Slaying the dragons

Today we had to give the 'elevator pitch' for the Business Plan Competition. I want to thank those of you who have been so kind to send me their ideas. It was great fun to see how some of you really got into it. Unfortunately most of the ideas did not turn out to be feasible for us, mainly for lack of the right expertise or the connections to pull it off.

Eventually we ended up staying close to home for me. I was so caught up in the novelty of my life here that I temporarily forgot that I still have a nice network to deploy back in Holland. Just last week it finally dawned on me that I actually knew somebody who could help us out. A few e-mails and phone calls later I found myself going over a highly promising patent application straight out of the Gorlaeus. And it gets better. The inventors are two very familiar faces; they work only one floor up (Gilles and Erik)! Although I have managed to stay away from their soil dwelling bugs in my Metprot years we are now actually writing a business plan to exploit just that technology. You can run but you can't hide!

I obviously can't divulge here exactly what our plan is since this is all patent pending but even more importantly; the university is actually looking to get clients for this patent. This means that our business plan is more than just a paper excercise. Whatever we produce, the university may use to attract interested parties meaning we better do our job properly. This real dimension of it makes it all the more interesting to us as well.

Since we only got the patent this Monday, we have been working very hard this whole week to get an initial feeling for what we are dealing with. Today we got to pitch the preliminary plan to our lecturers. It was a smash hit! I believe the exact words were "outstanding" and "fantastic job" and we have been shortlisted as candidates to win the big competition in 3 weeks time. I didn't expect I would like this part of my course but I am in fact very excited now. Although personally I don't intend to set up any business and for me it's all hypothetical, some people have already expressed a serious interest in the whole idea. I love it when a plan comes together.