“Everyone knows that if you got into this competition you’ve got some legitimacy.”
Winners TNG Pharmaceuticals with Venture Labs Director Rob Adams
Global Venture Labs Investment Competition (formerly Moot Corp) began on May4 with a lead-in by innovation guru Bob Metcalfe. He related an encounter during his first week at The University of Texas at Austin with Michael Dell, founder and CEO of Dell.
“Michael attended UT but did not graduate before founding his company, and I asked him, ‘Did you enter into any student business competitions while you were here,’ and he replied, ‘No, but I wish I had.’ So…that is confusing data.”
Metcalfe addressed the irony of having an organized university competition based on something as seemingly unbounded as the entrepreneurial process.
“I’m convinced you can teach students how to start a company,” he concluded. “The innovation environment at the university includes research professors, graduating students, scaling entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, strategic partners and early adopters. I would actually like to see more professors launching startups, and perhaps I’ll work on that.”
