The University of Texas

Welcome to Austin, Texas! It seems to be true that everything is bigger here from the hotel room to the food (including a bacon sundae but that's probably a story for another time) to the site of today's meeting the 423 acre University of Texas.

I met with Gary Cadenhead, the Director of the Master of Science in Technology Commercialisation (MSTC) Program and former director of the world famous MOOT CORP competition from 1992 until 2005.

This was a whirlwind meeting and we discussed a wide range of things related to young entrepreneurs. For this blog entry I will focus on a few key items relating to the evolution of Moot Corp. For those that have not come across Moot Corp in the past here are a few sentence from their web page:

"The Global Venture Labs Investment Competition (formerly Moot Corp) is considered the pioneer of business plan competitions. The competition attracts students from universities around the world including Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Colombia, France, Germany, Great Britain, Mexico, Sweden, Norway and Thailand.

Started at The University of Texas at Austin by Master of Business Administration students in 1984, the Venture Labs Investment Competition is the oldest new venture competition in the world. The competition provides graduate students with a chance to simulate the process of raising venture capital."

As mentioned in the text above, if you visit http://www.mootcorp.org/ one of the first things you will see is the change of name to 'Venture Labs Investment Competition'. The original competition was based around moot court used to train legal students but the business planning competition has gone beyond being just a training exercise. Many successful companies have launched from the competition hence the new brand and positioning.

The scope of the competition has increased beyond the engineering and MBA students to any University student. Many of the new technologies ready for commercialisation come from other departments and this was a logical progression.

Past graduates are welcomed back to run workshops and speak at events. They pass on their experience and show current students what is possible. Personal relationships play a big part in keeping in contact with Alumni. The power of a good alumni relationship is a recurring theme in my meetings, there is real power there and geat benefits to everyone involved.

Another very brief tast of the meeting. I have almost filled my note book and need to pick up another!