Release Date: Monday, April 28, 2003

TERRY MBAs TIE FOR SECOND PLACE AT CARROT CAPITAL COMPETITION; WIN MEANS UP TO $500,000 IN SEED MONEY FOR FLEDGLING COMPANY

ATHENS, Ga. — A team of MBA students from the University of Georgia's Terry College of Business are one step closer to realizing their goal of running their own company after winning second place and the promise of $500,000 in seed money at the 2003 Carrot Capital Business Plan Competition April 26 in Manhattan.

With less than two weeks left until they graduate, Matthew Ferris, Bruce Black, Doug Ghertner and Kerry Moher hope the plan they've devised for manufacturing and marketing the KidSmart Vocal Smoke Detector will carry the day in one more contest — the 20th annual 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 KidSmart team was picked to be among the 20 teams who attended the Carrot Capital Competition from a pool of 746 teams that applied hoping for a share of $3 million in venture capital to help launch their companies.

A team representing Princeton University (whose three-member team included only one student) won the grand prize of up to $1 million in funding with their plan for manufacturing and marketing cost-effective, organic bio-fungicide and fertilizer.

KidSmart's business plan was for the manufacture and marketing of the KidSmart Vocal Smoke Detector, a combination smoke detector and tape recorder patented by Smart Safety Systems Inc. They tied for second with a team from the University of California-Berkeley, whose business designs and markets upscale women's clothing manufactured overseas by craftspeople in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

On its way to the top in the Carrot Capital contest, KidSmart bypassed teams representing the University of Massachusetts, Northwestern (Kellogg), Georgia Tech, George Washington University, Duke University, UC-Berkeley (Haas), Harvard Business School, University of Pennsylvania (Wharton), Columbia Business School, University of Illinois, University of Texas (McCombs), UC-Irvine, and Northeastern University.

Back in Georgia after a busy weekend in New York City, the KidSmart team members said the Carrot Capital Competition was perhaps the most challenging in which they had participated.

Unlike some other competitions, the teams made their 15-minute presentations with only the judges present, then fielded 15 minutes of questions from those judges. Teams could not watch other teams' presentations to pick up hints of what to expect or what to avoid, nor did judges give any feedback on a team's performance. Those 20 presentations were videotaped. Twelve teams were picked as finalists based on the initial scoring and their tapes were reviewed to pick the winners. "It was one-shot, no feedback," said Kerry Moher. "You've got to make a huge impression."

The KidSmart team was well prepared for this sort of challenge, however, thanks to countless hours of preparation under the critical eye of Charles Hofer, the Terry College's Regents Professor of Strategic Management and Entrepreneurship and the KidSmart team's faculty advisor.

"He's the intangible the other schools don't have," said Bruce Black. Hofer analyzes, tears apart and helps teams rebuild their business plans so they're rock solid going into the competitions. Then Hofer drills the team members on every aspect of the plan, so an answer to every possible question a judge could ask has already been crafted and rehearsed. "He lives, eats and breathes this stuff," said Black.

KidSmart went into the Carrot Capital Competition fresh from winning first place in the student division of The Miami Herald's 2003 Business Plan Challenge and from taking the $10,000 cash award as runner-up in the 2003 Oregon Venture Challenge at the University of Oregon, both held earlier in April.

KidSmart president Matt Ferris said the team's successes are attributable to its intensive preparations, but it also has to do with the team's entrepreneurial spirit. "At the end of the day, the judges believe we can sell this product to people," Ferris said. 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.

KidSmart's second-place finish at Oregon qualified them for a spot to compete at MOOT CORP, where the winning team gets a $100,000 "bridge loan" to help start their venture, as well as the bragging rights that go along with besting teams from the world's finest business schools.

In 1998, Terry College MBAs not only won first place at MOOT CORP, they also had three other teams in the competition, leading contest organizers to change the rules to limit universities to no more than two invitations. In 2002, Terry's Aqua Vitae Enterprises team finished second.

Team member Doug Ghertner said this record of performance is giving the Terry College of Business a reputation among the other schools that compete regularly in these business plan competitions. "The coaches tell their teams, 'Terry's going to be here and they're going to be tough. They're always tough,'" Ghertner said.

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