Middle Market Deals and how to buy, sell and raise capital from $5 to $500 million

The Utah Entrepreneur Challenge final presentations and judging ocurred today.  As one of the judges, I'm sworn to secrecy so I won't disclose the winner, but I'll tell you a bit about each of the finalists.

MoveIt:  Kyle Mahuika, one of the co-founders, presented the plan for MoveIt, a company that designs, manufactures and sells racks and carts for tire retailers and other folks whose products are large and heavy, like  propane tanks.  The company is already up and running, having completed a successful test market.

Heightened Technologies: Jack Reneo presented the plan for Heightened Technologies, a hazardous spills clean-up company using technology developed at the University of Utah.  The technology has been proven at the laboratory benchtop; the team is raising money to prove the ability to scale the technology to do cleanups on site.

Mobile O/X: John Romney and Shawn Sanders presented the URL simplifying company Mobile O/X.  The company owns thousands of domain names like "playsguitar.com," allowing them to sell subdomains like "sue.playsguitar.com." Sue (and her friends) can then log in to sue.playsguitar.com and see her MySpace page, her Photobucket page, her blog and other social networks.

TRYK: Chris Carter, Clayton Wolf and Joe Wilcox presented TRYK, a manufacturer and designer of tilting, three-wheeled scooters.  The scooter is designed to be safer that two-wheeled scooters because it doesn't need traction to stay upright.  Without regard to the business model, among the presenting companies, this was the product I most wanted to own.

Zinch: Mick and Brad Hagen presented Zinch, a company that facilitates information exchange between high school students and college admissions offices.  Students upload their bios and admissions officers review them and then make contact.  With my son just having gone through this process, the need for this is readily apparent--smaller schools need this to find students who would be a good fit for their respective campuses.

Jeiko Inustries: C.J. Salazar, Adam Broderick, David Johnston and Cosme Salazar presented Jeiko Industries, an algae-based ethanol production company.  Their laboratory research suggests that the total cost of producing ethanol from algae to be about one-third the cost of producing ethanol from corn.

Utah Contract Research Lab:  Kavita Gupta and Lane Christensen presented their plan for Utah Contract Research Lab (UCRL).  They are building a company focused on helping medical device comppanies do FDA-required testing. 

Calle:  Josh Robbins presented the plan for Calle, street soccer.  Calle is a brand for marketing clothes and other street soccer-related products.  They are working to develop the brand at the intersection of performance and style/fashion. 

True Counsel:  Jared Richards and Kurt Avarell presented the plan for True Counsel.  True Counsel is developing software that will help legal clients to develop basic legal documents on-line WITH the help and review of an attorney, bridging the gap between using do-it-yourself forms on one hand or using an attorney on the other hand.

Verge Sales:  Josh Cameron and Jared Hansen presented the plan for Verge Sales, which provides automated marketing tools.  For instance, the verge system can automatically send thank you cards, birthday cards and sales literature to clients on an automated basis.

These are all great companies (well that's a bit of a stretch because one or two haven't even been formed as corporate entities).  They all made good to great presentations.  They all have real, solid ideas.  No one wasted the judges time.  The companies that presented today were, on average, the best from any of the five years I've judged the competition.