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Stanford Incubator Team Elected 'Entrepreneur Idol'

Mon 14 May 2007
Los Angeles Times
"The budding capitalists at Stanford University on Friday held "Entrepreneur Idol," a takeoff on the Fox Broadcasting talent show. Instead of singing tunes by Bon Jovi or Burt Bacharach, 48 students each had one minute to pitch their best business ideas. The winner would land $2,000 in seed money and connections to a top-level venture firm — but first had to win over a panel of four venture capitalists and one technology blogger.

Linus Liang, 25, a first-year graduate student in computer science, held up a diapered baby doll.

"What if I could tell you how you can save 4 million babies a year?" he asked. His idea: create a low-cost incubator that could help infants in developing countries. [...]

The five finalists pitched again. Liang brought out the doll again for his pitch. Charles River partner Saar Gur called the prop "questionable."

But as with "American Idol," the viewers decided. The crowd of rejected contestants and student spectators clapped and cheered the loudest for Liang, who took home the $2,000 grand prize.

He just smiled to the audience, then scurried to the judges for more advice." -- from the LA Times article "Stanford students vie to be 'Entrepreneur Idol'", by Michelle Quinn, 14 Mar 2007.

Linus and his teammates have taken on DtM's low cost infant incubator project as part of "Entrepreneurial Design for Extreme Affordability", a d.school course taught by Profs. Jim Patell and David Beach through the Stanford Graduate School of Business, the Engineering school, and the Institute of Design.

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