Dr. Lauren Lebeau (far right), Xenia Kachur (far left), Dung Nguyen and Dennis Maiocchi of Pathostat, LLC were recipients of the $50,000 cash award for placing first in the 11th Annual Tulane Business Plan Competition. The University of Arizona team are developers of a patent-pending medical device for use during cancer surgery which enables the surgical oncology team to precisely excise and assess cancerous tissue.
The competition was held Friday, April 8th in Goldring/Woldenberg Hall II of the A. B. Freeman School of Business. A total of 76 applications were submitted from Canada, China, Spain, Thailand and the United States.
The Tulane Business Plan competition is the first of its kind to require that the business model of each plan must have a conscious capitalism focus in order to be eligible for entry. A conscious capital business is one that has a higher purpose that moves beyond maximizing profits and whose focus is to optimize the value of all stakeholders, which include employees, shareholders, customers, suppliers and the community alike. There were two intensive rounds of judging before the final round of competition.
The final round consisted of three teams that were allowed 15 minutes to present and 15 minutes for Q&A. Final round participants were Tulane University team members Jennifer Schnidman Medbery and Eric Gallagher (MBA ’12) with Drop the Chalk; Massachusetts Institute of Technology team members Pedro T. Santos, Jeremy Pitts and Emmanuel Magani of OsComp; and University of Arizona team members Xenia Kachur and Dr. Laura Lebeau with Pathostat LLC. Drop the Chalk team members created a web-based software that enables teachers to use data to improve student performance in the classroom and OsComp Systems team members invented a patent-pending compression technology that reduces operating and capital costs of compression use by over 30%.
The winners of the competition were announced at the Tulane Council of Entrepreneurs Award Gala, which was held later that evening at the Audubon Tea Room. Also announced that evening were the winners of the Domain Companies competition.
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2011 Tulane Business Plan Competition.