University of San Francisco International Business Plan Competition - Prehistory

Prehistory

The first Business Plan Competition at The University of San Francisco was held in June 2000. It was planned, organized, and hosted by the fledgling USF Entrepreneurship Club, an MBA student organization founded in Fall of 1999 seeking to:

• sponsor programs that cultivate the creation of new businesses,
• create a safe environment for students to share ideas and gather support from one another, and
• be a representative voice for entrepreneurial MBA students at USF

The first USF Business Plan Competition was won by

• SonicBit for its interactive digital media terminal, the Atom, to serve the market of social venues with digital content.

The judges for the first USF Business Plan Competition included:

• John Van Dyke, Dakota Group
• Linda Glisson, Glisson Capital
• David Greco, Panoramic Ventures

In the Fall of 2000, the faculty of the USF Business School, led by Mark Cannice, organized the USF New Venture Center (later renamed the Entrepreneurship Program) after which time the Business Plan Competition has been co-organized by both the MBA faculty and the students of the Entrepreneurship Club. Additional competitions were held in Fall 2000, Spring 2001, Fall 2001, and Spring 2002 before the competition was rebranded as "The University of San Francisco International Business Plan Competition" in 2003.