Haas NewsWire


Haas NewsWire, April 17, 2000


CONTENTS
Priceline.com CEO to Speak at Haas Tuesday
Intel Founder Gordon Moore Receives Lester Center Award
Eight Teams Advance to Final Round of UC Berkeley Business Plan Competition
Putting Your Best Foot Forward: Presentation Skills Workshop
Haas MBA Students Take First Place at Case Competition
Haas EvMBA Student Chosen For Young Leaders Program
T-shirt Contest Winner Announced
Faculty News
Haas in the News
Happening at Haas

Haas NewsWire Archive
Contact Haas NewsWire


HAAS HEADLINES


PRICELINE.COM CEO TO SPEAK AT HAAS TUESDAY

"Is the Internet Dead?" is the title of the speech that Richard Braddock, chairman and CEO of Priceline.com, will give at the Haas School on Tuesday, April 18, at 5:00 p.m. in the Wells Fargo Room.

Priceline's business model uses the simple and compelling consumer proposition - "name your price" - to collect consumer demand for a particular product or service at a price set by the customer and communicate that demand directly to participating sellers. Priceline.com ads may have caught your attention recently, since they have brought the dulcet tones of William Shatner's singing into American living rooms.

A former Citicorp president, Braddock joined Priceline in August of 1998. He holds a Harvard MBA and serves on the boards of several high-tech companies.

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INTEL FOUNDER GORDON MOORE RECEIVES LESTER CENTER AWARD

Gordon Moore will be receiving the 2000 Lester Center Award for Lifetime Achievement in Entrepreneurship and Innovation on Thursday, April 27, at the UC Berkeley Entrepreneurs Forum.

Dr. Moore was one of the original founders of Intel, thereby influencing the culture of Silicon Valley, which emphasizes the constant need for change and innovation - the primary building block of the New Economy.

From his start at Shockley through his days at Intel, Dr. Moore has shown an insatiable thirst for new technology and learning.

The Lester Center developed its award for lifetime achievement in entrepreneurship to honor outstanding Bay Area entrepreneurs who have demonstrated a lifelong excellence in venture creation and innovation. In addition to recognizing the recipient's lifetime accomplishments, the award is meant to enhance the interaction among academics and entrepreneurs, scientists and faculty, pragmatists and idealists, thereby fostering entrepreneurial success for individuals and the community as a whole. The previous winners of the award were Dr. Alejandro Zaffaroni, founder of Alza Corp and a serial entrepreneur in biotech (1998), and Arthur Rock, a pioneering venture capitalist (1999).

The Lester Center will host an evening honoring Dr. Moore on Thursday, April 27, from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. in the Arthur Andersen Auditorium. Pre-registration is required. For more information call 1-510-642-4255 or visit http://www.haas.berkeley.edu/~lester/bef.html.

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EIGHT TEAMS ADVANCE TO FINAL ROUND OF THE UC BERKELEY BUSINESS PLAN COMPETITION

The Business Plan Competition has announced eight teams that will advance to the final round of the UC Berkeley competition. The finalist teams have developed ideas ranging from biopharmaceuticals and business-to-business exchanges to semiconductor wafer image processing and wireless technology. These teams will compete for more than $70,000 in cash and prizes.

In its second year, the competition attracted 182 teams. More than 60 leading venture capitalists (VCs) and successful entrepreneurs narrowed the field to 65 teams competing in the executive summary round. By bringing ventures led by UC Berkeley students and alumni in touch with Silicon Valley's community of entrepreneurs, VCs, and technology companies, the competition serves as a springboard for the university's most innovative ideas and technologies.

The following eight teams were selected by more than 30 VCs to advance to the final round of the competition:

"The UC Berkeley Business Plan Competition opened doors to entrepreneurship and venture capital that are tough for new ventures to unlock," said Greg Patterson, a member of the Harmony123 team and a second-year Haas MBA student. "Having our business plan reviewed and judged by top venture capitalists gives us access and feedback that many ventures never see. Whether we win or not, we believe the opportunities that the competition gives us will truly improve our chances for success."

Access to top venture capitalists and business leaders through the competition may result in additional financing; to date, seven of last year's teams have secured more than $35 million in funding.

The competition will culminate on Saturday, April 29, 2000, with a final public presentation of pitches from the eight finalists and the announcement of the first, second, and third place winners, as well as the People's Choice award. Judges for the final round are: Steve Domenik, partner, Sevin Rosen Funds; Mark Gorenberg, partner, Hummer Winblad Venture Partners; Harry Laswell, director of business development, Intel Corporation; Susan Mason, partner, ONSET Ventures; Gary Rieschel, executive managing director, Softbank Venture Capital; Beckie Robertson, partner, Palladium Venture Capital; Michael Rolnick, partner, ComVentures; Neil Weintraut, partner, 21st Century Internet Venture Partners. For more information, visit http://bplan.berkeley.edu/.

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PUTTING YOUR BEST FOOT FORWARD: PRESENTATION SKILLS WORKSHOP

Want to make a successful pitch for venture capital funding? Want to blow away your client with the perfect presentation? Or do you just want to feel more comfortable in a presentation environment? Well, talk to one of the Evening MBA students who attended Peggy Klaus' workshop called "Show Me the Money - The Perfect Pitch" on Saturday, April 8.

Students spent all day with Klaus learning methods to feel relaxed, to engage an audience, and to deliver red-hot presentations. Klaus' message is that effective speakers learn to become storytellers of sorts rather than "presenters." Klaus worked with students to understand their own current communication styles and how to bring out more of their fundamental, and more interesting, personality traits in presentations.

Klaus is the founder of Klaus and Associates, and has worked with comedians, actors, and business executives as an executive coach. For more information, call Klaus and Associates at (510) 548-8828.

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HAAS MBA STUDENTS TAKE FIRST PLACE AT CASE COMPETITION

The team of Haas MBA students tied for first place at the fourth annual Fixed Income Case Competition, which took place in New York the weekend of April 8. The Haas team of MBA students (Richard Case, Dimitris Giannis, Mark Greenbaum, Mary McKeegan, and Al Russo), coached by professors Richard Stanton and Nancy Wallace, tied with Wharton and crushed the competition from MIT, Chicago, Columbia, and Carnegie Mellon.

This is an annual event organized by Carnegie Mellon, and sponsored by Merrill Lynch and Appaloosa Management, L.P. Invited groups of 5 students from top schools around the country compete to develop a solution to a client's financial problem, and to present their solution in the most compelling possible manner. The presentations are judged by academics and representatives from the sponsoring firms.

This year's case was the most demanding to date, requiring teams to design and price a complex, asset-backed security. The judge from Merrill Lynch had just one word to describe the Haas team's performance on every dimension - "Excellent."

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HAAS EVMBA STUDENT CHOSEN FOR YOUNG LEADERS PROGRAM

Anne Craib, an Evening MBA student and director of International Trade and Government Affairs for the Semiconductor Industry Association, has been selected by the United States-Japan Foundation to participate in their Young Leaders Project. Participants will come from both the US and Japan, and will meet at conferences in Seattle in August 2000 and in Kobe, Japan, in 2001.

The Young Leaders Project is intended to create closer ties of communication and understanding among a new generation of young Japanese and American leaders. Twenty Americans and twenty Japanese between the ages of 28 and 42, will meet in Seattle, Washington, from August 19-27, 2000, in the first of what will be a series of annual conferences of young leaders of the two nations. Further details of the program can be found at www.jaylp.org

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T-SHIRT CONTEST WINNER ANNOUNCED

Jan Myszkowski (myszkows@haas.berkeley.edu), MBA 2000, is the winner of the t-shirt contest with his "One Out of Ten" design. All the designs that were entered are on display in the Haas Gear store. The winning t-shirts will be available on May 5 at the dean's end-of-the year party.

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FACULTY NEWS

JONATHAN BERK RECEIVES TENURE

The Haas School congratulates Jonathan Berk on receiving tenure and his promotion to associate professor in the Finance Group.

OLIVER WILLIAMSON RECOGNIZED WITH THREE HONORS

Oliver Williamson will give a lecture and meet with students and faculty at the Lazlo Rajk College for Advanced Studies, Budapest University on April 27 and 28, where he will receive the 1999 John von Neumann Award. The award is given in "appreciation for those professors in exact social sciences whose work has had the most substantial influence on the studies and intellectual activities of our students." Williamson is the fifth award winner. John Harsanyi, professor emeritus and Nobel Laureate, and Hal Varian, professor and dean of the School of Information Management and Systems, previously received this award.

Williamson was one of the first twelve fellows inducted into the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences at ceremonies in Washington, DC, in March. Others inducted at the same time included Professor Emeritus Neil Smelser (Sociology), the Honorable Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna Shalala.

Williamson received an Honorary Doctorate from the Copenhagen School of Business at the Inauguration Ceremony of their new building on March 10, 2000.

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HAAS IN THE NEWS

Dean Laura D'Andrea Tyson was quoted in Information Week's April 17 issue on the return on investment in information technologies infrastructure that is now helping to drive the economy.

Accounting professor Brett Trueman was on Channel 7 April 14, 16, and 17 talking about the stock market decline.

Professor Janet Yellen was quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle on April 15, "Wall Street Gets Whacked." Yellen stated that the market could absorb a correction of the size that occurred on April 14, and that a recession was not likely in the near future.

Pete Seeley, adjunct marketing professor, was quoted in the Los Angeles Times on April 15 on the marketing challenges facing the paper.

CBS News aired a nationwide broadcast featuring online real estate and zipRealty.com this past weekend. It aired three times on Saturday, April 15, once in the very early morning (5:00 a.m. to 7:00 a.m.) and then twice in the evening (6:00 p.m. and 10:00 p.m.) The story was also seen today on WebTV. The video can be found at http://cbsnews.cbs.com/now/story/0,1597,184069-412,00.shtml.

Paul Rice, MBA 96, was interviewed by Michael Krazny on KQED on April 13 about organic coffee and fair trade. Paul is now executive director of Transfair USA, which just closed a deal with Starbucks for the company to sell Fair Trade Certified coffee. The press release on this deal can be found at www.transfairusa.org.

Professor David Levine was on KRON April 14 evening at 6:00 p.m. and April 15 in the morning. Professor Jonathan Berk was on KRON on April 14 at 11:00 p.m.

The Social Venture Business Plan Competition was featured in the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday, April 11. The Reuters news agency ran a story of the competition that also ran on Excite.com. Internet.com ran an article on the competition that can be found at this link, http://siliconvalley.internet.com/news/article/0,2198,3531_341591,00.html.

An article on Dean Laura D'Andrea Tyson's speech to the AACSB, a meeting of business school administrators, was posted on the Chronicle of Higher Education's web site on April 11.

WomenCONNECT's article, "Upping the Numbers: If an MBA is the ticket to business success, why are fewer than a third of those students women?" quoted Alyssa Farber on the strength of the Haas non-profit program. The full text of the article can be found at http://www.womenCONNECT.com/LinkTo/apr1200_biz.htm?LAFCodeOverride=NoFrame.

Haas professors Janet Yellen and Hal Varian participated the White House Conference on the New Economy at the White House on April 5. Professor Varian spoke on "What's Next for the Internet and What Does it Mean for the Economy." Other speakers at the event included Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, Allen Greenspan, and Larry Summers.

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HAPPENING AT HAAS



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