BY TIMOTHY BOONE

http://theadvocate.com/news/business/5758027-123/lsu-student-businesses-share-25000 

 Advocate business writer

 April 22, 2013

 Four businesses led by LSU students, representing everything from a drink that helps prevent kidney stones to a device that monitors electrical appliance usage and shuts down outlets, participated in a competition Friday for a share of a $25,000 prize.

The LSU Student Incubator Venture Challenge was a “Shark Tank” type competition, where the student companies pitched their plans to a panel of local business leaders. Eighteen of the 44 businesses in the LSU Student Incubator submitted business plans for consideration in the competition. After two rounds, the field was whittled to four finalists.

Frosted, a gourmet cupcakes store founded by Kyle Anderman, of Baton Rouge, was the big winner, receiving a check for $8,000. A Frosted retail store at Nicholson and Lee drives has been open since Feb. 29, 2012, but Anderman plans to use the money to buy a truck so he can start a mobile cupcake business. He also wants to install a cupcake vending machine on the LSU campus.

“I want to franchise this business,” Anderman said.

Econofy, which offers a device to let people monitor their electricity usage and shut off outlets in order to lower their utility bills, was awarded $7,000. The company was founded by Lauren Lee Stuart and William Wagner, both of Baton Rouge.

“This is fantastic that they offer a competition like this,” Stuart said. She plans to use the money to help patent the Econofy technology and get computer chips made for the device.

Rock Water, a company founded by Mark Moss of Shreveport, was also awarded $7,000. Rock Water makes a doctor-formulated beverage, which helps aid in the prevention of kidney stone formation. Moss plans to use the money to pay for clinical trials of the beverage at Pennington Biomedical Research Center.

“This has been a really great opportunity,” Moss said. “I’ve been able to network with a lot of other businesses.”

Supedup Auto, a mobile vehicle cleaning and detailing service founded by Gary Shuford of Baton Rouge, was awarded $3,000. Shuford plans to use the money to buy a truck that will better promote his business and allow him to service customers better.

“This has been a positive experience,” Shuford said. “I’ve spent the past three weeks working on my business plan, learning everything I can to improve my presentation.”

Charles D’Agostino, executive director of the Louisiana Business & Technology Center, said the student incubator was formed to help combat the “brain drain” of students who graduate from LSU and leave for cities like Atlanta, Houston or Dallas.

“Once these people have created their jobs, they’re not going to leave this community,” he said. “This program has been proven to work in the two years since we have been involved.”

Two of the winner’s of last year’s Venture Challenge were LocalMed and Yellow Jacket. Local Med develops software that allows patients to schedule appointments through their computer, smartphone or tablet at any time with participating doctors and dentists. LocalMed has already raised $1.56 million in capital, moved into an office on Sherwood Forest Boulevard and plans to hire 52 employees by 2016.

Yellow Jacket, which developed a stun gun iPhone case, has moved into an office downtown and is starting to sell its products online and at Academy Sports and Outdoors.

The company sold 1,000 stun gun cases online through the crowdfunding platform Indiegogo.com, a move that brought in $100,000 for Yellow Jacket.

Frosted wins $8,000 top prize

Updated 19 hours ago | McKenzie Womack

 http://m.lsureveille.com/news/article_4c361ca2-aacb-11e2-a166-0019bb30f31a.html 

Student-made company Frosted, which sells gourmet cupcakes, won the top prize at Friday’s Venture Challenge hosted by the LSU Student Incubator.

The Student Incubator, a program of the Louisiana Business and Technology Center, is a place for students to create their jobs and businesses and hire other students, said LBTC Director Charles D’Agostino. Four students with their own businesses won a combined $25,000.

“

“We educate you, but there are no jobs here. You go where the jobs are. We lose you. We lose the income you make, the taxes and everything else. By starting the Student Incubator, we’re doing our share to eliminate this brain drain.”

All of the 44 student companies at the Student Incubator had a chance to make it to the final four, but only four can receive the money, D’Agostino said.

Kyle Anderman, the owner of Frosted, won $8,000. He hopes to buy a cupcake truck and install a cupcake vending machine on the University’s campus.

Anderman, an entrepreneurship senior, started the business in February 2012. He said they turned a profit the first year, and students have helped make the business successful.

“We’ve been super busy. The majority of our clients have been students. I just want to thank everybody,” Anderman said.

D’Agostino said the Student Incubator is helping to prevent a “brain drain.”

“We educate you, but there are no jobs here. You go where the jobs are. We lose you. We lose the income you make, the taxes and everything else. By starting the Student Incubator, we’re doing our share to eliminate this brain drain,” D’Agostino said.

Mark Moss and his company Rock Water won $7,000. Rock Water is a powder formula that can be mixed with water to help prevent kidney stones.

The majority of the money will be spent running clinical and efficacy trials at Pennington Biomedical Research Center to ensure the product’s effects will do what they say it will do, Moss said.

“The incidence of kidney stones is on the rise, primarily due to obesity. The real focus has shifted from treatment to actually preventing them, but preventive measures are not very effective. … Because of the adverse side effects, patient compliance is ridiculously low,” Moss said.

Rock Water reduces the adverse side effects but still effectively prevents the formation of kidney stones, he said.

Moss, who is graduating from the University’s Master of Business Administration program in May, said the target audience is people who have had several kidney stones.

“Once you form a kidney stone, the chance of reoccurrence is potentially up to 80 percent within 10 years. Once you’ve had multiple, you may be looking at ways of preventing them,” he said.

Lauren Stuart, a University alumna, and her business partner William Wagner also won $7,000 for their business Econofy.

Econofy is a device that lets people monitor their electricity usage and shut off outlets to lower the cost of utilities. It is also an appliance shopping guide.

Stuart said they plan to produce the first scaled prototype of the device.

“We’re hiring another incubator member that has special equipment to print out small microchips for us. We should have a little bit for a promotional video,” Stuart said.

The fourth competitor, Gary Shuford, who founded Supedup Auto, a mobile vehicle cleaning and detailing service, won $3,000.

Thirty-five companies have graduated from the Student Incubator, D’Agostino said.

“They’re staying in the area. All of those are hiring other people. It’s making an impact. We feel that in the next two or three years, the Student Incubator program might be employing 300 or 400 people. That’s 300 or 400 people who might have left the state,” he said.

LSU students pitch business ideas for startup money

By Adam Pearson

http://digbatonrouge.com/article/ready-to-hatch-6607/ 

Posted Apr 10, 2013

There are lots of ways to spend $25,000 on four separate businesses. But it’s a given that the business with the most alluring product or service will attract the most cash. That’s the concept of the second annual LSU Student Incubator Venture Challenge, which will send four entrepreneurs home with a share of $25,000 in startup capital based on creativity and potential profitability.

Assisting more than 40 student-run startups annually, the LSU Student Incubator showcases and awards its best business ideas. The two-round business competition culminates April 19 during a live 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. event at the Crowne Plaza Baton Rouge.

This year’s challengers include a powder-mix company that says its potassium citrate – when mixed with water – is the perfect elixir for preventing kidney stones, an energy efficiency technology company that says its plug-in gadgets and website will cut power bills for homeowners and businesses, a mobile car wash and vacuum service that makes house calls, and a brick and mortar cupcake store that wants to put cupcake vending machines and a cupcake truck on the streets.

Rock Water, says Mark Moss, infuses high levels of powdered potassium – a technology patented at the LSU Food Science Center – with powdered citrate to prevent kidney stones when mixed with water and consumed twice a day.

Rock Water will be an improvement on kidney stone pills that have low rates of compliance among patients, Moss says.

“It’s stone inhibiting,” he continued.

Moss says he got the idea for Rock Water by reading the results of recent studies in the field of urology. Both his father and brother are urologists.

Moss says he’s still seeking the right flavor for Rock Water, but could have a final prototype by early July.

Lauren Lee Stuart says she and co-owner William Wagner of Econofy can help homeowners bring down their electricity bills with the Econofier: a device that plugs into wall outlets and can tamp down the flow and leakage of unused electricity using website controls.

“Econofiers monitor energy usage of products they’re plugged into, then Econofy.com uses the data to guide shopping for upgrades to find the most efficient appliances and electronics,” Stuart said.

Electrical outlets lose “phantom” electricity when electronics and lamps are plugged in but are not in use, Stuart continued. Econofy will prevent that phenomenon from happening, but Stuart can’t estimate the typical cost savings for a homeowner. Econofy is still about a year and a half away from development.

Gary Shuford, CEO of Supedup Auto LLC, says he got the idea to start a mobile car-cleaning business after he and his friend spent years detailing cars for a living. Startup money from the Venture Challenge would allow him to potentially invest in a van and other equipment – like an air compressor and pressure washer – and to run Supedup Auto from the business side while his friend takes care of mobile operations.

With the potential for multiple clients in one particular location, like the parking lot of a large business, Shuford estimates Supedup Auto could clean and detail about three cars an hour.

Kyle Anderman and Andi Carroll opened Frosted, a specialty cupcake maker, more than a year ago at the corner of Nicholson and Lee Drive. But now Anderman is heading to the Venture Challenge with the goal of expanding Frosted with a cupcake truck that can alert fans and followers to its whereabouts via social media and by placing a single cupcake vending machine on the LSU campus.

“We want to do a cupcake truck, kind of similar to a food truck,” Anderman says.

Venture Challenge’s largesse grew by $5,000 this year – last year $20,000 was divvied up among four student companies. 

RSVP here! 

Matt Dardenne, Kristen Morrison and Joe Martin, Manship School of Mass Communication alumni from the class of 2009, spent three and a half years growing their business at the Innovation Park located on the University’s South Campus.

Red Six Media specializes in “video production, graphic design [and] all the traditional and non-traditional media production,” Dardenne said.

The company has handled many notable clients in the past and continues to do so.

“We’re handling Dow Chemical’s advertising campaign in Louisiana this year,” Dardenne said. “We did John Delgado’s campaign for Metro Council last year — we managed the campaign, we produced all of his media.”

While most clients are local, the company serves some people from all over the country, Morrison said in an email.

“Our client base spans from Louisiana to California, from nonprofits to the oil and gas industry, and from targeting college students to retirees,” she said.

The LBTC staff helped Red Six Media get to where they are today, Dardenne said.

“[The LBTC] was crucial,” he said. “We knew we had our skills … but we had no experience in running a business. The economy wasn’t in very good shape at that point. So they were instrumental in getting us off the ground and giving us the business advice that we really needed.”

LBTC Executive Director Charles D’Agostino said Red Six Media was able to gather clients located within the LBTC business incubator.

“One of the great things is that we were able to funnel a lot of business to them,” he said. “They ended up basically designing the logos and brochures for 15 to 20 companies in the incubator. So they were able to meet these people, see what their needs were and give them a very good price on designing their marketing materials.”

The LBTC assisted Red Six Media from accounting issues to legal issues and were always there for advice or guidance, Morrison said.

“We could always knock on their door when we faced a business hurdle, internal or external,” she said. “If they couldn’t answer our questions, they connected us to professionals that could.”

D’Agostino noted that his experience in helping Red Six Media gave him and Jennifer Fowler, director of the student incubator at the LBTC, a business idea for what is now a highly successful venture.

“They basically gave me the idea of the student incubator because they came to me a couple weeks before graduation and none of them had a job,” he said. “They had this idea of this company that they worked together on a student project.”

The trio at Red Six Media said they were all grateful for the help they received from the LBTC, and the future of their company looks bright.

The new office “represents a new area of growth” and a “huge step forward for our company,” Martin said.

“It’s exciting — we love this new office space,” Dardenne said. “It’s in the middle of downtown, we love being here. We’re hoping that is going to give our company more visibility, which will in turn help us get new business in the future.”

http://www.lsureveille.com/news/article_4815863a-91ad-11e2-81b5-0019bb30f31a.html

Baton Rouge, LA – March 1, 2013 – Bascom Hunter announced today it has been awarded a contract to develop a novel interference cancelation system for the U.S. Navy. The initial demonstration contract is valued at $716,000. The technology known as “Optical Active Cancellation”, was developed by a team led by Dr. Paul Prucnal, the Director of Princeton University’s Lightwave Communication Laboratory and Professor of Electrical Engineering. Dr. Prucnal is also the co-founder of Bascom Hunter and its chief technology officer. Bascom Hunter has an exclusive license of the technology from Princeton for all markets.

Interference is one of the major impediments to Satellite Communications (SATCOM). Bascom Hunter’s system is designed to remove radio frequency interference in Satellite Communication equipment. Interference comes from sporadic unregulated RF (radio frequency) transmission such as pirate radio and TV stations or other devices, as well as other sources. When strong interference is inside SATCOM channels, signals may be corrupted so that mission critical communications via satellite are disrupted. This impediment exists in both commercial and military systems.

Founded in 2010 by Andrew McCandless and Paul Prucnal, Bascom Hunter is a wireless communication equipment and service provider that offers a wide range of industry-leading solutions. The company specializes in solving the most difficult problems in wireless communications, as well as implementation of remote monitoring. Specifically, Bascom Hunter provides wireless communication technical consulting, design, installation, product support, and maintenance for industrial and government customers.

The Louisiana Business & Technology Center at LSU has assisted with the Phase 0 SBIR program which makes funding available to technical companies to compete for and win SBIR awards from federal research agencies. Charles D’Agostino, Executive Director of the LBTC, stated, “It is a great testimony to the expertise and technologies developed at Bascom Hunter to be selected by the US Navy to provide technical expertise and solutions to our military to make their operations more effective.”

Brian Fix

BASCOM HUNTER

7117 Florida Blvd

Baton Rouge, LA

P (225) 590-3553

F (225) 339-3397

inquire@bascomhunter.com

www.bascomhunter.com

Many of the city’s startups have ties to the city’s longstanding medical, petrochemical and political institutions. Still others were born out of life-changing moments or deep-rooted passions. Here’s a look at some of the new ventures coming out of Louisiana’s capital city.

Click to continue reading about LSU Student Incubator Graduate’s Yellow Jacket, HitLights, and LocalMed and LBTC Tenants HitLights, St. James Technologies, and Vinformatix!



The city’s industrial, medical and public-sector focus served Baton Rouge well during the recession. Unemployment averaged 7.4% in 2010, its highest point during the downturn and a far cry from the average 9.6% unemployment rate the nation suffered that year.

Still, the recession was a wake-up call for many latent entrepreneurs, says Charles F. D’Agostino, executive director of the Louisiana Business & Technology Center (LBTC) at LSU, which is the state’s oldest business incubator. “The economic slowdown helped bring more visibility to entrepreneurship.”

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