Biz students cut teeth in Vegas at Governor’s Cup
The Journal Record
5/15/2008

LAS VEGAS – Kim Saylor didn’t expect that in her last year as an undergraduate student at the University of Oklahoma she would be well on her way toward launching her first company.Wednesday, she and her teammates were pitching their Nantiox business plan to experienced executives in Las Vegas, competing against several other, equally driven groups from three states for a top award of up to $25,000.

That money would go a long way toward helping them bring the Nantiox retinal disease treatment out of testing and to market, she said.“It’s something different every time we work on it,” Saylor said.

She said the business development process has been a surprise and a challenge.“We never could have expected what we’ve done this year and how far we’ve come,” Saylor said. “We’ve really enjoyed competing in the Governor’s Cup, and every step of the way we were very grateful to keep moving forward. But we feel like we have a very strong technology and a strong plan, and we definitely feel very competitive.”

Four graduate and undergraduate student teams from Oklahoma are competing this week against a like number from Arkansas and Nevada for the Donald W. Reynolds Tri-State Award, the final step in the annual Governor’s Cup Collegiate Business Plan Competition.

The event is hosted by the nonprofit, venture-promoting i2E agency in Oklahoma and the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation, named for an Oklahoma City entrepreneur who died in 1993. The combined investment and prize money for the three preliminary state competitions and the final in Las Vegas is estimated at more than $1 million annually, officials said.

The competition’s goal is to simulate the real-world process of entrepreneurs creating business plans to soliciting startup funds from potential investors.

Students involved in this competition gain access to networks of successful entrepreneurs, lenders and investors, team-building opportunities, business planning skills, and media exposure.

“One of the keys to this tri-state competition is bringing all of you here together so that you can meet one another, get some new ideas from one another, and just enjoy this time,” foundation President Steve Anderson told competitors Tuesday. “This competition has economic benefits for the individual states, but our primary interest is in all of the individuals in this room. ... We want you to learn what it means to be an entrepreneur and hopefully be successful in that, but we’re primarily interested in your education.”

In the first three years of the Oklahoma competition, the cup has attracted entries from 19 college campuses statewide, involving more than 100 innovative ideas.Each team usually has three to eight members, including a faculty advisor.

In the case of Nantiox, the developer of the technology is James McGinnis, a professor at the OU Health Sciences Center. Their faculty advisor is Lloyd Hildebrand, an ophthalmic plastic surgeon and chief medical officer at Inoveon Corp.

Saylor and team leader Valerie Myers said Nantiox is an early-stage biotechnology company based on the development of cerium oxide nanoparticles called nanoceria, smaller than a fraction of the width of a strand of hair.

Nanoceria is used to treat oxidative stress that leads to retinal diseases such as retinitis pigmentosa, diabetic retinopahty, and AIDS-related macular degeneration – a blinding condition that afflicts Saylor’s great-grandmother.

“Not only have we done this business plan, but we have also negotiated a memorandum of understanding that will form the basis for the licensing agreement between the university and the company for the use of the nanoceria particles,” Saylor said.

“We’ve just submitted an SBTTR, a Small-Business Technology Transfer Research grant. And we’re kind of in continual development toward securing other grants and funding. ”So win or lose in Vegas, the Nantiox experience has been reward enough, the women said. “We’re excited to be here and play a part in this competition,” said Myers.

The other undergraduate finalist team is also from OU: SyntheSized Nano Coatings LLC, which has a patented, nanotechnology fabric-enhancing treatment for cotton.This year’s graduate student finalist teams and their representative schools are Perpetual Pharmaceuticals, which revolutionizes drug delivery systems such as a unique injectable insulin to effectively manage blood glucose, OU; and RedVault, a hardware encryption device for document imaging machines, University of Tulsa.

The judges of Wednesday’s presentations include Gregory J. Edwards, executive at Oklahoma City-based Mesa Capital Partners and chairman of CASS Holdings LLC; and Gary L. Nelson, chairman of the Nelson Foundation, former chief executive of Advanced Financial Solutions and founder of Shryk LLC in Oklahoma City.

Editor’s note: In the interest of full disclosure, it should be noted that reporter Brian Brus was invited to attend the competition at the expense of i2e.

The Journal Record

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