HBS Team Selected as a Finalist in the Nation's Largest Start-Up Competition for University Entrepreneurs

Granular Ink team, which includes two HBS students, has been selected as one of the finalists in the Carrot Capital Business Plan Challenge, a nationwide business plan competition geared towards helping university entrepreneurs get their businesses funded. Granular Ink will compete against 19 other teams from many of the leading schools across the country that were selected from a field of 740 entries for a shot at winning a top prize of $1 million in funding for their business. In addition, one lucky person will be crowned Forbes Magazine’s Future Capitalist. The Grand Prize winning team will open The NASDAQ Stock Market on Tuesday, April 29th, which will be televised to millions around the globe.

The team, consisting of Sava Marinkovich (OG), Raj De Datta (OG), two PhD students from Stanford Greg Tseng and Johann Schelier-Smith, and a senior at MIT, Alexander Wissner-Gross, has already entered and won the MIT $1K competition in December. It is also a semi-finalist in both the Stanford and MIT $50K business plan competitions.

According to Granular Ink’s business plan, the company makes semiconductor production equipment for foundries and integrated devices manufacturers that provides a low-cost means to decreasing chip feature sizes and extending the lifetimes of existing fabrication facilities.

Using a patented, nanotechnology based process, Granular Ink’s products enable existing photolithography fabrication facilities to achieve order-of-magnitude smaller feature sizes, with corresponding increases in speed and reductions in cost, extending their manufacturing capabilities by several chip generations.

Granular Ink team is invited to New York City on Saturday, April 26th to present their business plans to a celebrated panel of finalist judges made up of distinguished business and thought leaders, including Santanu Das, President, CEO & Chairman of the Board of TranSwitch Corporation (NASDAQ: TXCC); Tom Potter, CEO of Brooklyn Brewery; Udayan Gupta, former Wall Street Journal reporter and author of the best seller Done Deals; Alex Mashinsky, Co-Founder & Executive Chairman of Elematics; and Dan Weinfurter, founder of Inc. 500’s number one fastest growing company for 2000, Parson Group.

“The success of the Carrot Capital Business Plan Challenge clearly demonstrates that during tough market conditions, starting your own business is still a viable path for university students to follow,” exclaims David Geliebter, Managing Partner of Carrot Capital, principal sponsor of the competition. “We are excited to bring these top teams from across the country to compete in the final round of the Challenge.”

The Challenge is sponsored by the Carrot Capital Education Foundation, a non-profit corporation, which, in turn, is associated with Carrot Capital LLC. Carrot Capital is a New York-based venture capital firm that invests in seed and early stage businesses.