Summer 2018

Greetings,

We are excited to share some news about current and former student success and of the many wonderful things happening in our Entrepreneurship Community!

UW student teams have found great success in some very competitive business plan competitions both on the campus and across the state. The WSB Business Plan Competition was held over two days and attracted student teams from across the campus. A past participant of this competition as well as the WAVE & MEB programs also had a very impressive accomplishment. NovoMoto won the grand prize at the Wisconsin Governor’s Business Plan contest. The company was co-founded by two UW-Madison Engineering Ph.D. students who saw a huge problem for those villages in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) that were not on the electrical grid. A significant problem for millions in that country. By working with many campus and community resources, along with a few pivots along the way, they have launched a business that provides customers in the DRC with a lease to own option for a home-based solar power generation system. They have paying customers and are already benefiting those customers by replacing the expensive and dangerous usage of kerosene. A great example of students at the UW using their knowledge and training to create an innovative solution to a major problem. A great example of the Wisconsin Idea in action.

The Wisconsin School of Business also continues to develop the entrepreneurial mindset with students from across the campus. In this newsletter, you can learn more about some of these great programs and classes. They range from programs such as the StartUp Learning Community that works with new Freshman in Sellery Hall to the newly renamed Morgridge Entrepreneurial Bootcamp (MEB) that is designed for UW graduate students and post-docs in the STEM fields. It also includes one of the oldest classes (WAVE Practicum) where graduate student teams work on customer/market discovery for their startup ideas. In fact, our alumni spotlight is on Adam Bock who was one of the earliest WAVE graduates. After a wide range of academic and entrepreneurial experiences, he is now teaching the next generation of UW entrepreneurs. Lots of exciting things happening in the entrepreneurial sphere at the UW!

Thank you for your continued support of our great University and the Weinert Center for Entrepreneurship. We hope you enjoy learning more about the work of our students, alumni and instructors.

Best regards,

Dan Olszewski
Director, Weinert Center for Entrepreneurship