Release Date: Friday, August 22, 2003

TERRY MBAs JOIN MOOT CORP ORGANIZERS AS GUESTS OF HONOR AT NASDAQ MARKET OPENING CEREMONIES IN NEW YORK CITY

ATHENS, Ga. — Less than four months after graduating, a team of MBAs from the University of Georgia's Terry College of Business will be guests of honor at the Monday, August 25, opening of the NASDAQ stock market in New York.

Matthew Ferris, Bruce Black, Doug Ghertner and Kerry Moher all graduated from the Terry College's 11-month MBA program on May 9. Their invitation to open the day of trading at the NASDAQ stock exchange resulted from their grand prize victory at the 20th annual MOOT CORP competition held at the University of Texas last May.

Ferris, Black, Ghertner and Moher won the $100,000 competition with their business plan for manufacturing and marketing the KidSmart Vocal Smoke Detector, a patented combination smoke detector-digital voice recorder. With a unique product, a rock-solid plan and a well-rehearsed sales pitch, the Terry College entrepreneurs beat 29 other teams from among the world's top business schools.

"We're excited and honored," said Ferris. "It's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity." As president and CFO, respectively, Ferris and Black are the only team members currently working full-time to bring the KidSmart smoke detector to market. Moher founded his own consulting firm back in his home country of Canada, and Ghertner is working for Caremark, a Chicago healthcare services company.

Ferris, Black and Ghertner will be in New York for the NASDAQ ceremony, along with Dr. Gary Cadenhead, director of the MOOT CORP program at the University of Texas at Austin.

Plans currently call for KidSmart to begin taking orders for the Vocal Smoke Detectors at the 2004 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas next January. Ferris said they also will roll out the product via nationwide infomercial and magazine ad campaigns. Also in the works are distribution agreements for Australia and Japan, with a planned rollout in Western Europe in 2004.

MOOT Corp started at the University of Texas in 1984 and has become the world's oldest and largest intercollegiate business plan competition. Teams compete with each other to convince venture capitalist judges to fund their ventures. They are judged on the quality of their business ideas, the strength of the management team, and the clarity and persuasiveness of their written plans and oral presentations. BusinessWeek magazine once dubbed MOOT CORP "the Super Bowl of world business plan competitions."

KidSmart's Vocal Smoke Detector 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 VSDs, 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 KidSmart 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, Charles Hofer, who is the Terry College's Regents Professor of Strategic Management and Entrepreneurship and faculty advisor for UGA's business plan teams. It was Hofer who connected Routman with then-MBA candidates Ferris, Black, Ghertner and Moher.

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 to prevent a recurrence of the feat. In 2002, a Terry College team called Aqua Vitae Enterprises finished second overall.

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