News

Durham MBAs in “The Sunshine State”

(2 June 2006)

Two Durham full–time MBAs, Russell Bradshaw and Vish Laksmanan, recently returned from representing the Durham Business School in the final of the Stradling Yocca Carlson & Rauth Business Plan Competition at the Paul Merage School of Business, University of California based in Irvine near Los Angeles.

The competition was designed to attract entries from ambitious inventors and entrepreneurs with the final comprised a number of highly creative teams competing for the chance to win $15,000 top prize and a chance to attract venture capitalist investment. The Durham team, named ‘Virtual Journey’, comprised a unique concept involving video clip content to complement Internet based route planning services. Teams made presentations to a panel of judges, including marketing experts and high net worth investors with the day-long event culminating in an award ceremony, where the Durham representatives came tantalisingly close to receiving an award. The competition winning team were Framecaster, a Californian IT start-up working in software to convert digital movie formats into the new and highly compressed mp4 standard. Following the event, Russell Bradshaw commented, “now I know how contestants feel on Dragon’s Den. The judges were tough in their questioning, but it was an experience to savour”. Vish Lakshaman said “it was a demanding test of our knowledge and business acumen. The judges were complimentary about our presentation, and gave us some valuable feedback on how we should best take the idea forward.” The event proved to be an excellent opportunity in raising the profile of Durham Business School within the California business and academic community.