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A recent estimate for the total global freshwater is 35,000,000 cubic kilometers. Sounds like a lot right? Not quite. Humans depend on freshwater to survive, but unfortunately it only accounts for 2.5% of the Earth’s total water volume. Geophysicists and climatologists maintain that changes in climate conditions and stresses on water supply from overconsumption of groundwater resources and population growth will bring 45% of the world’s population below the Basic Water Requirement (BWR) by 2050. Water supply is difficult to adjust because renewable freshwater sources such as rain and groundwater are highly variable with respect to meteorological and geographical factors. Currently, households and farmers are consuming freshwater at rates that are below the sustainable yield.

The scientific facts beg the fearsome question: will the world run out of water? Environmental entrepreneurs would like to think the answer is no. A University of Ottawa student’s desalination process to extract drinking water from seawater took the $10,000 top prize this week at the Eastern Ontario Technology Venture Challenge competition. Large-scale desalination typically requires large amounts of energy as well as specialized, expensive infrastructure, making it very costly compared to the use of fresh water from rivers or groundwater, but founder Mohammed Rasool Qtaishat (pictured right) claims that his technology is more efficient and cost effective than competing desalination technologies. His startup Water For All, has already obtained funding including $286,000 in from the Middle East Desalination Research Center in Oman. (more…)

Aaron Belsh of PhatDeals recently informed us of the winners of the UCSB Technology Management Program New Venture Competition. A total of $25,000 was distributed to five winners in different categories. Taking “Most Fundable Idea” and “Dow Materials Use” categories ($10,000 and $5,000, respectively) this year was Nitride Solutions, a startup developing products used for fabrication of ultraviolet LEDs. These LEDs are sold to companies needing to sterilize medical devices or doing biological detection. The team of student entrepreneurs is comprised of Troy Baker, who is doing postdoctoral work in materials engineering, and David Pricco, who is finishing an undergraduate degree in business economics.

The award for “Best Business Plan” ($4,000) went to Green Pieces, a modular green-home building company that purportedly reduces costs by 15 percent and construction waste by 40 percent while allowing a home to be built in half the normal time. The company has already obtained $500K in funding. Green Pieces, which also won the Audience Choice award ($2,000), is led by Kelly Schmandt who is getting her masters in the Bren School of Environmental Science and Managment at UCSB.

Finally, InFlowMed, led in part by mechanical engineer Alex Williams, took home “Best Pitch” ($4,000) and split the Audience choice award. The company makes software that prevents harmful drug interactions by checking prescriptions quickly for doctors at “point of care” in hospitals. They’re planning to develop their product on EMR (Electronic Medical Record) devices.

All of these companies are incredibly impressive and I look forward to learning more details about their operations and future plans. I’ve been in touch with most of the founders so look out for full profile pieces with more details this week!

We are in the process of forming a partnership with VenturePORT and talking with their project manager, Tracy Buzzell. VenturePORT is a resource and networking site for entrepreneurs as well as a major sponsor for the The Extreme Entrepreneurship Tour. Right now they are hosting a video elevator pitch competition in which winners take home an iPhone as the grand prize or a $100 gift certificate for sending them an email of your success story to contest@ventureport.org. For more on the details, go here.

Tracy wrote about our interaction and the importance of collaboration in the web 2.0 and business world in general. Partnerships have played a crucial role in the success and growth of College Mogul and believe that they are crucial for any business. Businesses are able to leverage each other’s efforts, form synergies, and catalyze innovation. If you are interested in forming a partnership with College Mogul, send us an email at submit@collegemogul.com. I agree with Tracy’s points, here is what he had to say: (more…)

iViz is a network security company founded by two IIT-Kharagpur alumni. They provide technology which enables organizations to strengthen their networks against hackers and intruders. Their patented software uses AI to simulate a hacker’s penetration techniques and eliminate human errors. The founder’s Bikash and Nilanjan developed the technology as a project on network security in IIT. When they saw the potential of a business in their project, they entered various business plan competitions to raise initial funds. Bikash also sold some of his paintings to fund their business.

I had the opportunity to talk to Bikash after he had won Conquest-2006, which was a business plan competition held at BITS-Pilani. While I couldn’t make much sense of his technology, I was inspired by his passion and vision. A few days after winning Conquest he incorporated iViz and began taking projects from companies. In a year he won UC-Berkeley’s Technology Challenge and also London Business School’s Asia technology venture competition. Recently Business Today put them in their annual top 10 Indian startups list. (more…)

Covalent Solar may hold the key to increasing efficiency and cost effectiveness of solar energy. They just won the $20,000 MIT Student Team Award at the MIT Clean Energy Entrepreneurship Prize as well as another $10,000 the following day in the MIT $100k Business Plan Competition. Their simple, yet powerful idea is derived from concentrating sunlight onto smaller surface area rather than collecting it over a broader surface such as current solar panels. Their “Organic Solar Concentrators” look exactly like a quarter inch thick neon green piece of glass. However, the technology captures the light from the surfaces, redirects, and concentrates the light on the outer brim. The benefit comes from being able to create smaller photoelectric converters to turn the concentrated light on the brim into energy instead of large surface areas of solar panels such as the ones you are probably familiar with. (more…)

Over the past 18 years, the MIT $100k Business plan competition has given birth to over 85 companies that amount to over $10 billion in market cap and produce an aggregate exit value of $2.5 billion! It’s no wonder that BusinessWeek has labeled it “the most acclaimed business competition.” Over 1,000 people participating in over 250 teams this year that were narrowed down to 7 finalists. We would like to congratulate Diagnostics For All for taking home the grand prize of $100,000 and CovalentSolar with taking the Audience Award of $10,000.

I just attended the reception and awards ceremony last night and have to say that it was a remarkably inspiring event with companies providing solar energy solutions, cyber security, mobile applications, and ventures that aim to bring health care to third world countries. It’s not only inspiring to see such innovative ideas, but ones that actually have the potential to solve some of the world’s biggest problems. Competitions like these that aid entrepreneurs are not only crucial for entrepreneurs themselves, but are crucial in expediting the commercializing of new technologies and innovation developed in the labs of these institutions. The gathering of these world-class entrepreneurs, investors, and potential investors, creates a unique environment that catalyzes the growth of companies that can open up new job opportunities for thousands of people. The companies that have sprung from MIT have already produced over 2,500 jobs. This might not have been possible without the $600 million dollars in Venture Capital funding that the event help to garner.

Diagnostics For All has a unique technology that has tremendous potential for social impact in health management care. Their service revolves around a simple piece of litmus type paper that is able to diagnose patients for certain diseases by exposing the paper to a drop of blood. Depending on whether the patient has a certain disease or is healthy, the paper will turn a certain color. This makes it easy for any person in third world countries to diagnose patients without needing expensive equipment. It is a big idea because it provides a simple, easy and cheap method for a problem that is currently difficult, inefficient, and expensive. By providing this revolutionary technology the non-profit diagnostic company will provide health care agencies and commercial organizations with a new generation of point-of-care tools to address the diagnostic and clinical management needs of the global medical community. Diagnostics For All may begin to bridge the gap between the difference in health care options and services in the developed world and third world countries through affordability and immediate feasibility.

For those of us who’ve been tearing our hair out trying to keep track of what our politicians believe in order to make an informed voting decision, VoteGopher.com has been nothing short of a godsend. The brainchild of rising Harvard senior Will Ruben ‘09, VoteGopher was the Grand Prize winner in this year’s i3 Harvard College Innovation Challenge. The site provides visitors with a comprehensive, yet simple set of tools to research all of the main candidates’ stances on…just about everything.

For each of 16 major political issues, from healthcare to foreign policy, the website provides a clear and concise “Issue Summary”, as well as a summary of each major candidate’s stances and voting record on the issue. It probably sounds like a daunting task to make that much information (with news articles, videos, quotes, etc. thrown in for good measure) easy to navigate and interpret, and indeed, this has been the main failing of ambitious political summary sites in the past. But this is precisely VoteGopher’s strength: with excellent design and some very clever features (such as the ability to compare several candidates’ stances on an issue side by side), the site makes the election start to look simple.

The VoteGopher team have gotten a ton of great press these past months (from the NYTimes and Washington Post, for starters), and we can expect things to continue to ramp up as November approaches. With the buzz it’s generating, VoteGopher.com may be set to position itself as the go-to online resource for election questions.

According to Ruben, the team is facing the challenge head-on, building an entirely new platform (more…)

People were thrilled when cell phone companies rolled out built-in cameras. But now, they are about to be stunned. Shahyaan Desai, a graduate of Cornell University, is in the process of developing a high-definition micro video projector that utilizes breakthrough micro-mirror technology called Microelectromechanical Systems (MEMS), to bring a new generation of displays to market. Imagine, instead of your massive rear projection system you have projector that is no larger than a matchbox! With this type of disruptive technology, it comes as no surprise that they have been able to lock down nearly $1 million in a seed round from 6 venture capital firms as well as taking the grand prize of $100,000 last Tuesday in New York’s Creative Core Emerging Business Competition.

Although it has potential to produce an incredible device, Mezmeriz Inc. faced a big challenge of creating a market for the new technology. Offices already have large projection systems, so they looked into more ubiquitous products such as digital assistants, cell phones, and MP3 players. This still begs the question whether or not people actually need a portable HD projector. Everything is shrinking, but does everything need to be so incredibly tiny? You would think that features would be compromised; however, a recent article explains that the opposite is true:

Though small, the device can project a wide image onto a wall or fold-out screen, making a much larger image than is possible with the tiny LCD screens that come with, say, the popular Apple iPod music and video players. (more…)

For those who are avid gym goers and find it hard to track your routines, you will appreciate the idea that just recently won Ideablob.com’s $10,000 monthly challenge. As a passionate weight lifter, I have often pondered some sort of portable touch screen device that syncs with a fitness-based social networking site. Penn State student and inventor, Matt Allison, will be committing the prize money to building the product that he is aiming to have function like a virtual personal trainer that logs workouts, monitors progress, and that will even come equipped with a personal heart rate monitor. The goal is to have the device upload workouts, future advice, daily nutrition information, and progress charts from the company’s website so that the user has an interactive utility to maximize efforts and efficiency in the gym.

I completely agree with Allison and his partner, Ron Humer, who realized that many people don’t know how to properly exercise and structure routines. I still have trouble balancing and planning routines as well as planning my next steps in the gym even though I have been going and talking to people for years. If designed right, the product has potential to solve many problems. Planning and tracking routines is usually tedious and annoying to do either while working out or after returning home. Searching for the right information is also tiresome and is never readily available when you need it the most in the gym. For these reasons, a service like this could apply to seasoned lifters as well as novices.

Allison is no stranger to the entrepreneurial world; he already has another technology innovations company called M.R. Innovations Solutions, LLC. (more…)

Laurier School of Business & Economics student Christopher Carmichael won the national Wes Nicol Entrepreneurial Award in a competition against students from Acadia University, Carleton University, University of Guelph, University of Ottawa, and the University of Waterloo. His company, Campus Ink provides competitively priced ink cartridge refills, using a portion of the proceeds ($1 per refill) to invest in businesses in developing countries through Kiva.

Campus Ink, currently at seven colleges in Canada, refills cartridges up to 10 times fasting than current refilling processes that can take up to 30 minutes. The unique process consists of sonic sound cartridge head cleaning and a delicate refilling method that amounts to only a few minutes of your time. Refilling ink cartridges is an eco-friendly alternative to disposing of them in landfills where they take up to 450 years to decompose. Campus Ink’s site reports that in North America alone 350 million cartridges are tossed into landfills annually.

Campus Ink is not without competitors; many large companies refill and provide a broader service offering. The college startup is competing on price, time and location. It can offer lower prices because (more…)