Creating products ranging from specialized microprocessors to gourmet burritos, an above-average number of students at the Tuck School of Business have worked to launch their own start-up companies this year, according to Tuck professor Gregg Fairbrothers, director of the Dartmouth Entrepreneurial Network.
"To me, the first litmus test is if they are actually going to work on their project full time out of school," Fairbrothers said. "I would say this has been an above-average year."
This year also saw Dartmouth's inaugural $50,000 business plan contest in which teams from all over the country met in Hanover to present their entrepreneurial ideas. Each team had to include at least one member of the Dartmouth community. The winning team, composed of Tuck and Dartmouth Medical School students, developed a non-invasive blood glucose monitoring device and a marketing plan to advertise it to individuals diagnosed with diabetes.
"Rather than having to prick your finger every day, you will be able to measure glucose levels by using our device to basically shine a light in your eye," Eugene Hsu, an MD/MBA candidate at Tuck and DMS, said.
The pocket-sized instrument shines a bright flash similar to a camera's in users' eyes and then measures the rate at which pigment in the eye returns to the retina. This rate is an accurate measure of blood glucose levels, Hsu said.
The team will not be able to sell the device for a couple of years, Hsu said, because the project was started just a few months ago and the prototype is still under development.
Mike Adair Tu'09 decided to venture into the food business about a year ago with his own line of gourmet burritos, called Red's All Natural. Adair said he borrowed a recipe from his wife and handmade hundreds of burritos, later selling them to local grocery stores in Fairfield, Conn. He said the positive feedback he received led him to continue the company, although he personally had little experience in the food industry.
"One of the first grocery stores in which I tested my product gave me great feedback, but asked whether or not I was USDA-approved," he said. "I didn't even know what they were talking about."
Now, with a manufacturing partner, three different recipes and a fully-decorated truck, Adair said the company is ready to expand.
Mac Dougherty Tu'09, who organized the $50,000 business plan contest, teamed up with two Dartmouth professors to commercialize a new type of microprocessor for high-speed parallel-processing, in which a computer carries out numerous calculations simultaneously.
"Not only does our chip do parallel-processing very fast, but it is also designed in such a way that makes it very straightforward to program," Dougherty said.
Dougherty, who has been involved with the project since December 2007, will spend the next few months giving hardware demonstrations to firms and government agencies that may have use for the high-speed processing, he said. Banks and investment firms, for example, might find this technology useful in analyzing portfolio risk every hour or in real time.
Another award-winning Tuck start-up uses text messaging to combat the increasing danger of counterfeit pharmaceutical medications in west Africa. Ashifi Gogo, a Ph.D candidate in the Thayer School of Engineering's Innovation Program, said he came up with the idea while visiting his home in Ghana. He worked with Shivam Rajdev Tu'09 to create a viable business model for their company, Sproxil.
Gogo and Rajdev hope to provide a service through which doctors and patients can text message a scratch-off code on drug packaging to a central number to verify that the pharmaceutical is genuine.
"We decided to use technology that already exists and apply this concept to mobile phones," Rajdev said. "Anyone with access to any cell phone can use this service."
Rajdev and Gogo recently won $10,000 by placing first in the United States and second globally in the 2009 Global Social Venture Competition.
While each of the students face different challenges, they all said they were motivated by a strong sense of passion for their particular idea.
"Almost without fail, passion is the driving force behind [the student's] decision to take a shot at it out of college," Fairbrothers said.
