Tears for Life, a business started by a team of University of Arkansas students, won first place in the business innovation track. Standing, from left to right, are Jordan Greer, Jared Greer and Bessie Williams. Seated is Chris Elizer
Tears for Life, a company founded by a group of University of Arkansas students to develop a screening tool to detect breast cancer using tears, won the grand prize of $20,000 in the business innovation track of this year’s Tulane Business Plan Competition, but the company may have picked up an even bigger prize after the competition.
“Three of the final round judges offered them a deal,” says Will Donaldson, president of the Tulane Entrepreneurs Association, which organizes the annual event. “That’s big for us because, externally, people will get the idea that if you go to the Tulane competition, these guys mean business. You’re liable to get funding if you show strong in New Orleans.”
This year’s Business Plan Competition attracted a record 85 entries from universities as far away as Canada, Mexico, India, Sweden and Turkey. More than 50 first- and second-round judges reviewed entries and selected the six finalists invited to present their plans in person: three in the traditional business innovation track and three in the social entrepreneurship track, which is dedicated to ventures that meet social needs. The winning team in each division received a prize of $20,000.
The University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences granted Tears for Life an exclusive license to commercialize a patent-pending technology developed at the university that uses protein patterns found in women’s tears as a screen for breast cancer. If the technology proves to be successful, the company hopes to make breast cancer screening much less invasive and less costly than current methods.
KAIEN, a business founded to provide software-testing jobs for people with high-functioning Autism, won the top prize in the Social Entrepreneurship track. The company's principals are Keita Suzuki, left, and Marc Noland
The company’s plan impressed investor Gary Solomon, one of this year’s judges. “I was amazed that these-, I hate to say it, kids got the right to have this product,” Solomon says. “I’m sure the university didn’t give that technology license to them lightly, which says a lot for them.”
The grand prize in the social entrepreneurship track went to KAIEN, a for-profit company started at Northwestern University to leverage the unique talents of people with high-functioning autism to provide software testing for the Japanese auto industry. Keita Suzuki, whose son is autistic, founded the company to meet the demand for highly qualified software testers while at the same time providing employment for a group that often has difficulty finding work.
“Harvard Business School did a test that demonstrated that people with high-functioning autism are a surprising right fit for software testing,” says KAIEN’s Marc Noland, whose brother has high-functioning autism. “The attributes that are important in software testing—things like concentration, strong memory and being very logical—are things that people with high-functioning autism naturally have.”
Business Plan Competition judge Gary Solomon, left, asks a question during the business innovation presentations. Also serving as judges in the business innovation track were, left to right, Ron Ondechek, Jimmy Maurin and Ralph Maurer. Not pictured are Crichton Brown and Rick Conway
“We were all touched by the fact that each of the principals had either a brother or a son affected by autism,” says John Elstrott, one of the judges in the social entrepreneurship division. “But they’ve got a proven model that’s been shown to work in Denmark, and we thought their plan demonstrated they could provide a valuable service to clients while at the same time making the world a better place by enabling individuals with high-functioning autism to earn a living and improve their self esteem.”
While the principals of both Tears for Life and KAIEN say the prize money will come in handy, they also say the competition is about more than winning.
“The prize money is great and it’s wonderful to be able to invest that type of money into our business,” says Jared Greer of Tears for Life, “but the feedback we get from judges—ways we can improve our business, ways we can improve our presentation—is what has been so invaluable to us as a group.”
