Prozac for angels

San Rafael-Based Medical Startup Sweeps Business Plan Competition

San Rafael-based medical technology startup K-Diagnostics faced off against three other fledgling businesses to win the Seed Round Business Plan Competition June 1, held at Sonoma State University. The competition,which is a joint effort of the North Bay iHub and the Sonoma State University School of Business and Economics, was created to stimulate entrepreneurship in Sonoma, Marin and Napa counties.

K-Diagnostics has developed Sleep ID, a touchless sleep apnea diagnostic device that returns data to doctors in real time. Sleep apnea is a medical condition in which patients have low blood oxygen levels and high adrenaline levels while sleeping, which can be a contributing factor to diabetes, stroke and heart disease. Current technology on the market to diagnose and monitor the condition are either invasive, requiring patients to spend a night at a sleep center for study, or inaccurate, said entrepreneurs.

“K-Diagnostics presented a unique and proprietary solution to a legitimate problem,” said Peter Garner of Wavepoint Ventures, one of the three judges during the final round. ”They have a credible management team and a thoughtful business strategy that leads to the prospect of building a sustainable and long term company.” 

Lindsay Austin, the chairman of the Sonoma Mountain Business Cluster, which serves as the North Bay iHub coordinator, said all of the business plans presented were strong, but what set K-diagnostics apart was their market research.

“The guy with the most customer data won,” Austin said.

The competition, which started in January, took 36 companies through the process of writing a fundable business plan and presenting that plan to venture capitalists. Of the 36 companies, four were selected to present their plans to a panel of three judges.

“We all worked very hard on our business plan and we will not disappoint you. The process was extremely helpful in honing in on the key points needed to make our plan viable,” said Ayako Yamazaki, the chief operating officer of K-Diagnostics.

K-Diagnostics will receive a prize package totaling over $40,000 that includes cash as well as legal, accounting and marketing services from North Bay business leaders. In addition, the Sonoma Mountain Business Cluster will provide 12 months of free office space to the company in Rohnert Park. 

In addition to K-diagnostics the four finalists included GOassis, a developer of folding solar powered mobile shelters and field hospitals; Barrier Free Adventures, creators of a mobile app and social networks to make world travel easier for people with disabilities and E3, an energy companies looking to produce biomethane from municipal waste and integrate with existing natural gas infrastructure

The competition was more than just a chance for the companies to earn some capital and mentoring — it was also a step in changing the business image of the North Bay. According to Ivo Austin, Business Development Manager for the Sonoma Mountain Business Cluster, Silicon Valley has created a culture and identity that attracts both investors and start ups, and that talent is mirrored here in the North Bay.

“If you are thinking about where to go as an investor or a developer, you think of Silicon Valley,” Austin said. “The North Bay has a long history of innovation but, we need to develop that image.”

Bill Silver, dean of the School of Business and Economics at Sonoma State University, explained that events such as the Seed Round, where colleges partner with area startups and businesses, are a boon for the local economy.

“We have a campus of 8,000 students with creative ideas,” Silver said.

Students were encouraged to enter the competition, however none made it to the final four. The process of entering and working through the development of a business plan has strengthened all the competitors, Silver said.

“Yes, we have a winner, but we also have 35 other startups that are closer to launching their business,” Austin said. “This is the work that the North Bay iHub is committed to doing with collaborating partners such as Sonoma State’s School of Business and Economics.”

Weight Loss for Women Business Plan Unveiled in Anti-Diet eBook

BURLINGAME, Calif., May 31, 2011 — /PRNewswire/ — Rosemary Hershey, author of Diet-Bailout, unveils her anti-diet weight loss eBook using a business plan that helps women take back their power, change habits and lose weight.

According to Hershey, overweight women need to change their diet dialogue with themselves and break out of the on/off cycle in which they are trapped.

Women need a platform that teaches more than what to eat; women need to discover why they eat. Diets lack help for what really matters, how to neutralize urges and hot buttons and win the war with self. Instead, diets do food, a side skirmish in the ongoing battle of the bulge.

Hershey’s book offers an eye-opening look at the dynamics of the on/off diet culture and the many ways it traps women. What readers can expect to learn from Diet-Bailout is the core management system to run the business of living life successfully, such as:

• How to Leverage How You Operate
• Diet Turnaround Action Plan
• Diet Risk Management Tools
• Asset/Liabilities/Solutions Grid
• Power Words Grid
• Obstacles and Reverse Therapy Analysis
• At-risk Eating Sensors
• Habit Buster Solutions
• Body Language and Eating
• Mental Exercise Program
• How to Cut Calories and Lose Weight Permanently
• Weight Loss Scripting
• Daily Operating Procedures

Diet-Bailout is a hands-on plan to empower women to give up the fantasy that a diet will change their lives. It won’t. A diet is a temporary solution that does not last because when the diet ends, everything ends with it and your old habits and weight returns.

Hershey discusses her position that people are always on a diet because people eat every day to feed themselves and sustain their lives. We are always on a diet and it’s how we manage that diet that matters. It’s how you relate to yourself and the world through food every day, not sporadically, that creates stability.

Women have been misled and need to believe it’s about the food they eat. It’s about why you eat. It’s about giving up what you can’t have, an easy fix and putting on the war paint to take a stand and make your life happen. And that takes a new perspective to live aware, ready and courageous enough to go within.

Hershey’s Diet-Bailout is that journey wrapped in a business structure that teaches women to process what really matters — their business of living their lives successfully.

For a free chapter of Diet-Bailout, visit: http://Diet-Bailout.com.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Rosemary Hershey is an entrepreneur with experience owning and operating several businesses, including a women’s weight management program. Rosemary has written over 50 articles on weight loss and dieting and currently is an independent contractor for examiner.com as the SF Women’s Fitness Examiner.

CONTACT INFO: Press Media quotes650 340-8835, rosemary@pernatravel.com

This press release was issued through eReleases(R).  For more information, visit eReleases Press Release Distribution at http://www.ereleases.com.

SOURCE Rosemary Hershey

Responding to fitness consumers helps shape healthy business plan – Sun

Who: Rick Berks

What: Berks is founder of the Youfit Health Clubs chain. There are about 25 locations in Florida, including Margate, Pompano Beach and Boca Raton. Customers pay a flat $10 monthly fee.

Understanding the market, demographics and responding to consumers has kept his business plan healthy, fit and on track, says Berks.

Berks based the Youfit profile on his decadeslong experience in the health club industry. He owned and operated multiple Gold’s Gyms before opening the first Planet Fitness location in 1993.

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This time, he’s tuned into the growing sector of average consumers looking to be healthy, rather than those focused on body sculpting and bodybuilding, says Berks.

The back story: Berks compiled lessons learned to launch the streamlined Youfit model in 2008.

He rebranded his facilities, upgraded equipment and created smaller footprints with fewer amenities like classrooms and babysitter spaces. There are no sales people pushing membership fees or long-term multiyear commitments; spinning classes or group aerobics.

“The market is shaping itself,” said Berks.

People want to spend less money but still have access to an exercise venue, he says. Consumers want flexible hours. They want an offering of equipment that matches their own level of proficiency and interest.

At the same time, businesses have to find ways to cut expenses, too, says Berks.

The clubs are retrofitted with newer energy-efficient air conditioning, LED lighting and tankless water heaters. The floors are made from recycled sneakers.

“Doing the things we are doing isn’t just idealistic,” said Berks. “It’s economics as well. The upfront costs are savings in the end.”

Though Berks maintains corporate control of the clubs, “the idea is to make a simple reproducible model,” he said. The marketing platform is pretty simple, too, says Berks. The company utilizes direct mail, multimedia and social media.

The take away: “As an entrepreneur, you have to be optimistic or you can’t be an entrepreneur,” said Berks.

“I’ve had good times and I’ve had bad times,” says Berks, who once asked a mentor what separates successful people from “non successful” people.

“He answered, ‘Persistence. If you stick with it, you’ll figure it out.’” said Berks.

Knowledge

Achieve mass appeal. Rather than focus on a niche group of fitness consumers, Berks caters to customers that know what they want, a comfortable, low-pressure gym environment while achieving their goals. “Our typical consumer is more committed to being healthy by doing a 45 minute workout,” said Berks. “They want to know they will fit in.”

Calculate trial and error. Beta test a product or location, says Berks. That way you can be aggressive trying out an idea and at the same time limit potential loss. Expand on what works. “Good judgment comes from a lot of bad judgment,” said Berks.

Details: Go to youfithealthclubs.com, 954-968-3481

ckent@tribune.com or 954-356-4662

Brecksville-Broadview Heights Students Create Business Plans

This spring, a number of students in the economics classes at Brecksville-Broadview Heights High School turned their attention to a different kind of test.

Those students created imaginary businesses and detailed business plans for the Scholarship of Entrepreneurial Engagement, a local program that is run through Ashland University and is designed to inspire students to create the future, program director John Klipfell said.  

Klipfell began the program a few years ago, and it has since expanded to include more than 20 local high schools. Brecksville-Broadview Heights has the largest group participating, Klipfell said, at least in part because the program is incorporated into many of the economics classes at the high school.

Earlier this spring, students gathered into small groups in one of Dathan Cole’s economics classes to discuss their business plans with local community members. The individuals had volunteered their time to listen to the students’ plans and give them feedback. 

These plans had to be detailed – students had to be able to explain how much their products would cost, who the audience was, how to market it, even, for the more technologically based plans, how the products would work.  

The ideas vary widely—in an email, Cole said that some of the winning entries included “Canary Colours,” a plan for a paint that would change color to respond to toxins in the air and “Derbee.com,” website for digital textbook rentals.

Cole said the students created a rough draft of their plans before this session; after the input, the plans were revised and graded.

Then, the best ones were submitted to the Scholarship of Entrepreneurial Engagement competition. The Brecksville-Broadview Heights’ submissions are first judged against one another. The submissions were split into three groups to be judged, and the top three projects in each grouping will receive a monetary prize, Klipfell said in an email. The top project in each group will now go on to the regional competition, where winners will receive scholarships. 

According to an email from Klipfell, the following projects from Brecksville-Broadview Heights High School were the first place winners in each group: 

• “Canary Colours,” by Suji Modugula, Aaron Markowitz and Veronica Thompson
• “Derbee.com” by Malcolm Cole, Matt Dietrich and Paul Williams
• “From Scratch Bakery,” by Kali Matko and Jacklyn Lurz

From basement, Baltimore’s first winery crafts business plan

In a Canton basement lit by fluorescent lights, a dozen glass jugs of fermenting grape juice share space with a washer, dryer and furnace.

Standing before them, Erik Bandzak surveys his wines: two deep reds made from a Rougeon grape and an Isabella blackberry blend, which every few minutes emit tiny bubbles of carbon dioxide through their glass air locks.

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A glass hydrometer, an instrument that gauges a wine’s sugar content, measures his Rougeon at about 0.99.

“That’s what I want it at,” Bandzak says. “You get it below one, it’s a dry wine.”

A traditional winery, this is not. There are no lush vineyards anywhere near this dense residential neighborhood. Nor is there wine aging in 60-gallon oak barrels, or tourists lining up for weekend tastings.

Nonetheless, Bandzak, 30, has launched what amounts to Baltimore’s first winery, according to records kept by state regulators. If all goes as planned, in two months the wines of Aliceanna Winery — what Bandzak has christened his fledgling enterprise — will be served to the happy-hour patrons of a nearby restaurant, the latest entry in Maryland’s burgeoning wine scene.

After months of applications, rejections from city and federal authorities, and health and safety inspections, Bandzak now holds the licenses and permits necessary to sell his wine, making his business Maryland’s 50th winery and one of just a handful in urban areas.

“It was a hobby, but it’s become more,” Bandzak said of winemaking, which he has done in one form or another since he was 18. “People always say get into something that you like to do. It’s something I enjoy doing.”

His ancestors made wine in oak barrels in the basement of their home in Italy, a practice Bandzak’s grandfather, now 91, continued in Pennsylvania and eventually taught to Bandzak and his brother. “I just wanted to take it to the next level,” Bandzak said.

At a Christmas party in 2008, a friend tasted some homemade winee Bandzak had brought. “He said, ‘You should make this,’” Bandzak said.

At first, he shrugged off the suggestion, but his friend persisted, and Bandzak began experimenting at a rented storage space on Aliceanna Street. Three grapes — the Rougeon (which produces a dry red wine), Isabella blackberry blend (a red, fruitier wine) and a Riesling (a white, sweet wine) — seemed to consistently result in the best-tasting batches, and they will be the first three wines offered by Aliceanna Winery.

Perfecting his method was hard enough, but in the past three years, Bandzak has also gotten a crash course in navigating a tangle of local, state and federal regulations on the production and sale of alcohol. By day a guidance counselor at Curtis Bay Elementary School and now father of a baby boy, Bandzak had no previous experience owning a business.

“It’s been a headache,” Bandzak said in a Canton coffee shop on a late winter afternoon, a thick stack of paperwork set before him. “You got work, you got the baby, trying to start this, trying to get permits.”

Much of the challenge came from proposing to base a winery in a residential area. Though he wants to eventually expand into a commercial space, Bandzak believes starting small will help him build credibility and get a loan, allowing him to avoid mortgaging his home for the business.

Micro-wineries operating in urban areas were virtually unheard of when Bandzak first approached the Baltimore City Municipal Zoning and Appeals Board last fall.

“You can have breweries,” said David C. Tanner, executive director of the zoning board. “But a winery or vineyard is something that’s not even listed. As the code developed, it just wasn’t on anybody’s radar screen.”

Transitioning from home winemaking to commercial production is rare, and for good reason, said Kevin Atticks, director of the Maryland Wineries Association. A recipe that can taste phenomenal in a five-gallon batch can be difficult to replicate on a larger scale, he said.

“In Baltimore, there’s a very large community in Little Italy that makes wine at home,” said Atticks, who has advised Bandzak throughout his application process. “From that pool all across the nation, we find some of them wanting to make the leap to becoming commercial. It can take 10 years of practice for some folks.”

The zoning board approved Bandzak’s request to make and bottle wine — but with some restrictions. He can make only 100 gallons a year — about 500 bottles — and cannot sell wine on the premises, advertise his business at the site or use oak barrels, to prevent the wine from leaking into the ground, panel members said.