Need Your Support

We just entered an elevator pitch competition at MIT, but to get to the finals we need your help. The link below will take you to a YouTube page with a video of our elevator pitch. Click on the link and "like" the video. If we get the most "likes" we win.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrTQs68cGb0

Hurry, we only have a couple of days. Tell all your friends to "like" it too. Thank you for your support.

Walmart Update

We didn't make it to the finals of the Walmart Competition.  However, we will be presenting our elevator pitch.  It's great if you haven't seen it, you should definitely come check it out.  We'll be presenting around 1:00 pm.

In case you haven't seen it, here's a video of Pree, our CMO, delivering the elevator pitch.

Quick Update

We have been very busy lately. Catching up on classes and competing in competitions.  When I last wrote we had just finished up Governor's Cup.  Well we won, we took the top spot in every event we competed in: 1st place overall graduate level, 1st place agriculture track, and 1st place graduate elevator pitch.  We are undefeated in elevator pitch events.  We've won every single elevator pitch competition that we've competed in.

Last week we were down in Houston competing at the Rice Business Plan Competition.  This is one of the largest, if not the largest, business plan competitions in the world.  The University of Arkansas was very well represented at this event.  Both of our teams made the finals, which also means that both of our teams are in the top 1% of all competing teams.  Not bad, considering we are competing against the best in the world.  We placed 4th overall, while our other team TiFiber placed 6th.  The University of Arkansas is very proud of both our teams.  For making it to the finals both teams will be featured in the May 23rd issue of Fortune, this is the Fortune 500 issue.  Definitely check it out.  I have to send out a special thanks to the Fortune crew, they were fantastic.  We had lots fun with the photography crew, as well as the interviewer, Jessica Shambora.

This week we are competing in the Walmart Better Living Business Plan Competition.  We presented this morning.  We find out tonight if we made it to the finals tomorrow.  I will let you know how we do as soon as I find out.

Donald W. Reynolds Governor's Cup

Another week, another competition.  cycleWood Solutions just finished up the Donald W. Reynolds Governor's Cup.  This competition is a little different from the others we've been to.  There were no spectators, just judges.  We had a longer amount of time for our presentation, 20 minutes instead of 15.  We also don't find out if we won or not for two weeks.  We feel ok about the how we did, but we're not overly confident.  The two top teams from this competition move on to the Tri-state Competition in Las Vegas.  We are hoping to grab one of those two spots.  The first place prize here is $20,000.  That would be a nice little investment for our start-up.  There will be a luncheon on April 20 to announce the winners.  That's when we'll also have the elevator pitch competition.  The Governor will be on hand to cheer us on.  It should be kind of a big deal.

While we were in Little Rock, we sat down and had a conversation with the Arkansas Secretary of State.  He's a pretty sharp fellow himself.  The conversation was interesting.  We talked about our business, politics, and economics.  The entire staff in the capital building was very welcoming.  We got a tour and talked to several people along the way.  This was all arranged by our Chief Business Development Officer, Jack Avery, who is also an elected constable.

Next week we are headed back down to Houston to compete in the Rice Competition which has over $1,000,000 in prizes.  It's also one of the toughest competitions.  Over 500 teams applied, but only 42 teams were accepted.  The University of Arkansas has two teams accepted, us and TiFiber. 

O' Canada

This past weekend we were in Canada, Winnipeg to be exact, for the Stu Clark Investment Competition.  We won two prizes.  We won the Royal Bank of Canada Challenge Round, winning $2,000, and we also won the elevator pitch, winning a $2,000 dinner.

The dinner was an amazing experience.  It was a five course meal with five wines paired up by a sommelier.  The dinner included a 7 lb lobster that was probably 100 years old, a rack of lamb, ribs, filet mignon, New York strip, Vietnamese tiger prawns, a couple salad dishes, wild mushrooms, carpaccio, creme brule, chocolate cheesecake, and blueberry bread pudding.  There were some other items, but that's all I can remember.  Needless to say we were quite full afterwards.

The experience in Winnipeg was great, we met some great folks up there.  We invited the keynote speaker to come down to Fayetteville this Fall and he agreed.  The advice and feedback we receive is so much more valuable than the actual monetary prizes.  We formally decided to move forward with cycleWood Solutions, LLC.  This is a huge step for us.  We are working with the our Chemistry and Chemical Engineering departments to develop a prototype.

Another piece of good news we received over the weekends is that we have been extended an at-large berth into the Venture Labs (formerly Moot Corp) competition.  So we'll be headed down to Austin in the beginning of May.

Next up for us is Arkansas Governor's Cup.  We'll be headed down to Little Rock Thursday morning.  We present Thursday afternoon and Friday morning.  Wish us luck.

cycleWood Solutions Wins Again

We just got back from the Venture Challenge at San Diego State.  The atmosphere out there was electric due to the success of the basketball team.  The weather was also nice and traffic was not as bad as I had imagined.  San Diego seems like a great place to live.  Maybe cycleWood Solutions will put our headquarters there.  That would be nice.  The beach was great, but the water was a little cold.

So how did we do in the competition?  We won the Green Award for being the best Green team.  We also placed third overall.  It was a busy couple of days for us.  We were the first to present Thursday morning at 8:00am.  Needless to say, we were not on our "A" game.  However, we did well enough to go to the Wild Card round.  There were four tracks and the winner of each track went to the finals, second place teams in each track went to the Wild Card round.  We had to turnaround and present again Thursday afternoon.  We made some adjustments to our presentation based on the judges feedback from the first round.  This definitely helped us win the Wild Card round and move on to the finals.  In the final round we presented last.  This gave us time to practice in the morning.  The presentation was recorded and will be posted on Youtube at some point.

We have a week off for Spring break, which will be spent on revising the business plan some and working on the presentation for Manitoba.  We'll be headed up to Winnipeg next Wednesday.  This will be the start of a grueling stretch of four competitions in a row.  While the competitions are definitely exciting, they also wear us out.  Our endurance will be tested.

First and Last Midterm

Yesterday I took my first and last midterm of the semester.  I suppose that's one of the benefits of taking a couple extra classes over the past year.  The test was in Strategic Management.  Overall it wasn't too bad.  There were a few tricky questions, but nothing unexpected.  The semester is moving along pretty quickly.  Spring break is just around the corner.  Our entrepreneurship team is headed to San Diego Thursday for our next competition.  We have a week off for Spring break then we are off to Manitoba.

Graduation is only a couple months away.  I can't believe it's almost over.  We just had our Spring social last night.  The turnout was good so there should be a reserve of great Walton MBA graduates coming in the future.  To all those currently in the program I say, enjoy your time here it'll be over before you know it.  That first semester was very busy to say the least, but we all learned a lot about business and about each other.  I've got some big decisions to make here in the next couple months.  I'll keep you all posted as I try to figure out my next move.