Saturday Night
Well we are at the Hilton Americas in downtown Houston and the room looks absolutely wonderful. This is by far the best dinner the Rice Business Plan has had and facilities including the AV work from V2 Studios is also a fine example of what can be with a great local TV studio.
I noted during the ballot turn in process that the judges were quite appropriately all over the board on their thoughts 1-7. I saw some sheets that had the same groupings as mine, and some that were completely opposite. In a ranking like this, the key is not to have too many high points. Someone consistently ranked 2-3 might beat someone was 1 on some sheets and 6 or 7 on others.
The keynote speaker was Barrett Boone from the Container Store. Essentially his message was stay the course, don’t give up, or give in to others who may approach you to buy you out, etc. If you want to do it, and you have a passion stay with your ideas. Appropriate for the audience that we had.
At my table were the two principals from BYU (which happened to be one of the finalists this evening). Their product Precision Surveying is a company that has some minor revenues but is building fast. I spoke to them about contacting one of the numerous bankers in the room about getting an SBA loan to take the company bigger. In fact during their presentation they said they didn’t need money, they were looking for a strategic partner to take them to the next level.
Also at the PKF table were:
Russ Capper of The Business Makers Radio Show
Laura Capper of CAP Resources
Joe Trahan and his wife of 1-Service
Deborah Mansfield of the HTC
Jagdip Ahluwalia,Executive Director of the Indo American Chamber of Commerce of Greater Houston
I hope all you had a great time as well.
Well the winners were announced and I have to tell you that it came down to SteriCoat from MIT and ResuRx from John Hopkins. And the winner of the first place $120,000 cash award is………………..
ResuRx from John Hopkins.
Talk about your upsets, ResuRx didn’t even win their flight but they came through the WildCard round and won! Just like in pro sports, the Wild Card can win and sometimes does!