Rice Business Plan Competition to ring Nasdaq closing bell Oct. 10

MEDIA ADVISORY

Jeff Falk
713-348-6775
jfalk@rice.edu

Mary Lynn Fernau
713-348-5374
mlfernau@rice.edu

Rice Business Plan Competition to ring Nasdaq closing bell Oct. 10

HOUSTON — (Oct. 5, 2017) — The 2017 winner of the Rice University Business Plan Competition (RBPC) — Forest Devices from Carnegie Mellon University — will ring the Nasdaq Stock Market closing bell at 3 p.m. CDT Tuesday, Oct. 10.

Forest Devices CEO Matt Kesinger will be joined by Brad Burke, managing director of the Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship, which hosts the annual business competition, as well as Peter Rodriguez, dean of Rice’s Jones Graduate School of Business.

A live webcast of the Nasdaq closing bell will be available at https://new.livestream.com/nasdaq/live or www.nasdaq.com/about/marketsitetowervideo.asx. To receive a photo of the Forest Devices team and Rice representatives at Nasdaq, e-mail jfalk@rice.edu.

Credit: Shutterstock.com/Rice University

What: Ringing of Nasdaq closing bell.

When: Tuesday, Oct. 10, at 3 p.m. CDT. The closing bell ceremony begins at 2:45.

Where: Nasdaq MarketSite, 4 Times Square, 43rd and Broadway, Broadcast Studio, New York City.

Forest Devices is a medical device startup located in Pittsburgh that is developing AlphaStroke, the first stroke screening device that can potentially be used by all medical personnel in any environment. Forest Devices won nearly $700,000 of the more than $1.9 million in cash and prizes awarded at the world’s richest and largest student startup competition April 6-8.

“We are honored to win the Rice Business Plan Competition,” Kesinger said. “It has opened doors to new resources and relationships that have accelerated our progress, and ringing the Nasdaq bell is an example of that. It is an extreme honor for me and my team and another opportunity that the Rice Business Plan Competition has provided us.”

Carnegie Mellon has sent 19 teams to the RBPC since the competition’s inception in 2001. Ten of those teams are still in business or were acquired, and seven of the 19 made it into the final round of the competition. Tied with the University of Michigan, Carnegie Mellon has had more finalist teams than any other school.

Described by Forbes magazine as “the Super Bowl and World Series of business plan competitions,” the 2017 RBPC brought 42 university teams from across the globe to pitch their new technology businesses to more than 275 venture-capital and investor judges. Judges evaluated the businesses based on the investment potential.

Since the RBPC’s inception, more than 200 former competitors have gone on to successfully launch their ventures and are still in business today. They have raised in excess of $1.7 billion in funding and created more than 2,000 new jobs. Of the 200 businesses, 24 have successfully exited with a market value of more than $458 million.

For more information, contact Jeff Falk at Rice, at 713-348-6327 or jfalk@rice.edu.

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Follow the Rice Business Plan Competition via Twitter @RBPC.

Follow Rice’s Jones Graduate School of Business via Twitter @Rice_Biz.

Follow Rice News and Media Relations via Twitter @RiceUNews.

Related materials:

Webcast:
https://new.livestream.com/nasdaq/live

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Social media:
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Photos:
To obtain a high-resolution photo of the market close, go to www.nasdaq.com/reference/marketsite_events.stm and click on the market close of your choice.

The Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship is Rice University’s nationally recognized initiative devoted to the support of technology commercialization, entrepreneurship education and the launch of technology companies. It was formed as a strategic alliance of three Rice schools: the George R. Brown School of Engineering, the Wiess School of Natural Sciences and the Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Business. Since inception in 1999, more than 2,000 early-stage companies have presented at the 185+ programs hosted by the Rice Alliance and raised more than $4.9 billion in funding.