Congratulations to the 2010 Winners of the 6th Annual Intel+UC Berkeley Technology Entrepreneurship Challenge
First Place - $25,000 Prize
OsComp Systems from Pontificia Universidad Católica Madre y Maestra in the Dominican Republic: OsComp Systems (OCS) has invented a breakthrough, patent-pending technology that reduces operating and capital costs for natural gas compression by over 30%. Compression costs affect the entire natural gas supply chain from wellheads all the way to the end user. Worldwide, natural gas compressors consume more than USD200 billion in fuel/electricity and generate more than 340 million tons of CO2 each year. Sales of natural gas compressors is a USD7.2 billion per year market (2010) and is expected to grow more than 8.7% per year for the next decade. OCS makes marginal gas wells profitable once again, and increases the margins from already profitable ones. Compression is needed at the wellhead to enhance production, among other uses. OCS has confirmed that packagers and leasing fleet operators are willing to adopt our technology after successful field trials and long-term durability projections.
Second Place - $10,000 Prize
Magoosh from the Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley: Magoosh is disrupting the three billion dollar test preparation market with personalized test preparation delivered through videos on any device. Magoosh is different in its mode of teaching: students learn through short-form videos that deliver content according to each student’s strengths and weaknesses. The key benefits to the student are effectiveness (the personalized videos create an experience that is like having a personal tutor on demand), convenience (since the student can learn anywhere, anytime, on any device), and affordability (since Magoosh costs a fraction of the thousand dollars or more than is normally spent on a class). Magoosh product sales have exceeded ten thousand dollars in each month over September and October of 2010. Students from over one hundred and fifty countries have learned with Magoosh products
Third Place - $5,000 Prize
ADTELLIGENCE from University of Mannheim, Germany: ADTELLIGENCE provides the leading advertising targeting platform for the social web. Social networks, Web 2.0 sites, and social web providers can monetize their platforms more effectively by using their members’ real interests, demographics, and geographic information —matching them with the most relevant ads—all within a fully automated closed-loop marketing process for advertisers. We unify self-service ad-booking, ultra-precise user profile targeting based on real data, payment, monitoring, analytics, and market intelligence into a fully automated SaaS solution that runs on cloud computing. Our superior targeting technology enables advertisers to precisely target their advertising and increase online shop revenues using real data from social network users or single sign-on services like Facebook, Connect, and Open Social.
People’s Choice Award - $5,000 Prize (voted on by the public after the Challenge)
Bio-oil from Tsinghua University in Ching: Bio-oil aims to promote an alternative energy source while reducing pressure on the environment. Our company produces biodiesel using various kinds of waste oil as raw materials. Not only do we solve problems arising from the disposal of waste oil, but we also provide a clean and sustainable form of energy—thus bringing valuable benefits to society. The production technology creates biodiesel and 1-2-propanediol (PDO) through a bio-enzymatic reaction. The production process is pollution free, cost saving versus traditional methods, and has a high raw material-to-end product conversion rate. Almost all animal and plant oils can be used, even waste oil. Our innovative technology also produces the chemical product PDO as a by-product that increases the profit per ton of waste oil substantially.
Link to the News Release from the Lester Center for Entrepreneurship at the Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley.
