iShoe in the running for Rice Business Plan prize

iShoe, which won 8th Continent’s 2008 Business Plan Competition, was featured in Fortune Small Business this week as a top contender for the Rice Business Plan Competition, which awards $800,000 in seed money to promising start-ups.
The team from Cambridge, Mass.,  captured our prize – then called the Lunar Ventures Business Plan Competition – by modifying  [...]

Do Investors Care What Your Business Plan Looks Like?

No less an authority than The Wall Street Journal says this: Venture capitalists don’t read business plans.
The same point was made by a quartet of entrepreneurs at Tuesday’s Rockies Venture Club meeting in Denver.
“Nobody will read your business plan,” said Jeffrey Saffer, co-founder of Quertle, a Web portal for biomedical research that must be doing [...]

8C at today’s Space Investment Summit

Burke Fort, Director of the 8th Continent Project, is meeting with space commerce entrepreneurs, venture capital investors and journalists today at the Space Investment Summit in Los Angeles. This annual summit unites investors, entrepreneurs, companies, government officials, academics and non-profits to promote innovation in space-related commerce worldwide.
The day’s agenda includes business plan presentations from several [...]

Space 2.0 in-depth part IV

Like other companies we have examined that came to 8th Continent through our “Space 2.0″ business plan competition, another runner-up company called ViraTag, comprised of Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University students, is able to solve an important  health care demand with their space-derived technology. The company has developed in-vitro diagnostic virus detection kits [...]

Space 2.0 in-depth part III

Today, 8th Continent Project announced our third annual business plan competition.  As before, we are seeking college and university students to submit proposed business plans that either use or further develop space technologies for an Earth-bound commercial markets.  This year, the winner will be awarded $50,000 in cash and in-kind professional services, plus a wild [...]

Lumedyne lands sizeable investments

Since winning the inaugural 8th Continent Business Plan Competition (formerly known as Lunar Ventures) Lumedyne Technologies has kept its momentum high. Investments have come steady and regular since the 2007 competition and Lumedyne now boasts a solid $1.5 million from investors.
Brad Chisum, CEO and founder of Lumedyne Technologies credits the 8th Continent Business Plan Competition [...]

MIT students take solar power to new heights

A new parabolic solar collector from MIT could revolutionize the energy industry. According to a recent article in the Daily Tech, a team of students from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have developed a revolutionary solar dish that “concentrates sunlight intensely enough to melt steel.”
While traditional photovoltaic cells have advanced significantly in recent years, producing [...]

2009 Business Plan Competition Video