Companies join forces to foster entrepreneurship; The winner will receive a $ 250,000 investment
Main stages of venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson (DFJ) and Cisco today announced that each company will use its global reach to jointly launch a competition for global business plans designed to promote student innovation and entrepreneurship. The competition is based on Cisco TelePresenceTM, which enables collaboration through a live, face to face communications network experience, to allow finalists from around the world to present their business plans in real time to a joint panel DFJ and Cisco executives based in San Jose.
This is the first time he addressed to competition in a global market, a milestone made possible by both DFJ network 's Global and Cisco TelePresence. Cisco TelePresence helps break down the barriers of distance by creating a collaborative experience where participants feel as if they were sitting in the same room even though they are thousands of miles away. The competition aims to find new technology ideas to aspiring college and university student entrepreneurs around the world. Sixteen finalists will be announced on June 19, 2009. The winner will be announced on June 30, 2009, receive a minimum initial capital of $ 250,000. The winner will also receive information and guidance of both DFJ and Cisco.
"Over the past four years, DFJ has held only regional competitions. We are very excited to partner with Cisco and expand worldwide the opportunity to include the regions covered by our DFJ Global Network," said Tim Draper, managing director of DFJ. "Our 16 Global Network partners are ideally positioned to host this competition, given our network 's unprecedented wide range of countries on four continents. We believe that technology has no boundaries and that there are talented entrepreneurs in all parties who want to change the world, and look forward to partnering with them. "
In general, Cisco has approximately $ 1.3 billion in venture capital investments in management and has been an early investor and active in major markets like the U.S., China, India, Israel, Russia and Europe. Cisco is a strategic investor in start-ups and venture capital funds around the world and focuses on partnering with innovative young companies.
Finalists will be selected on several criteria such as quality management team, technological innovation, market size, competitive position, barriers, capital efficiency and financial projections. Before business plan competitions have been major successes, including DFJ backed DirectHit winners, which was acquired by AskJeeves in 2000 for $ 532 million, and Webline Communications, acquired by Cisco for $ 325 million in 1999.
About Draper Fisher Jurvetson
Draper Fisher Jurvetson ("DFJ") backs extraordinary entrepreneurs everywhere who set out to change the world. DFJ achieves its mission through its DFJ Global Network of the funding partners. Together, DFJ and the Network manage over $ 6B and have made over 600 investments on four continents. With a history of 24 years of success in various sectors and market conditions, DFJ has led the way to invest in new technologies, sciences of the Internet and life to clean energy and nanotechnology. DFJ has been proud of over 500 companies in sectors such as industry changing successes such as Hotmail (acquired by MSFT), Baidu (BIDU), Skype (acquired by EBAY), United Online (UNTD), Overture (acquired by YHOO), athenahealth (ATHN), EnerNOC (ENOC), TicketsNow (acquired by TicketMaster), Feedburner (acquired by Google), Interwoven (IWOV), Four11 (acquired by YHOO), Parametric (PMTC) and Digidesign (acquired by AVID).
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