANELS

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ROLLINS CENTER ANNUAL REPORT 9

THE EVENT

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OCTOBER 2012

Idea

OWLET Baby Vitals Monitor

At the time of the Big Idea Pitch Competi-tion, the student start-up company Owlet Baby Monitors was just an idea, some sur-vey results, and a low-budget video.

After the pitch, they had confidence and direction. Positive feedback from the com-petition judges coupled with optimistic survey results obtained around the same time gave them the validation they needed to continue making their idea into a reality.

The Big Idea Pitch was only the very be-ginning. Looking from where they were to where they are currently, Owlet founder Jordan Monroe said that about 98 percent of the work happened after the competi-tion.

“Ideas are worth as much as [they] cost you—nothing. Go out and start creating value with the idea,” Monroe said.

This advice that Monroe gives to other en-trepreneurs is exactly what Owlet followed. They now have a market-ready product, a baby monitor that measures infant vitals including heart rate and oxygen levels, with hundreds of pre-orders that will be shipped at the end of the year.

MILLER NVCBIG IDEA PITCH

It’s the moment you’ve prepared for. You’re not nervous. You’ve rehearsed your pitch. You know what

to say. On your mark, get set, go—one minute to change the world.

That’s the premise behind the Mill-er New Venture Challenge’s Big Idea Competition. More than four hundred students submitted their ideas; the top thirty were selected to pitch.

Each team had sixty seconds to sell their business idea to the crowd. The pitches were judged by three groups: center donors known as Founders, local angel investors, and student at-tendees. Each group picked a winner.

Once the competition was under-way, the pitching was focused and fast-paced.

MBA student Ben Miller’s pitch pro-posed a way to fund natural gas con-version for cars. Miller’s idea was given top marks by the angel investors.

“I am excited about the exposure the idea got,” Miller says. “I’m not ap-

proaching this as an academic exer-cise. Instead, I want to see if this is something I can do after I graduate.”

Kurt Workman, a chemical engi-neering student and part of the Owlet Baby Monitor team, also found suc-cess at the event. The inspiration for his business was born of tragedy—the death of his baby cousin to sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS). Using pulse oximetry technology already available in hospitals, Workman and his team created a product that can be used in the home.

“The Big Idea Competition was an excellent event for us,” Workman says. “It helped us nail down what is most important about our product.”

Chosen by both the audience and the Founders, Workman’s team was delighted with the win and believes the competition and feedback they received will have a positive impact on the future of the venture.

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NOVEMBER 2012

ROLLINS CENTER ANNUAL REPORT 11

MILLER NVCBUSINESS MODEL WORKSHOPS

The Rollins Center has pro-vided training workshops on one of the newest ap-proaches to entrepreneur-

ship, the business model, which is a way for entrepreneurs to test assump-tions about their business. The Marriott School introduced the Business Model Competition three years ago and pro-grams across the country have since adopted the method. Professionals were brought in to educate students on what a model is and how it can help

them in their business ventures.“The purpose of the workshop is

to educate students on this new ap-proach to entrepreneurship,” says Jeff Brown, assistant director of the Rollins Center. “We educate students on what business modeling means, what cus-tomer development includes, and the business model canvas.”

This year Nathan Furr, BYU profes-sor and author of Nail It Then Scale It, instructed students at the workshop.

“The workshops provide students the tools, training, and feedback to be successful both as an entrepreneur and in the competition.” Furr says. “It puts BYU in the forefront because there are only a handful of schools that have done anything to develop the thinking and curriculum around this new entrepreneurship paradigm.”

In the past start-ups would write a business plan which then encourages them to find information to justify the plan. The business model, or lean start-up model, takes a new approach which allows entrepreneurs to make initial assumptions about their company and then test those assumptions with peo-ple in the market to see what changes are needed for success.

“The workshop helped us under-stand that entrepreneurship is not a light version of big corporate business,” says Mark Neilson, an MBA student from Salt Lake City. “You really need a lean start-up process and every step of the way you need to check your as-sumptions so you don’t blindly believe in something that nobody else cares about. That came to me as a refreshing reminder.”

Discovery Simulations

The D in DSC really stands for dedicated. This start-up focused on making educa-tional space simulations a real out of this world experience by going to the Business Model Workshops hosted by the Rollins Center.

What especially stood out to to the team was how applicable the Nail It Then Scale It model is. “I would advise anyone to not only read [the book], but believe it and practice it from the very first day,” Skylar Carr, DSC founder said.

The workshop helped DSC learn how to save time and money, as well as how to cre-ate real value in the customer’s mind. From the very beginning, DSC knew that if they built the company’s foundation on the cus-tomer, success would be inevitable. He was right. This summer, the team was invited to participate in Provo’s start-up accelerator program known as Founders Launchpad, which culminated into the opportunity to pitch before CET founders and investors at Investor Day.

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NOVEMBER 2012

Model

FiberFix“The Rollins Center bends over backwards to get you with the right mentor. The Get Mentoring program is huge. We cannot say enough good things regarding how help-ful the Rollins Center was to our early suc-cess—not only with outside mentors, but also the vast experience inside their office.”

Dark Energy“Mentors are everything—especially to an entrepreneur. [They] showed us exactly where we needed to go to learn very quick-ly who we needed to talk to. Mentors help you bridge the ignorance gap. You can get to the next level more quickly by having a mentor.”

Invironment“Without the mentors we had, we would not have won the competitions we did win. Their expertise and wisdom was critical to our success.”

Sales Rabbit“It was helpful working with mentors on different ideas and approaches and strat-egies we could take to fix the obstacle we were trying to get over. If you’re doing it by yourself, it seems unattainable, unreach-able—but the mentors have been there before and they were able to help us over difficult hurdles.”

Discovery Simulations“Of all the many resources available to us at the Rollins Center, the mentoring pro-gram has been number one. We came to Jeff Howlett and spoke to him about some of the things we were working on and asked what we should do. He immediately said, ‘You need to talk to this person,’ which shows how professional and well prepared the Rollins Center is.”

VENTURE MENTORING SERVICES

Based in part on the wisdom that, “Better than a thousand days of diligent study is one day

with a great mentor,” the Rollins Center has created a scalable world-class mentoring program that, simply put, is a game changer.

Students go to Getmentoring.com and choose either: advisement men-toring, which is typically early idea stage and one-on-one, or team men-toring which is a custom, handpicked team of mentors for more developed ideas getting ready to launch. Once as-signed, team mentors meet with stu-dent teams on a regular basis to help them identify next steps and to help them avoid the pitfalls most start-ups encounter.

After selecting which type of men-toring the student is seeking they complete some basic prerequisites, which then qualify students to have

access to our pool of over 200 men-tors in either a student self-select or private-select by the Venture Mentor-ing Services (VMS) team.

In addition to innovative ideas and having some of the top students in the nation, the real key to VMS success is its mentors. Not only do they have their own code of conduct, prerequi-sites, and screening process, they give freely of their time and expertise which is amazing considering that most are C level executives with family, commu-nity, and religious commitments.

“Their time is our most valuable asset,” states Jeff Howlet, director of Venture Mentoring Services. Mentors come from all backgrounds and levels of success, and the relationships cre-ated between student and mentor can last a lifetime.

GetMentoring.comGive your business idea a boost.

CET ANNUAL REPORT 13ROLLINS CENTER ANNUAL REPORT 13

Thirty-nine teams com-peted at the 2012 Student Innovator of the Year com-petition for tens of thou-

sands of dollars in cash prizes and the title of Student Innovator of the Year. The competition which is hosted by the Fulton College of Engineering and Technology and sponsored by the Rol-lins Center helps participants make connections, get feedback on their ideas, and ultimately take their innova-tions to market.

On the first day of competition each participating team pitched to over twenty judges at booths set up on BYU’s Brigham Square. Students and other foot traffic were also able to get a first glance at the noteworthy inno-vations.

“The student innovators love the exciting atmosphere and the opportu-nity to showcase their ideas to fellow students,” says Andrew Pack, SIOY stu-dent director and a mechanical engi-neering major.

The top nine innovations were pre-sented at the final event the following day. Each team was given four minutes

to pitch to a live audience. The judges awarded prizes for the top three inno-vations and a runner-up prize for the idea with the most potential.

Owlet Baby Monitors took first place and the crowd favorite award walking away with $6,000 in prize money.

“We really want to create a safer en-vironment for infants,” Kurt Workman, a chemical engineering major, explains. “We want parents to know their baby is okay. In a lot of situations, our product would warn parents before something tragic happens. Winning this competi-tion takes us one step closer to making that a reality.”

Second place went to iLived.com, a website for family history buffs to con-nect with their ancestors on a deeper level with photos and memories con-nected to a family tree.

Third place was a tie and went to business operations management software Intuiplan and to Leenovation for ByBell, a doorbell integrated with security-system technology. Hiven, a company that invented sensor tech-nology to keep pipes from freezing, garnered the Great Potential Award.

SIOYSTUDENT INNOVATOR OF THE YEAR

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Venture FactoryBuild Your Dreams

Housed in BYU’s Fulton College of Engi-neering, Venture Factory combines entre-preneurial principles with technical skills, making it one of the most talent-rich or-ganizations on campus. “Our organization is in the business of making student ideas reality,” said Steven Branham, president of Venture Factory.

Venture Factory provides a variety of ser-vices. Students can attend an Ideathon to receive valuable feedback on their ideas. The organization also helps students to build prototypes of their physical products. Development teams are organized to help in the iteration and validation process of an idea.

In addition, Venture Factory runs the Stu-dent Innovator of the Year competition, which has launched several successful products including PillSafe, Owlet, Flex Leg, Active Alarm, and LunchBox.

“Venture Factory focuses solely on product development. However, we work closely with the Entrepreneurship Club, the Inno-vation Academy, and other clubs to pro-vide a complete support network for stu-dent driven ventures,” said Branham.

NOVEMBER 2012

Model

Cat herding, ninja fighting or photo gaming—it could all be found at the fourth annual Mobile App Com-

petition hosted by the Rollins Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology.

In order to help students better understand the importance of mobile devices in today’s business environ-ment, the annual competition, one of the first of its kind, invites students to create App Store-ready apps.

“The purpose of this competition is to help students get more excited

about mobile development,” says Josh Nicholls, a second-year MISM student from Seattle, who helped run the com-petition. “These competitors have built really cool apps, and I hope it will moti-vate others to do the same.”

Apps were evaluated based on user experience, design implementation, business application, and number of downloads. The panel of judges in-cluded Rollins Center academic direc-tor Stephen Liddle and MokiMobility executives Tom Karren and Jared Blake.

Of the forty teams that registered, eighteen teams showed off their apps to a live crowd at the competition’s fi-nal event.

“I was very impressed by the mar-velous job the students did,” Liddle says. “Choosing a winner was a difficult decision—the apps and presentations were phenomenal.”

None of the finalists walked away empty-handed. All were awarded a piece of the $15,000 prize money—each team taking anywhere from $250 to $3,000.

The grand prize went to Intuiplan’s app for simplifying daily operations for franchisees. The second runner-up was the ARD Sales app, now called Sales Rabbit, designed for sales reps in the pest control and home security indus-tries. The Space Jumps game app came in third as well as being named crowd favorite.

Awards were also given to the Growing Pains app (MoneyDesktop Ruby Award) and Ninja Tactics (Analyt-ics Award).

MOBILE APP COMPETITION

30th

Sales RabbitMobile Solutions for Sales

During the mobile app competition, Sales Rabbit was focused on creating a mobile app for door-to-door salesmen in the pest control industry, to help them in every-thing from managing leads to electroni-cally signing contracts.

Soon after the competition, founders Brady Anderson and Barima Kwarteng pivoted and decided to drop the pest-control in-dustry for the satellite industry, where their product was gaining more traction.

Sales Rabbit has made a lot of progress since the competition. A company that started with a functional, yet clunky app, now has two smooth, sleek, and very user-friendly apps available on the app store that cater to the door-to-door sales and satellite industries.

The company has grown, but the founders will always remember the lessons learned from the Mobile App Competition. “Every-thing always takes longer than you think. If you think you’re going to be done in one to two weeks, you’re going to be done in four to eight weeks. We put tons of time into this mobile app and had a lot of late nights,” Anderson said.

CET ANNUAL REPORT 15

INNOVATION ACADEMY

Ideas, products, and or-ganizations are better equipped to achieve their potential through inter-

disciplinary collaboration. The mission of BYU’s Innovation Academy is to help create these connections.

Founded and funded out of the Rollins Center, the organization gath-ers students from across BYU’s cam-pus into a collaborative environment where they not only learn how to in-novate through a series of workshops but also launch hands-on, innovative projects to solve real-world problems and gain experience through hands-on projects and workshops.

“The Innovation Academy creates a platform of collaboration where stu-dents from all across campus can see their innovative ideas come to life,” says co-president Devin Basinger, a business strategy senior from Vacaville, California.

Focused on a learn-do-teach model, the organization meets weekly with project teams to ensure teams are ac-complishing the academy’s goal of validating ideas that can be taken to market. These meetings also allow teams to collaborate and learn from

one another which in turn has created a sense of camaraderie and peer-to-peer accountability.

To sweeten the deal, the Rollins Center provides each team access to innovation mentors and $400 toward building their product.

“The Innovation Academy is a spring board for business,” Basinger says. “People who participate make things happen. It’s a great organization for anyone interested in collaboration, innovation, and entrepreneurship.”

ROLLINS CENTER ANNUAL REPORT 15

The Shot CoachWrist Basketball Trainer

One CET resource that helped BYU start-up company Shot Coach score was the Center-sponsored club Innovation Academy. Inno-vation is really the essence of Shot Coach, which product is a wristband and basket-ball rim attachment that together track key shooting statistics.

During one club activity, the team mem-bers learned from guest speaker and BYU adjunct professor Jeff Schwarting about the importance of pretotyping, which is validating an idea with a product that is a non-functioning and very cheap shadow of a prototype. The team decided to make a pretotype of their own and tested it out on their target market: basketball players.

“The concept was a hit and allowed us some important validation without spend-ing money,” Bassiger said.

In addition to great advice from speakers, Shot Coach also received invaluable advice and input from other club members dur-ing project feedback sessions. These ses-sions happen at each Innovation Academy event, where groups are able to share their progress with like-minded entrepreneurs.

JANUARY 2013

Model

Dark EnergyThe Reservoir

Mechanical engineering major Garrett Aida and information technology major William Lam make quite a team. Last November they founded Dark Energy, a technology company focused on offering stylish, pow-erful, and practical solutions using modern technology.

On 11 February 2013, they launched a Kickstarter campaign for their first prod-uct, a portable charger the size of smart-phone dubbed The Reservoir. In forty-five days 2006 backers provided them with $173,612, far exceeding their goal by 73.6 percent.

One major thing they discovered about running a successful kickstarter campaign was the time-consuming task of answering the backers’ questions. “Kickstarter is like doing a round of funding with investors, but there are a million investors and each of them wants to talk to you,” Aida said.

Aida and Lam are grateful for the experi-ence and plan on releasing more products through Kickstarter. After all, their first campaign exceeded their funding expecta-tions, and resulted in a flood of online pub-licity in Mashable, Uncrate, and Men’s Gear.

KICKSTARTER CLASS

Following the crowd isn’t usually a good idea, but entrepreneurs can gen-erate serious capital by

jumping on the crowdfunding band-wagon. That’s the premise of an in-novative new course at BYU’s Marriott School of Management.

“This class is one of the first of its kind, and it gives our students a real advantage,” says Daniel Falabella, en-trepreneur and course co-creator.

The class takes students through the process of launching a business, starting with idea generation and vali-dation all the way through product development, sales, customer man-agement, production, and delivery. Special emphasis is put on proven crowdfunding methods.

To create a realistic business envi-ronment, the class is set up in corpo-rate hierarchy with students filling the roles of CEO, COO, CFO, etc. As a team the class members decide which prod-ucts they would like to launch.

The first semester’s class, comprised of nine students, created three group projects: LYKE, a line of customizable watches; Kubb, a handcrafted Viking party game; and Bundtastic Band, a bracelet that doubles as a hair tie. Once they developed an idea, the teams launched their products on Kickstarter.com, a popular online crowdfunding platform.

“Many entrepreneurship courses emphasize bootstrapping,” Falabella observes. “Crowdfunding is an excel-lent way to save money because de-mand and validation are completed upfront.”

At the end of the month-long Kick-starter campaigns the class had raised more than $40,000 from 843 backers.

“I took the class because I wanted to have an entrepreneurial experience,” says class CEO AJ Christensen, “The class definitely delivered.”

7th

CET ANNUAL REPORT 17

In perhaps the most suc-cessful season ever for BYU entrepreneurship, innovat-ing student teams gener-

ated over $700,000 for their start-up ventures. Validation and early success came from a variety of activities, in-cluding competitions and pre-sales campaigns.

From a portable device that can charge a phone for a week to a spray technology that biodegrades plastics found in landfills, students have creat-ed technologies that are turning heads worldwide.

“Student ventures have brought in more money this year at competi-tions than any other,” said Rollins Cen-ter managing director Scott Petersen. “But more importantly,” said entrepre-neurship professor Nathan Furr, “the students are getting real traction with customers. The ultimate proof that you’ve nailed the problem is that peo-ple will give you their money.”

BYU is already recognized as a top entrepreneurial university, with a tra-dition of high-performing start-ups (Omniture, 1-800-CONTACTS, Property Solutions, KT Tape), but this year’s crop has achieved unprecedented success.

Here are some top performers.

Owlet ($360,000) The Owlet baby monitor is a wireless, sock-like device that measures oxygen levels and heart rates of infants and then sends that data to a parent’s smartphone.

Dark Energy ($173,000) BYU stu-dents created a portable phone/de-vice charger they call the Reservoir. The Reservoir, which is similar in size to a smartphone, is designed to provide enough charge for phones, tablets or other devices for up to a week and be-yond.

Inviroment (104,000) A spray tech-nology that speeds up the natural bio-degrading process for plastic trash. The product can reduce landfill volume increase by 20 percent and increase methane energy output by more than 210 percent.

FiberFix ($45,000) FiberFix is an industrial-strength repair wrap that combines the strength of an epoxy with the convenience of a wrapping material.

VALIDATION & EARLY SUCCESS

ROLLINS CENTER ANNUAL REPORT 17

InviromentPlasTektm

One month. That’s all this BYU student-founded team had from its founding date to the beginning of start-up competition season. Talk about being in an accelera-tor. As they developed everything from their elevator pitch to their business model for their new patent-pending technology called PlasTek™, which decomposes plastic found in landfills, they learned what it takes to succeed. And succeed they did, they won $100,000 in the CU Cleantech Chal-lenge Finals Competition in April.

Founder Nathan Parkin shares three oth-er things the Inviroment team learned through competitions:

“The more you can validate your assump-tions through industry experts or real data, the stronger and more competitive you can be.

Practice your presentation in front of those who don’t know your business.

The businesses that most often won ei-ther had contracts in hand or actually had revenue. The quicker you can get either of those, the more likely your business will win these competitions and succeed in the long run.”

With its foot-hugging baby breathing monitor already receiving notoriety from media across the country,

this year’s Business Model Competition winner Owlet Baby Monitors knocked the competition’s socks off.

The competition awarded Owlet $3,000 in prize money. Additionally, Owlet received BYU’s automatic bid to compete against student teams from all across the world at the International Business Model Competition this May at Harvard.

“This is a unique competition,” says Nathan Furr, entrepreneurship profes-sor and competition creator. “It encour-ages students to go through the crucial step of testing their assumptions with customers in the field to get a viable solution.”

Owlet team member Jacob Colvin agrees and believes the competition has been crucial for the company’s early success.

“BYU has been a fantastic spring-board for our company,” says the Euro-pean studies major from Alpine, Utah. “We look forward to participating in the international competition as an oppor-tunity to get more feedback so we can take our idea to market.”

In addition to the recent buzz from Mashable, Huffington Post, and ABC News, the Owlet team was honored as BYU’s 2012 Student Innovator of the Year and as the winner of the Big Idea Competition—proving them to be an entrepreneurial force to be reckoned with.

Owlet beat out four other teams in the final event where competitors gave eight-minute presentations about their business validation process. A ques-tion and answer period from the panel of judges followed the team presenta-tions. Second and third place went to Vacation Races and Intuiplan respec-tively, with FiberFix taking fourth and MedLock, fifth.

Furr, who also served on the judg-ing panel, said he was delighted with the way the event turned out. Before announcing the winners, he took a mo-ment to reflect on the competition.

“Judging this year was the most dif-ficult yet,” Furr said. “I see every one of these teams as having massive poten-tial. They have done something phe-nomenal and will change the world.”

Furr said this year’s surge of success-ful BYU start-ups comes from a focus on getting student business ideas in front of potential customers.

“The problem is that whatever you believe as an entrepreneur is a guess,” Furr said. “The time you spend planning or building on an unvalidated guess is usually wasted because you usually guess wrong.”

JANUARY 2013

Model

MILLER NVCBYU BUSINESS MODEL COMPETITION

25th

CET ANNUAL REPORT 19ROLLINS CENTER ANNUAL REPORT 19

4th

Students knew they were in the right place when they saw the sign: “Be Awe-some. Work for a Start-up.”

Utah Startup Marketplace 2013, sponsored by the Rollins Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology, is different than your typical job or in-ternship fair. The one-day event gave 500 student attendees access to in-ternships and full-time jobs at some of Utah’s hottest start-up companies.

“When you work at a start-up you’re on the front lines making decisions that create immediate results,” says Jeff Brown, director of the event. “These companies need doers—people who will dig in and make things happen.”

In past years USM has featured some of the state’s most successful and fastest growing start-ups, such as Qualtrics, Fusion-io, Allegiance, and

OrangeSoda. This year SolutionStream, ThinkAtomic, DropShip Commerce, and Scan, among others, scouted for talent.

“There are jobs in every area. If you’re a rock-star programmer, a de-signer, or creative in any way, you could land a full-time job,” says Josh

Nicholls, a second-year MISM student from Seattle and student director of the event. “Being an entrepreneur is not about what you study in school; it’s about who you are and what drives you. That’s what start-ups are going to pick up on.”

Derik Krauss, a junior from Bakers-field, California, studying entrepre-neurship, hopes to start a business of his own someday. He attended the fair to gain experience at a start-up with the ultimate goal of launching his own venture.

“Getting in early is the dream,” Krauss says. “I want to work for a start-up to get some experience before I do my own thing. The people here are the ones to know.”

But students don’t have to be entre-preneurs to make a connection. Sociol-ogy major Carmela Balter from Trujillo,

Peru, came to the fair looking for a job in HR. For Balter, the idea of a start-up’s close-knit atmosphere was appealing.

“I want to be known by name,” she says. “I see Utah Startup Marketplace as a great opportunity because the companies are small, and I want to help a company grow.”

UTAH STARTUP MARKETPLACE

Launch

FEBRUARY 2013

IntuiplanMobile Tools for Franchises

Intuiplan founder Josh Bird remembers marveling at Baskin-Robbin’s disorganized, and seemingly nonexistent, operating pro-cedures. That is when he saw the customer pain point, and from there, he and his team set out to alleviate it by creating Intuiplan. Intuiplan remedies operational chaos by offering a software system that helps food establishments organize procedures, cre-ate employment accountability through checklists, and monitor employee produc-tivity.

The Business Model Competition helped Intuiplan become the organizational soft-ware provider that it is today. Filling out the business model canvas allowed them to evaluate all aspects of their business, from customer relationships to revenue streams.

The competition allowed Intuiplan to think about these crucial elements and especially focus on the principles in BYU faculty mem-ber Nathan Furr’s book Nail It Then Scale It.

Founder CJ Lewis said, “The whole com-petition was about [finding] the idea or nail[ing] the solution or value proposition before you scale.”

MARCH 2013

Launch

1st

A restaurateur, a film pro-ducer, and an inventor squared off at the final round of the twenty-sec-ond annual Student En-

trepreneur of the Year Competition sponsored by the Rollins Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology. Chosen from fifty applicants, these three entrepreneurs represent one of the most successful crops of student entrepreneurs in the competition’s twenty-year history.

“The SEOY competition recogniz-es students for their entrepreneurial achievements,” said Scott Petersen, managing director of the Rollins Cen-ter. “This year’s finalists were some of the strongest we’ve ever had.”

The red-carpet event, run by the

Entrepreneurship Club, formerly the Collegiate Entrepreneurs Organiza-tion club, provides an opportunity for student business owners with profit-able companies to win nearly $20,000 in prize money. Finalists were judged by a panel of successful entrepreneurs based on their entrepreneurial track record, current venture performance,

and business growth potential.Jason Faller, a third-year MBA stu-

dent from Ottawa, Canada, took the top prize for his film production com-pany, Arrowstorm Entertainment. He attributes his company’s innovations to his graduate education.

“In the MBA program I recognized a lot of business principles that could be applied to the film industry,” Faller said. “Streamlining our processes and leveraging our capital has allowed us to build brand equity and value.”

Second-place winner Scott Walker, a business management senior from Corvallis, Oregon, walked away with $5,000 as well as the Audience Choice Award for his company, Underwater Audio, which waterproofs iPods and headphones.

Lance Wakefield, a junior study-ing French from Laie, Hawaii, earned $2,500 and third place for his ven-tures—a used car dealership called The Car Depot and a restaurant called The Awful Waffle.

SEOYSTUDENT ENTREPRENEUR

OF THE YEAR

Entrepreneurship Club

Sometimes rebranding causes confu-sion, like how MBA player Ronald Artest changed his name to Metta World Peace or how in September 2013 the CEO Club (Collegiate Entrepreneurs Organization) changed their name to the Entrepreneur-ship Club. Despite the new name, the club and its mission are the same: to promote principles, practices, and benefits of entre-preneurship campus-wide.

The E-Club’s focus is on assisting students in developing new ideas, writing business plans, accessing capital, networking, and mentoring. They do all of this so students will feel prepared to successfully launch and manage entrepreneurial ventures.

This year, the E-Club strategically partnered with BYU’s two other entrepreneurial clubs: Innovation Academy and Venture Factory. Each club meets at the same time so stu-dents can conveniently use the variety of resources each club offers. While the E-Club focuses on introducing students to entre-preneurship and aiding students with their business models, Innovation Academy and Venture Factory fill in the gaps by focusing on innovation, validation, and prototyping. With the E-Club leading the way, entrepre-neurship and innovation are getting more popularity and prestige on BYU campus.

BYU

entrepreneurship

CLUBe

CET ANNUAL REPORT 21

UTAH STUDENT 25

Underwater Audio, created by BYU student Scott Walk-er, was recently named the No. 1 student-run business

in the state by Utah Student 25—an organization that recognizes student-founded businesses.

Utah Student 25 is the first state-wide awards program that recognizes successful business execution while attending school. Program organizers believe students who accept the chal-lenges of going to school and running a business deserve to be recognized and welcomed with open arms into the entrepreneurial community.

“It was nice to receive recognition for all the hard work,” said Walker, a marketing senior from Corvallis, Oregon. “The number one listing has already opened all kinds of doors for me and my company.”

The recognition provided Walker the clout needed to connect with sev-eral business entities that will help take

his company to the next level. Winners were acknowledged at a black-tie op-tional event held on the University of Utah campus.

In addition to Underwater Audio, which sells waterproofed iPod shuf-fles and headphones, fourteen other BYU businesses were honored out of twenty-five companies from colleges and universities across the state. The top twenty-five were chosen based on business revenue and profit.

“These students are inspiring and deserve this recognition,” said John Richards, event founder and director of operations for Google in Utah. “Start-ing out in business takes many sacri-fices. The gala was an opportunity for us to pay tribute to these innovative students.”

14th

ROLLINS CENTER ANNUAL REPORT 21

Underwater AudioiPod Waterproofing

It all started when Scott Walker came up with the idea to waterproof iPod shuffles and headphones. In July of 2011 Underwa-ter Audio was born. In March of 2013 Un-derwater Audio won the coveted first place position in the Utah Student 25 competi-tion that recognizes Utah’s top student-founded businesses.

What set them up for the win was Under-water Audio’s finances. At that time, Under-water Audio had more revenue than any of the other companies considered. Also, they were completely self-funded until they took out their first loan in August of 2013.

What determines success in this competi-tion is a company’s growth rate of revenue and profits from each business. Underwa-ter Audio hit the mark on both criteria.

Now, Underwater Audio is on track to make $4 million in revenue in 2013 and has been approached by Amazon, who asked the small business to prepare for an increase in sales this upcoming Christmas season.

One of the largest, single-university venture com-petitions in the nation brought the aspirations of some BYU teams closer to reality.

Sponsored by the Rollins Center for Entrepre-neurship and Technology, the inaugural Miller New Venture Challenge provided eight student ventures with cash to kick-start their companies and a summer immersion program to keep the momentum going.

Named for entrepreneurs Larry and Gail Miller, the com-petition replaced BYU’s previous business plan competition, adding a fresh format and more prizes.

“The Miller New Venture Challenge launches businesses in a way few other universities do,” says John Hyde, a second-year MBA from Fallon, Nevada, and student director of the competition. “The Miller’s generous endowment makes it possible for us to provide more money to more businesses. It really sets us apart.”

With over fifty entries, the competition included two rounds of judging by several panels of experts before being narrowed to the final eight who walked away with a com-bined total of more than $140,000 in prize money.

The finalists included FiberFix, which produces a tape-like adhesive that hardens to fix broken household items; Gear-Head, which manufacturers a device that tracks mileage and other performance metrics in vehicles and alerts car owners about service needs; Intuiplan, a software service that auto-

mates paper processes and tracks employee performance; Medlock, which manufacturers combination locks for pre-scription pill bottles; Ori, which makes flat-folding plastic containers; Owlet Baby Monitors, which produces a baby monitor based on pulse oximetry technology; Sales Rabbit, which offers management software for door-to-door sales companies; and Shot Coach, which sells a wristband and backboard device to track basketball players’ shots.

“The year-over-year improvement in the student teams is phenomenal,” says Barry Smith, judge and founder chair-man for the Rollins Center’s advisory board. “The high level of performance speaks to the excellence of the stu-dents and the BYU experience. The competitive environ-

Launch

APRIL 2013

MILLER NVCFINAL EVENT

CET ANNUAL REPORT 23ROLLINS CENTER ANNUAL REPORT 23

FiberFixRepair Wrap

Not only did the name of the New Venture Challenge change to Miller NVC this year but the name of the game changed as well. The Founders had enjoyed determin-ing which one of the eight finalist teams deserved the Miller NVC Founder’s Choice award through Shark Tank-styled judging.

Ultimately, the sharks decided to bite on FiberFix, awarding the team with the $5000 prize. “There’s something about that style of competition that is especially nerve-wracking. The Founders are entrepreneurs. They know what to ask. They know the things you haven’t thought about and they point them out,” Spencer Quinn, FiberFix founder, said.

The competition proved to be good prepa-ration for FiberFix, who presented on ABC’s Shark Tank 25 October 2013, and made a deal with Lori Greiner. FiberFix has been sold on QVC and is in over 6,000 stores, but they would not have been able to do it without the Founders. “The most impor-tant feedback we got was [about] position-ing in the market. Initially, [we were] going after very specific repairs. But founders told us that we needed to reach out to more universal applications,” Quinn said.

NVC

5th

ment allows students to achieve more because of the high standard.”

Winners were chosen based on three factors: the team’s understanding of the market, proof that customers are inter-ested in the business or product, and a clear roadmap for growing their com-pany.

“Participating in this competition was invaluable for our company,” says Jordan Monroe, a senior studying management from Burley, Idaho, with Owlet Baby Monitors. “In addition to the benefits of the cash prize, the feedback from the judges was really helpful, and the buzz generated from the competition is giv-ing us a lot of recognition. It’s exciting.”

Launch

MAY 2013 4th

BYU’s Owlet Baby Moni-tors team won big again after taking first place and $25,000 at this year’s Inter-

national Business Model Competition held at Harvard.

The International Business Model Competition is the first and largest competition of its kind, rewarding student entrepreneurs for testing and validating all aspects of their business model with real, potential customers in a lean approach. Conceived at BYU in 2010, the annual event is co-spon-sored by BYU, Harvard and Stanford and is open to all student entrepreneur teams in the world.

Over one thousand student teams from over one hundred schools and ten countries participated in this year’s

event, held at Harvard’s Innovation Lab. Twenty-eight teams advanced to Boston for the semi-final round and were judged by a panel of local invest-ment professionals. The winner was

selected by Steve Blank, co-author of The Startup Owner’s Manual; Alex Os-terwalder, co-creator of the Business Model Canvas; Tom Eisenmann, pro-fessor of entrepreneurship at Harvard Business School; and Nathan Furr, co-author of Nail It Then Scale It.

“We were very excited we were able to win with such tough competition,” says Jordan Monroe, a business man-agement major from Burley, Idaho, and member of the Owlet team. “We worked hard to prepare and feel very fortunate it paid off. Our next step is to carry this momentum into the summer and make some initial sales.”

Owlet joined six other BYU teams at the competition, which is a testament to the program and culture being developed at the university.

“By leading the way in this event, BYU is establishing itself as a credible thought leader in the entrepreneurial world,” Furr says.

INTERNATIONALBUSINESS MODEL COMPETITION

PanxNext Gen GPS Tracking

Not everyone can win first place. For Panx founder Christiaan Watson, going to histor-ic Harvard to compete in the International Business Competition, being awarded an Honorable Mention, and having a reason to sharpen up his company’s business model and elevator pitch were reward enough. But it still did not hurt that Panx received exposure and publicity as a result of the competition and made some influential contacts with investors.

Watson said that it was also “great to compare with other companies at the competition and see how far along they were.” They realized that Panx’s innovation, a technology that allows customers to locate someone within a building through tracking devices and software applications, was as impressive as any other team’s and that it also had the potential to be used on multiple platforms and in a myriad of industries.

The IBMC was the only competition this start-up, established in 2010, participated in. Now, founders Chistiaan Watson and Alex Curtis are busy making contracts with health care facilities and hotels in the west, using the skills they developed at the IBMC.

CET ANNUAL REPORT 25ROLLINS CENTER ANNUAL REPORT 25Scale

MAY–AUGUST 2013

FOUNDERS LAUNCHPAD

Located in the historic and aptly named Startup Build-ing in downtown Provo, Camp 4 provides a place

for student business teams to grow and develop during the summer. A rib-bon-cutting ceremony for Camp 4 was held on 1 May 2013.

“It is really a significant day,” gover-nor Gary Herbert told The Daily Herald, “as we work together to create more business opportunities.”

The Camp 4 Initiative is part of a continuing effort to boost the entre-preneurial ecosystem in the Provo and Utah County areas. The Rollins Center, Franchise Foundry, Innovation Net-work, and BoomStartup among other invested parties have all worked to-gether to help aspiring entrepreneurs experience rapid growth and develop-ment in their budding businesses.

The Founders Launchpad located at Camp 4, a summer skills accelera-

tor for BYU companies, began on 13 May with sixteen student-led ventures. Sponsored by the Rollins Center, this 16-week program provided student teams with the tools necessary to launch their businesses. These ame-nities included training curriculum, mentoring services, program interns, Google Fiber gigabit internet, and a dynamic co-working space and learn-ing environment.

The curriculum for the program included trainings on topics ranging from leadership and sales manage-ment to company culture and brand management among other things. Trainings were delivered by some of the top entrepreneurs in the state in-cluding Ryan Smith, co-founder of Qualtrics, and Mark Hurst, CEO and owner of three companies in Utah and Silicon Valley.

While the Founders Launchpad program closed on 31 August, Camp 4 leadership has many plans for the fu-ture including a coding academy.

“It’s exciting to see things up and running but this is just the beginning,” said Tom Taylor, current owner of the Startup Building, “It is [only] the first year and we have big plans for the fu-ture.

ChatadsContextual Mobile Ads

Chatads, which monetizes text messaging apps by having paid advertisements ap-pear when certain keywords are typed by the user, was relatively much less of a start-up than the other teams that participated in Founders Launchpad. They were defi-nitely among the veterans of the summer startup accelerator, especially when con-sidering that most of the other teams had been founded less than a year before.

“We had a pretty solid path paved before us, even before Launchpad,” Mike Evans, Chatads founder said.

Being at Camp 4 was still an indispensable experience. The free office space and co-working environment were two things that Chatads found particularly helpful. In order to produce the greatest results, they used these resources in conjunction with other Rolins Center resources, specifically men-toring.

“One of our mentors not only gave us a lot of great advice on how to reach out to in-dividuals, build connections, and build our pipeline; but he also helped introduce us to a variety of very important people,” Evans said.

OCTOBER 2013

Scale

4th

INVESTORS DAY

On 4 October 2013 there was a flurry of activities on the eighth floor of the Zions Bank building on University Avenue, Provo, Utah. The caterers were preparing a breakfast buffet for a crowd of over

200 people. CET staff members were managing the check-in table, distributing name tags, and fielding questions. In a back room, undergraduate and graduate students were in an assembly line, making packets of information to be distrib-uted to all the attendees. Student entrepreneurs were excit-edly putting the finishing touches on their company pitches. Investors, Founders, community entrepreneurs, and media members were filing into the Rock Canyon Room, ready to hear ten BYU start-ups pitch their companies. This is how In-vestors Day began.

The Center completed a revolutionary process when it hosted its first Investors Day. The ten companies that pre-sented in Investors Day had gone through the idea, model,

Founders: Skyler Carr, Brandon Wright, Brandon “BJ” Warner, Casey Voeks

$350,000 in 2013 revenueRaised $150,000 in venture funding20,000 simulator visitors in 20135 simulators in operation15 simulators valued at $640,000 in production or negotiation

Discovery Simulations

Founders: Mike EvansNumber of employees: 23Over $10,000 in monthly recurring revenue 50 clients 11 million users

Chatads

Founders: William Lam, Garrett Aida$1,000,000 in 2013 revenueRaised $173,000 on KickstarterNegotiating contracts with 4 companies valued at $600,000 Featured in at least 25 different online blogs, magazines or web-

sites including Mashable and UncrateReleasing 3 new products in 2014

Dark Energy

Founders: Spencer Quinn, Derek Rowley, Chris Quinn$2,000,000 in 2013 revenueSold in 6,000 storesSold 45,000 units in 8 minutes on QVCDeal signed for nationwide product roll-outs in Home Depot

and Lowes storesAppeared on Shark Tank and made a deal with Lori Greiner

FiberFix

Founders: CJ Lewis, Josh Bird, Tyler Slater, Chase WasdenNumber of employees: 16 (9 part-time, 7 full-time)$35,000 in revenueIn 25 different franchises including Subway, 7-11, Buffalo Wild

Wings, Firehouse Subs, and Edible ArrangementsProjected to sign 173 accounts valued at $300,000 with 9 com-

panies before year’s end

IntuiplanChatads provides advertis-ments and mobile ads for texting and VoIP apps.

Creator of The Reservoir, an extremely thin, extremely powerful portable charger.

Education through simulation technology.

The world’s strongest repair wrap.

SaaS solution for streamlining the standard operating proce-dures of franchises.

CET ANNUAL REPORT 27ROLLINS CENTER ANNUAL REPORT 27

and launch phases, and the Rollins Center had been there every step of the way—offering mentoring, events, and competitions. The entire process culminated with Investors Day—which provided teams the opportunity to complete the last step of the start-up life cycle and scale their compa-nies through outside investment.

As the teams presented their ten-minute slideshows be-fore the investors’ scrutinous gazes, they were in fact present-ing the capstone of hundreds of hours of work innovating, pivoting, validating, and designing.

The ten companies listed here are just the first graduates of many yet to come in the years ahead who will go through the entire start-up life cycle offered each year through the Rollins Center. They were the Investor Day pioneers and have already experienced significant success. But they have only just begun to fill the vast potential within themselves.

Founders: Kurt Workman, Tanner Hodges, Jacob Colvin, Jordan Monroe, Zach Bonsta

Ranked #4 college start-up in the nation by collegestartup.org$300,000 in 2013 revenueRaised $225,000 in venture fundingWon $200,000 cash and prizes from competitions

Owlet

Founders: Brock Bennion, Devan Bennion, Nathan Parkin, Nate Alder, Aufbau Laboratories LLC

Won over $104,000 in international business competitionsReceived two written LOIs & permission to conduct landfill pilot

tests in Utah and MassachusettsFiled an SBIR EPA grant Highlighted on hundreds of news web sites across the globe

Invironment

Founders: Daniel Falabella, Jeff Schwarting, Andrew JensenNumber of employees: 4Prefundia users raised $2,500,000 in first 3 months Projects that go through Prefundia experience a 71% success

rate as compared to Kickstarter’s 44% and Indiegogo’s 9%

Prefundia

Founders: Brady Anderson, Barima Kwarteng, Jeff Lockhart$110,000 in 2013 revenueUsed by 4 largest door-to-door retailers for DISH networkRaised $218,000 in venture funding

Sales Rabbit

Founders: Sam Harrison, Jessica MarshallVitamin-shaped teddy bear that tastes like bubblegum candy Scientific formulation makes it the best dosage on the market$30,000 in revenue1,000 online customers90% of Amazon.com reviews are 5 starsOver 65% reorder rate

Teddy MD

BABY MONITORS

Created PlasTek™, an environ-mentally safe, chemical solu-tion for decomposing plastics.

Baby monitor that sends heart rate, O2 levels, skin temp., etc. to parent’s smartphone.

The world’s first pre-launch platform for crowdfunding projects.

Mobile SaaS solutions for door-to-door sales companies.

Creators of Tired Teddies, a natural sleep aid for little kids and toddlers

Founders are successful entrepreneurs who financially and experientially support BYU’s entrepreneurship events, programs, and curriculum. Founders and Associate Founders teach or lecture in entrepreneurship classes and serve as mentors to students interested in starting businesses.

The Founders Organization, started by a small group of determined entrepreneurs in 1986, is now comprised of more than two hundred members who have been instrumen-tal in helping the Rollins Center become one of the most successful and highly ranked entrepreneurship centers in the country. The group is guided by the motto to Learn, Earn, Return.™

In 2000 the Marriott School established what is now known as the Kevin and Debra Rollins Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology. Kevin is currently a senior advisor on global in-vestment strategies in the technology sector to TPG Capital L.P., a private investment firm.

Kevin served as president and CEO of Dell Computer Corporation and also as chief operating officer, vice chair, and president of Dell Americas. Prior to Dell, Kevin was a partner and direc-tor at Bain & Co. in Boston, Massachusetts. He earned his MBA and two bachelor’s degrees from Brigham Young University. He was born and raised in Utah and is an accomplished vio-linist. While attending BYU he met his wife, Debra Skinner. The Rollins are the parents of four children and are members of the BYU President’s Leadership Council and the Marriott School’s National Advisory Council.

The Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology is unique at BYU. We support our programs entirely from the contributions of successful entrepreneurs called Founders. This year we gave away $276,544 at our various competitions and launched over 20 scal-able ventures, of which the top five generated over $3.76 million in revenue. As our readers can see from the contents of this report, these achievements are just the tip of the iceberg. Without the generous support of our Founders and donors, this would not have been possible.

KEVIN & DEBRA ROLLINS

ENTREPRENEUR FOUNDERS ORGANIZATION

Dear Friends,

The success of the Rollins Center this year is both gratifying and inspirational. With all that we are accomplishing we are foremost building capable and ethical leaders in the ris-ing generation and thus a brighter future for our country. As a long-term investor in the Rollins Center I am proud of what we have achieved and what we will yet achieve through the remarkable students here at Brigham Young University. I am pleased to be serving as the Chairman of the Founders Organization, a group of bright, energetic, and accomplished entrepreneurs who are giving so much of themselves in time and treasure to support such a wonderful cause. I invite you to join with us in this worthy and worthwhile endeavor.

Barry SmithChairman, Founders Organization

MAKING IT ALL POSSIBLE

Barry SmithCEO, Magellan Health Services

Because we’re fans too!

-lumni