Release Date: Thursday, April 24, 2003

UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA MBAs HEADED TO NEW YORK FOR $3 MILLION CARROT CAPITAL BUSINESS PLAN COMPETITION

ATHENS, Ga. — Fresh from winning first place in The Miami Herald's 2003 Business Plan Challenge, a team of University of Georgia MBA students are off to Manhattan to pit their business plan against those of other MBAs from the nation's top business schools. The prize: a share of $3 million in venture capital to help launch their company.

Matthew Ferris, Bruce Black, Doug Ghertner and Kerry Moher of UGA's Terry College of Business devised a plan for manufacturing and marketing the KidSmart Vocal Smoke Detector, a combination smoke detector and tape recorder patented by Smart Safety Systems Inc.

As winners in the Herald contest's student division, the KidSmart team was invited to be among the guests of honor at an April 30 luncheon in Miami, but they won't be attending. They'll be in Manhattan instead, one of 20 teams selected from 746 applicants to compete in the Carrot Capital Business Plan Challenge. The top 10 teams will share $3 million in funding from Carrot Capital LLC, New York-based venture capital firm that invests in seed and early stage businesses. The grand prizewinners also get to ring the opening bell at the NASDAQ stock market.

The Miami Herald's Business Plan Challenge, a competition began in 1999, received about a dozen entries in its student category. Judges evaluated all entries on the originality of their ideas, but also looked at financing, market analysis, management team and startup costs.

Members of the judging panel included Mary Partin, CEO of the Dan Marino Foundation; Peter W. Roulhac, vice president, Wachovia National Bank of Miami-Dade County and chairman-elect of the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce; Marielena Villamill, president of Washington Economics Group; Jorge Salazar-Carrillo, professor and director of the Center for Economic Research and Education at Florida International University; and Jonathan Cole, managing partner at Edwards and Angell.

Ferris, Black, Ghertner and Moher also finished first among U.S. teams and second overall in the 2003 Oregon Venture Challenge hosted earlier in April by the University of Oregon. In addition to a $10,000 cash prize for second place, the KidSmart team also beat out the field of 19 schools to take home another $1,000 by winning the contest's "Elevator Pitch" competition.

The product the KidSmart team is marketing was invented to solve a problem only recently recognized by fire safety experts and researchers. Children experience deeper R.E.M. sleep patterns than adults and often are not awakened by the piercing alarms of conventional smoke detectors. They are awakened consistently by the sound of a parent's voice calling their name, however. The KidSmart Vocal Smoke Detectors, each with a non-removable, 10-year lithium battery, allow parents to record a set of escape instructions customized to a child's home.

Brent Routman, one of the inventors of the KidsSmart VSD, is a Minnesota patent attorney who used to work as an administrator in UGA's School of Law. Looking for a way to build a management team for his company quickly and economically, he contacted a former UGA acquaintance, Dr. Charles Hofer, who is the Terry College's Regents Professor of Entrepreneurship and the KidSmart team's faculty advisor.

Matt Ferris, the president of KidSmart Corp., said he and his team hope to have the smoke detectors on retail store shelves by the end of the year. Before entering the Terry MBA program, Ferris was a vice president of business development with GE Capital Corp. He and his teammates are all graduating from the Terry College's 11-month MBA program on May 8 and all intend to be working for KidSmart full-time within the next two years.

The Kid Smart team's second-place finish at Oregon qualified them for a spot to compete in the 20th annual global MOOT CORP Competition May 1-3 in Austin, Texas, a contest BusinessWeek magazine refers to as the "Super Bowl of World Business Plan Competitions." The winning MOOT CORP team gets a $100,000 "bridge loan" to help start their new business, as well as the bragging rights that go along with besting student teams from the finest business schools in the world.

In 1998, Terry College MBAs not only won first place at MOOT CORP, they also had three other teams in the competition, a performance which lead contest organizers to change the rules limiting universities to no more than two invitations. In 2002, a Terry College team called Aqua Vitae Enterprises finished second overall.

Ferris said the many competitions the KidSmart team has entered have been extremely valuable in honing the fine points of his company's business plan and their presentations. Time is money, as the old adage goes, so venture capitalists understandably want to hear the bottom line quickly.

"It's really helped us make our plan concise," said Ferris. "We can outline what it is and how it will work in just a few minutes."

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