Awarded by: International Business Plan Competition-University of San Francisco
Five MBA students won praise from Silicon Valley movers and shakers after putting their entrepreneurial skills to the test against tough opposition in California. Alice Yeung, Becky So, Cherry Lu, Suki Chan and Wendy Kam took third place in the highly-competitive University of San Francisco 2004 International Business Plan Competition when 25 semi-finalists met there to battle it out.
The judging panel included over 50 venture capitalists and executives from top flight companies such as Microsoft, McKinsey and Nokia. More than 150 graduate student teams from 100 universities in 18 countries originally took part.
The HKUST team came away with the Microsoft Technology Pioneer Award after being told their business plan was "brilliant" and their presentation was "strong, well-organized and cohesive." The financial portion was said to be "great, with a good level of detail." University of Pennsylvania MicroMRI were the overall winners.
The team proposal involved the use of technical innovations to provide seamless wireless and mobile internet access through both 3G and Wifi technology, using an adaptor and a SIM card. It took them less than two months to prepare their presentation, prototype and display.
This was the first competition of its kind for the five students who this year will be taking different courses in finance, China business and marketing either in exchange schools or in Hong Kong. But they have already mentored an undergraduate team developing proposals for a business plan competition sponsored by Goldman Sachs and they plan to enter more contests themselves in the near future.
In the meantime, they have said thank you to the School by donating their prize to the MBA office.