A group of students from the UCLA Anderson School of Management competed in the Rice Business Plan Competition at Rice University in Texas this past weekend – winning two awards.

The business plan for which the team was accepted into the competition was for an “early-stage medical device start-up company that is providing a portable endoscopic visualization solution for physicians,” said Jules Huang, a graduate student pursuing a joint master’s degree in business administration and medicine.

Huang is president and CEO of the hypothetical company specified by the business plan, Perseus Medical Technologies.

The device takes “images from endoscopy and puts them on a small screen so that they can be viewed right next to the patient, and it wirelessly transmits images and stores them electronically,” said Rory Berry, a graduate student pursuing a master’s degree in business administration and chief operating officer of Perseus Medical Technologies.

An endoscope is an instrument that is used to look inside a hollow organ or part for diagnostic or therapeutic purposes.

It can be used in a variety of specialties for doing endoscopic procedures, such as urology, gynecology and anesthesiology, Huang said.

The idea for their product came from two anesthesiologists at the medical center, Dr. Aman Mahajan and Dr. Nir Hoftman, who had previously filed a provisional patent on the visualization system, Huang said.

A business plan involves writing a business model for an idea. It starts with an executive summary and includes background information about the industry, information about the technology proposed, competition for the technology, business strategy including sales and marketing strategy, financial details and investment opportunities, Huang said.

The team won an award for their executive summary, which included a $2,500 cash award, Huang said.

An executive summary is a summary of the business plan that an investor uses to determine if they will read the rest of the business plan, Huang said.

The team also won third place in the challenge round, Huang said.

The challenge session was for teams that did not make it into the finals, and was similar to an actual session with venture capitalists, in that questions and clarification were asked for during the presentation instead of being asked for at the end of the presentation, Berry said.

The team from the Anderson School was one of 36 teams that were selected to compete in the business-plan competition; these 36 teams were selected from 234 business-plan teams around the world, according to a press release from the Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship.

Being accepted into the competition was a feat of its own, said Daniel Nathanson, professor at the Anderson School, and advisor to the team.

“They did a tremendous job even by being accepted into the Rice competition,” Nathanson said.

The management team for Perseus Medical Technologies come from various backgrounds, with various experiences within and without the business world.

“I think that because we had a broad range of skills and backgrounds, it really helped contribute a lot of depth to each part of the plan,” said Sarah Carr, a graduate student pursuing a master’s degree in business administration and vice president of marketing and sales for Perseus Medical Technologies.

Many of the members of the team have worked at various businesses.

“The businesses that we worked on as individuals helped culminate a credible whole when speaking to investors,” Carr said. “If we didn’t have deep experience within each of our fields, I don’t think we would have been as credible.”

Not only did the team receive feedback to improve its business plan and make contacts with investors and others who can help in developing their product, they also were able to network with people like themselves.

“It is very exciting to see the projects people are working on at schools all over. It is such a great showcase for businesses of the future because the competition was based on businesses that are at very early stages,” Berry said.

The team is looking forward to the UCLA Knapp competition, in which they are one of 25 semifinalists, Huang said.