Rice University has a fantastic history
of entrepreneurship. In the beginning,
20-plus years ago, professors like Al
Napier and Ed Williams really led the
charge for entrepreneurship at Rice. Today we have leaders like Brad Burke at
the Rice Alliance for Technology and
Entrepreneurship, who leads the world's
largest business plan competition and
professors like Yale Hochberg who are
really the inspiration for so many of
our students around campus to do
something meaningful after they leave,
and she leads the Lilie Center - a
fantastic asset for all of Rice
University. I'm extremely proud of what
we've been able to do at the Jones
School through our MBA programs for
Entrepreneurship, and I'm very excited to
announce our number one ranking this
year in the Princeton Review and
Entrepreneur Magazine. Our current
program in Entrepreneurship is really
built on two solid bases: the academic
program that Al Napier and Ed Williams
built up at the Business School starting
a number of decades ago to help really
promote entrepreneurship among our
business school students, the second
piece of this has been the Rice
Alliance for Technology and
Entrepreneurship.
Well, the Rice Alliance was founded about
19 years ago, and it was founded to help
make Houston a leading center of
entrepreneurship in the country. Over the
last four years we've been working
particularly hard to build up our crown
jewel: the Liu Idea Lab for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, for what we call Lilie.
We've created a set of courses and the
set of co-curricular activities all of
which revolve around a space - a
laboratory - in which our students can
come and learn from faculty,
entrepreneurs and residents, and mentors.
Owl Spark Accelerator is probably the
most unique and immersive
entrepreneurship experience that equips
Rice students with first-hand knowledge
on how to launch a tech startup. The
Napier Rice Launch Challenge is our
internal business plan competition. It's
the business plan competition that
serves our undergraduates, graduate
students, and recent alumni and offers
them an opportunity to pitch investors
and members of the community here in
Houston, and members of our alumni
community across the United States.
One of our most exciting new offerings
is our new Student Venture Fund. Our
students come together in teams and work
with two experienced venture capitalists
who lead the courses around the fund,
evaluate deals, and actually make
investments. And, last year we in fact
made three investments that we're really
excited about, and other investors have
been very excited about as well. Well, the
Rice Business Plan Competition is a unique
experience there is no other. We bring 42
university startups together with over
300 judges who compete for over 1.5
million dollars in prize money. The Rice Business Plan Competition gives
student startups the opportunity to
experience all of the steps and the
experiences that are needed to start and
launch your business. One of the most
exciting initiatives that we have right
now at Rice is the work that we're doing
with the city of Houston to build an
innovation district right next to our
campus. This innovation district is going
to be anchored by a crown jewel that
we're calling "The Ion." The Ion is meant
to serve as a nucleus for innovation
activities here in Houston. We've seen
over 2,500 companies come through our
programs over the 19 years, and those
companies have raised over eight billion
dollars in funding. This has been a great
platform for us, seeing our
business school students launch real
businesses and really have the entire
support system from the day they walk in
to Rice Business to the day that they
graduate and go to work on their
startups.
