Presenting to a room of about 500 students at the fourth annual Wisconsin Entrepreneurship Showcase Thursday evening, four prolific entrepreneurs, all University of Wisconsin graduates themselves, touted the qualities that make for successful endeavors in entrepreneurship.
Noted: EatStreet’s funding round follows the company raising $15 million in December and brings to more than $40 million the total amount of outside capital Madison-based EatStreet has raised since it was founded in a dorm room at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2009. The company will use the money for general corporate purposes, according to the filing.
The Wisconsin Energy Institute is buzzing with about 400 scientists, graduate students and staff.It boasts the University of Wisconsin System’s largest grant, $265 million over a decade. But, its sunsets next year, and the Energy Institute is at a pivotal point, both in leadership and funding.
Last month, the University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents unveiled a new initiative to help businesses around the state tap into the talent of UW System graduates.
Noted: HealthMyne — which lists among its co-founders Rock Mackie, the University of Wisconsin-Madison medical physicist who developed the technology behind TomoTherapy Inc. — said in late September that it had raised $6.9 million.
University of Wisconsin System President Ray Cross says he’s forming a business council made up of “key business and industry leaders from around the state,” ideally from an array of economic sectors.
Two University of Wisconsin Masters in Business Administration courses became the first to receive a STEM designation in the country Thursday, which could make the degree more valuable to students and employers.
President Ray Cross announced the formation of a new council aimed at fulfilling initiatives from the 2020FWD strategic framework plan.
Noted: Sybil Pressprich is a career and educational counselor for the Division of Continuing Studies at UW-Madison.
Noted: PerBlue, which has about 40 employees, was founded by Beck and Andrew Hanson in June 2008. They funded it themselves, then raised $72,000 from family and friends in July 2009. Both graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison with computer engineering degrees in 2009.
CDI is partners in the venture with David Gamm, director of the UW-Madison’s McPherson Eye Research Institute.
Quoted: Would increased diversity among investors result in more parity for women and people of color? In terms of peer reviewed research, there’s not enough robust literature on the subject to really say, said Sarada, a professor with the University of Wisconsin-Madison who goes by one name. In fact, there isn’t even a clear understanding of why certain groups are so underrepresented in the realm of entrepreneurship, let alone private equity.
In the fast-changing world of science and technology, if you’re not innovating, you’re falling behind. UW System is No. 13.
Noted: The partnership is the first gener8tor has forged with a university outside of Wisconsin. About a year ago, gener8tor partnered with the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, which provided an undisclosed amount of funding for gener8tor to provide coaching and other services to startups.
The University of Minnesota’s Office of Technology Commercialization, which has increased the number of businesses born from university research, announced Tuesday a partnership with Wisconsin-based “Gener8tor” the start-up business accelerator.
Governor Scott Walker says the University of Wisconsin Credit Union’s decision to expand its membership criteria could help more state residents refinance their student loan debt.
“You’re making the face,” said a client to Michelle Somes-Booher, business consultant and director of the Wisconsin Small Business Development Center at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. According to Somes-Booher, it’s the tough love face, the one she puts on when she says something that a client doesn’t want to hear.
Everyone loves the idea of solar energy, but the reality is that it’s not always efficient enough for our needs.
Many college courses use online materials. But until this fall, the University of Wisconsin-Madison didn’t have an entire academic program that relied only on computers instead of paper.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Executive MBA program is ditching paper and going digital.
The University of Wisconsin is launching a new study to determine how to better allocate information technology resources on campus.
The University of Wisconsin System has launched a new website connecting students with state businesses in a bid to keep more UW graduates in Wisconsin.
Virent — the Madison company with a process to turn sugars from corn stalks into the makings for jet fuel, polyester t-shirts and recyclable plastic bottles — will become part of a consortium of high-level, international companies that will work together to bring Virent’s biofuels and chemicals to market.
Noted: Sandi Torkildson, who helped found A Room of One’s Own in 1975, has invited a representative from the UW-Madison Center for Cooperatives to give an informational presentation Tuesday at 7:30 p.m. at the bookstore, located at 315 W. Gorham St. Torkildson, who announced in June that she was putting the store up for sale, said she has had several customers inquire about the feasibility of a co-op, but there was no organized effort. The meeting is simply a way to bring those interested in a co-op model together and to learn about that type of business model.
It all seemed like a fairly straightforward process.The shipping giant Amazon sought out an agreement with UW-Madison to land one of its Pickup Points, which allows customers to pick up their orders on-site, inside the campus’ historic Red Gym.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison ranked 14th among all universities in the world in a count of how many venture capital-backed entrepreneurs it has spawned, according to a report by Pitchbook Data, a Seattle-based deal tracker.
StartingBlock Madison, a still-to-be-built entrepreneurial center just east of downtown in Wisconsin’s capital city, took another major step forward this week. The nonprofit organization says it has met its $3 million fundraising goal and, with that piece in place, can continue working toward a groundbreaking planned for later this year.
StartingBlock has hit its $3 million fundraising goal as it looks to become a startup hub on Madison’s East Washington Avenue.
Noted: The move comes as Virent has continued to develop technology originally developed in the chemistry labs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison to create fuels from the sugars found in plants such as beets.
The computing industry sees carbon nanotube transistors as something of a Holy Grail. They promise not just faster performance and lower power consumption than silicon, but a way to prevent the stagnation of processor technology and the death of Moore’s Law. However, their real-world speed has always lagged behind conventional technology… until now, that is. University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers have created what they say are the first carbon nanotube transistors to outpace modern silicon.
The first Wisconsin Under Armour Brand House will open on Friday in Madison, the Baltimore-based retailer said Thursday.
Few professors can be devoted to research, inspired by teaching, committed to service, and driven to lead—but all have different talents to contribute to an institution’s mission. That’s why business schools are adopting more formal, flexible, and comprehensive frameworks that enhance and reward all of the strengths they bring to the table.
Ranked No. 10, UW-Madison: This university has pride like none other. While many fail at the art of bragging modestly, UW-Madison proves through retweets from current students and big name publications like TIME, that whether it be their gorgeous sunsets or their outsourcing of the top CEOs, they are proud of their accomplishments.
Noted: Months later, she enrolled in UpStart, a free 11-week entrepreneurial program for women and people of color developed by the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation and taught by instructors from the University of Wisconsin–Madison Small Business Development Center.
Local Madison business owners say they are disappointed in the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents’ approval of a plan to allow Amazon set up an online order pickup point in the historic Red Gym on the UW-Madison campus.
Is Wisconsin really in the cellar when it comes to new business creation?
UW-Madison just ranked seventh in the world for patents. That’s a lot of brainpower. But the state of Wisconsin just ranked last for startup business activity. That’s a lot of lost opportunity.
By any measure, Jon Hardin is the portrait of millennial entrepreneurial success. His name is on the door of one of Madison’s oldest and most successful tech companies. And he made the UW-Madison Alumni Association’s Forward Under 40 list when he was just 25 years old.
A UW-Madison alum who’s now a lawyer at Tesla Motors warned Madison startup leaders they’ll face a lot of resistance as they try to disrupt their more established competitors.
Noted: Ankit Agarwal, who founded Imbed in 2010 with five professors from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is the company’s chief executive officer. Imbed raised $683,000 of equity and debt funding in 2014 in a round that was led by WISC Partners LLC.
Noted: Joann Peck, associate professor of marketing at the Wisconsin School of Business, has conducted numerous studies on haptics, the science of tactile sensations, and how it influences shoppers. Peck has found that when customers handle an item “they’re going to value it more, so they’re going to be more likely to purchase it and often to pay more for it,” she says, because the action increases people’s sense of psychological ownership.
Noted: “There are many things we know we should be doing, but temptation gets in the way,” says study coauthor Evan Polman, an assistant professor of marketing at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “Curiosity is a very powerful force” that can help us overcome those short-term temptations, he says.
Classic rock songs played in the background of an iD Tech lab on the UW-Madison campus as rows of children and teenagers sporting navy T-shirts sat in front of laptop computers where they were designing their own video games.
Jihae Shin of the Wisconsin School of Business at the University of Wisconsin and Katherine Milkman of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania carried out a series of studies to investigate how forming a backup plan affected people. The research was inspired by a conversation the two had when Shin was a PhD student of Milkman’s at Wharton and was thinking about how to land a job in academia.
Imbed’s nanofilm technology was developed in a laboratory at the University of Wisconsin-Madison managed by Nicholas Abbott, an engineering professor at the school. Abbott is one of six Imbed co-founders listed on the company website. Another is CEO Ankit Agarwal, who worked in Abbott’s lab as a postdoctoral fellow, according to UW-Madison.
Noted: Technology of all types is still the No. 1 theme, but this year, new events include a talk on “Earth Futures” by Paul Robbins, director of the UW-Madison’s Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies; Code Madison Forward, where student teams compete to create an interactive website; and Microbrews for Microfinance, a fundraiser hosted by Madison nonprofit Wisconsin Microfinance to raise awareness and funds for entrepreneurs in Haiti and the Philippines.
Quoted: That kind of ending is not uncommon, said Hart Posen, UW-Madison School of Business associate professor of management and human resources.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison has negotiated a tentative agreement with Amazon for a brick-and-mortar shop in the historic Red Gym, where students, faculty and staff could pick up online purchases at a central, secure location — a deal that would earn the university at least $100,000 in commissions annually.
Landing your dream job is a daunting prospect for anyone. So you might be forgiven for thinking that the smartest thing to do when pursuing an ambitious career is also thinking up a Plan B, in case your Plan A goes wrong. Right?
Noted: With fortune cookies in hand, American researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Northwestern University approached 100 people and offered them the choice between the plain cookie and the chocolate-dipped one, at first without the promise of a revealing fortune. In this control group, the less-healthy cookie was far more tempting — with around 80 per cent of participants picking it.
Noted: The Wisconsin School of Business was ranked 27th.
Noted: “It used to be that innovations that spawn or destroy entire industries would happen very infrequently,” said Witek, who has an undergraduate degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “Now major disruptions that can be life-threatening to industries or companies are emerging almost annually.”
The Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF) ranks 7th among the world’s universities in U.S. patents issued in 2015, according to a report from the National Academy of Inventors and the Intellectual Property Owners Association.
UW-Madison is one of the top universities in the world when it comes to getting patents for the work done here, according to a report released Friday.
Noted: Stratatech was founded by University of Wisconsin-Madison researcher Lynn Allen-Hoffmann in 2001. After watching a surgeon operate on a farmer who had suffered third-degree burns across 95% of his body, she transformed her research into a company that would focus on developing a skin replacement created with actual human cells.
Noted: Christopher Murphy, an ophthalmology professor at the University of California-Davis, is EyeKor’s chief executive officer and a co-founder. Ronald Danis, an ophthalmology professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is EyeKor’s chief science officer and also a co-founder.
By the time Hans Sollinger helped launch a company for the first time, in 2004, he had performed hundreds of pancreas transplants. In the process, he had built a reputation as a prolific surgeon whose experience few of his peers could match. Sollinger, who practices at the University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics, also known as UW Health, said that the high demand for his services over the years made his first foray into entrepreneurship somewhat jarring.
A team of University of Wisconsin researchers have received a major grant from the Department of Defense to further develop a sophisticated piece of optical technology: A camera that can see around corners.
The technology is based on research Agarwal got involved with as a post-doctoral research scientist at the UW-Madison in 2008.
Cellectar, a publicly-traded company, was founded in Madison in 2003 by University of Wisconsin-Madison professor Jamey Weichert.
