So . . . Where Are They Now?

Thinking of entering a business plan competition? We asked the experts to give us the skinny on what's hot right now-so listen up.

• "Last year was the year of dotcoms. This year, people are still looking at ways to utilize the Internet, but they're moving away from the B2B-type industry. For the most part, we're headed back to brick-and-mortar and manufacturing. We [also] see a very strong life sciences and biotech [trend]."
  -Anne Stamer, associate director of the Wharton Business Plan Competition

• "We see a lot of teams that have a very strong technology focus and background. They're dealing with things they've worked on in labs for a number of years and are now ready to commercialize. One strong take-away from this year-and hopefully for next year-is that entrepreneurship really lives on at MIT in terms of the number of people who want to found companies and who are very confident that now is a great time to start a company."
  Elad Gil,leader/organizer of the 2001 MIT $50K Entrepreneurship Competition

• "No dotcoms and higher quality overall. [Compared to last year,] we're seeing somewhat fewer plans and a very strong emphasis on technology-based enterprises."
  -Jerome S. Engel,executive director of the Lester Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation, Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley

Contact Sourcess

• Aligo
  (415) 593-8200, www.aligo.com
• Broadcom
  777 E. Middlefield Rd., Mountain View, CA 94043, eslick@broadcom.com
• Haas School of Business
  www.haas.berkeley.edu/groups/lester.html
• MIT $50K Entrepreneurship Competition
  50k-core@mit.edu , http://50k.mit.edu
• Skyflow
  (877) 9-SKYFLO, www.skyflow.com
• Wharton School of Business
  (215) 898-4589, stamer@wharton.upenn.edu

This article was originally published in the September 2001 print edition of Entrepreneur with the headline: So . . . Where Are They Now?.