DFJ and Cisco Global Business Plan Competition

Riskmasters

DFJ is dedicated to the entrepreneurs who set out to change the world. Their passion and drive advance our society, improve our lives, and create employment and wealth for all of us. DFJ entrepreneurs are some of the most successful we have encountered, but there are so many more who are out there risking their careers, their financial stability, and their social lives for the good of our world.

We at Draper Fisher Jurvetson have been investing in start ups now for over 20 years, and our industry is forever fascinating and full of wonder. The people we meet are extraordinary, driven by some injustice or difficulty or opportunity in the world, and they often create from nothing a way for their customers to improve their lives. The blood, sweat and tears they shed are all for the good of their cause, and any success they achieve is rightly theirs.

The visions and products we see through the eyes of entrepreneurs can be as simple as Hotmail's free email, Skype’s free Internet phone service, or Overture's pay for performance search. Or, they can be beyond the imaginations of science fiction writers, as in the case of Theranos' human-prescription feedback mechanism or D-Wave's quantum computer. Whatever their effect, they all become a part of the human experience, our culture and our lives. It just keeps getting better.

Change will come to our lives faster and faster with the continued exponential development of communications and information technologies, the melting of geographic barriers, and the improvement in governmental freedoms. Eventually, everyone will be able to exercise the creativity of the entrepreneur, and from the unleashing of their minds, we all benefit.

But it is only those who make the sacrifices, who keep their eyes on the mission, who lead their teams with compassion and strength, and who ultimately wake the world to see what they have envisioned who can be called, “The Riskmasters.”

The Riskmaster Book (PDF)

The Riskmaster Song (MP3)

Congratulations to Husk Power Systems, the winner of the 2009 DFJ and Cisco Global Business Plan Competition.

DFJ's Tim Draper gives $250,000 check to winner, Husk Power Systems

Video: Tim Draper talks to Fox Business News about Husk Power Systems and the DFJ and Cisco Global Business Plan Competition.

DFJ and Cisco would like to thank all of the teams that submitted business plans for the 2009 DFJ Cisco Global Business Plan competition. We were impressed with the high quality of submissions from all around the world and the broad range of ideas and creativity behind these companies. We recognize that this was an exceptionally busy time of year for students and it can take considerable time and effort to prepare a submission. Passionate teams like yours are changing the world and we hope to continue to hear from you all in the future as your business plans turn into reality.

Our review process considered the management team, technical innovation, addressable market size, competitive positioning, barriers, capital efficiency, and financial projections. We had a difficult time selecting the top finalists.

The 16 finalists come from 6 different countries in locations as diverse as Brazil, Russia, India, China, Israel, and all across the USA. Technology and entrepreneurship have no borders; talented entrepreneurs are everywhere solving some of the world’s biggest problems and improving the way we do things. From designing improved drip irrigation systems in India, providing online entertainment for China, to creating efficient and affordable web-scale computing - these are all amazing entrepreneurs making a difference. And, they’re doing this during a time of uncertainty and fear of a global recession. We know that some of the greatest companies have been founded during recessions. History has proven it. Innovation doesn’t stop for recessions. We expect these entrepreneurs to be the founders of the next generation of game changers.

DFJ and Cisco intends to follow these 16 Finalists as they continue to grow. Check back on the DFJ website in the future to see how these teams make their impact on the world. We’ll be following these new Riskmasters.

And, for these 16 Finalists, congratulations!

Name of Company	Company Location	University	Business Plan Summary The finalist's business plan is based on technology that provides:
80 Legs	USA	Rice University	A grid computing system for running applications that need to analyze massive amounts of web content quickly and affordably.
Audiallo	USA	University of Michigan, Georgia Institute of Technology	Power-efficient, acoustic processors that improve speech perception for hearing aids.
Biological Dynamics	USA	UC San Diego	Point-of-care multi-cancer screening tool that detects early cancer biomarker directly from whole blood.
Digiceipt	USA	Cornell University	A paperless receipt solution that enables consumers to manage receipts online and provides product-level market data to consumer product companies.
DripTech	USA	Stanford University	Innovative drip irrigation systems that can be manufactured and profitably distributed to small farmers in developing countries.
Five Minutes	China	University of Southern California	Innovative online social games including Happy Farm, the number one social game in China.
Husk Power Systems	India/USA	University of Virginia, Darden School of Business	Miniature power-plants that cost-effectively convert rice husks into electricity, serving off-grid rural Indian villages.
iCore Software	Russia	Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology	OS-level virtualization software enabling multiple secure high-performance virtual machines on a Microsoft Windows desktop.
Innoz	India	LBS College of Engineering	An SMS text messaging interface for trivia and other information for 300 million Indian cell phone subscribers.
Mengtian Biotech	China	Fudan University	A fast-acting, low-cost and environmentally-friendly process for treating papermaking wastewater.
Mercardi	USA	University of Chicago, Booth School of Business	An online marketplace for the sale or exchange of unwanted gift cards.
PowerSave	Brazil	Federal University of Rio de Janeiro	An advanced smart-home technology platform to monitor and interact with appliances and the electric grid for the efficient use of energy in the home.
Properat	USA	Stanford University	Assistance for enterprise users to manage the growing volume of e-mail and to seamlessly embrace new messaging media.
Trauma Solutions	USA	University of Maryland	The first and only synthetic hemostatic material capable of simultaneously inducing blood clotting and delivering therapeutics.
Yubitech	Israel	Tel-Aviv University	A mobile thin client and server platform for migrating any software application to any smartphone, regardless of operating system and handset type.
ZeroWatt Technologies	USA	UC Irvine	A significant reduction in the power consumption of analog-to-digital converters, a key component of essential devices such as cell phones, laptops and biomedical implants.