NCET

If you want to compete in this yearsGovernor’s Cup business plan competition, get started now – good business plans can take months to develop, said Rahul Bhargava, chair of the managerial sciences department.

Individuals and teams of up to five need to make their commitment to the competition by Feb. 15 and turn in their plan by March 17. The competition, open to undergraduate and graduate students, awards $200,000 in prizes. A panel of judges select the best plans.

Rishi Tiwari, a University of Nevada, Reno student that competed and won in last year’s Governor’s Cup with her interdisciplinary team NanoVation Inc., spent weeks creating the business plan for their product Energy Harvester, a product that converts wasted vibration energy into useful electrical energy. She found the competition to be very beneficial.

“We worked very hard for it,” Tiwari said. “We had weeks of sleepless nights and discussions. Each team member contributed a lot toward it.”

Dave Archer, CEO of Nevada’s Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology, which hosts the event, said most teams in previous Governor’s Cup competitions were engineering, technical and business teams. Archer encourages teams from other fields such as journalism, arts and medicine to enter business plans related to their fields.

“It doesn’t have to be technical,” Archer said. “It’s really only limited by the student’s imagination.”

Bhargava noted how beneficial the Governor’s Cup Competition is to students interested in entrepreneurship as it forces students to learn key values about planning out a business.

“This is providing a great opportunity for students to get their business plan funded,” Bhargava said. “It also gives students an opportunity to get feedback. Some of the judges are venture capitalists and provide excellent feedback.”

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Founders of a company that plans to develop the first commercial-sized aeroponic greenhouse in the nation in Reno were recently in town to pitch the idea to venture capitalists.

NewGardens LLC, a company headquartered at Beaverton, Ore., hopes to raise $1.7 million from investors at the annual Silver and Gold Conference, which draws venture capital firms from throughout the West.

The company plans a 33,000-square-foot aeroponic greenhouse at the Valley Road Field Laboratory operated by the Nevada Agricultural Experiment Station.

The University of Nevada, Reno Board of Regents has approved a lease with the company, which plans to work closely with the experiment station. The experiment station is the research arm of UNR’s College of Agriculture, Biotechnology and Natural Resources. Read more:
 

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The road weariness showed on Rod Hosilyk’s face as he began his presentation to a panel of eight venture capitalists in Reno last week.

The talk by the chief executive officer of Reno’s Universal Combustion Technologies at the Silver & Gold Venture Capital Conference came at the end of a three-week swing that had taken him to one venture capital conference after another across the United States.

His goal: raising $600,000 now and $7 million early next year to get the company that develops pollution-control devices for diesel equipment up and running.

By contrast, Chip Evans was the picture of freshness as he sought investors to put $5 million to $12 million into GreenDisk Technologies, a Reno-based developer of a new

technology for computer hard disks. The presentation, Evans said later, marked the first appeal by the young company for venture funding. In fact, he said, its executives had put the final touches on their business plan only two weeks before he stood in front of the deep-pocketed investors scattered around the ballroom of the Siena Hotel. Read full story:

Technorati Tags: John Seelmeyer, Northern Nevada Business Weekly, Rod Hosilyk, Reno, Universal Combustion Technologies, Silver & Gold Venture Capital Conference, Chip Evans, GreenDisk Technologies, technology, Jon Gregory, Golden Capital Network, Nevada’s Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology, NCET, Sierra Angels, Centennial Woods, S.two, Zodiac, Clario Medical Imaging, entrepreneurs

The Nevada Chapter of the Turnaround Management Association will host a holiday mixer Wednesday, November 28. The event is sponsored by SouthwestUSA Bank.

Event Info:
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
5:30PM to 7:30PM

SouthwestUSA Bank
4043 S. Eastern Avenue
Las Vegas, NV 89119
702-853-4733

Register for this Event

Note: This event is free, however RSVP’S are required

The Turnaround Management Association of Nevada, a non-profit association dedicated to corporate renewal, growth and turnaround management, invites business people interested in this networking.

Technorati Tags: Turnaround Management Association, NCET, Nevada’s Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology, Southwerst USA Bank

It seems everyone these days is talking about how to green their business.

A handfull of small businesses in the Las Vegas Valley have taken it a step further, making their operations carbon neutral.

The economic impact of these moves is questionable. Recent national surveys of consumers found that green marketing is seen by most as a gimmick. But in some industries, going green can pay off. Read more:

Technorati Tags: Stephanie Tavares, In Business Las Vegas, Las Vegas, Las Vegas Cyclery, Escape Adventures, Jared Fisher, Heather Fisher, Sustainable Travel International, Energy Star, Annette Bubak, Astoria Homes, NCET, Nevada’s Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology, Steve Marcus