2012 in review

Venga Investment 1

2013 Cornell Venture Challenge 2

Popshop Office Hours 2

Shark Tank @ Cornell 3 Startup Showcase

Portfolio Company Update: 3 GNS Healthcare

Featured Cornell Technology: 4 Waste Water Treatment

BRV Alumni Profile: 5 Marlon Nichols MBA ‘11

Issue #: [Date] Contents

BR Venture Fund (BRV) is the only student-run seed-stage venture capital fund in the nation. BRV’s investments are evaluated, executed, and exited entirely by students. Governed by eight second-year MBA students at Johnson at Cornell University, BRV is supported by a network of nearly 50 first-year Associates, faculty, notable alumni, and venture partnerships. 2012-2013 Fund Managers: Vinay Badami (COO) Mandy Chu Jenny Delaney CJ Halabi Eugene Hsu Chris Seneta Brian Stuckey Siobhan King Thoughts or comments: contact@brventurefund.com

About BRV

AUM $1.6M Firms Screened 66 New Investments 1 In Portfolio 10

BRV’s Latest Investment: Venga

BBRV Investor

The Nation’s Only Student-Run Venture Fund Quarterly, Q1 2013

BRV is thrilled to announce an investment in Venga, a Washington D.C.-based restaurant customer relationship management startup. BRV was joined in the December 2012 Series A investment by D.C.-based SnappCloud CEO David Steinberg, venture capital firm Fortify Ventures LLC, and celebrity chef Jose Andres’ ThinkFoodGroup.

While Point-of-Sale systems collect static data, Venga’s technology deploys powerful data analytics to provide a deeper dive needed for restaurant operators to effectively manage their branded loyalty programs, guest satisfaction rating, customized guest services, and targeted marketing campaigns. Venga’s technology platform seamlessly integrates with a restaurant’s existing Point-of-Sale terminal, captures all of the information on the bill (server, dishes, check amount etc.) and turns it into actionable insights for restaurant management.

Venga’s current customer list includes some prestigious D.C.-based eateries like Ping Pong and Taberna Del Alabardero.

Its Advisory Board includes Top Chef’s Spike Mendelsohn, Mike Isabella, and Jose Andres’ Think Food Group’s CEO Rob Wilder. In January 2013, co-founder and President Winston Bao Lord was also named Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Cornell University’s School of Hotel Administration.

The BRV Investment Committee believes that the fund’s investment in Venga is a perfect example of the robust partnerships among the different colleges at Cornell. Leveraging Cornell’s expertise in hospitality, engineering, and business, BRV will contribute on-campus resources, and is excited to be a part of Venga’s continued success.

See more at www.getvenga.com

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BRV Engages with Popshop through Weekly “Office Hours” In a bright Collegetown storefront, you may find several students hacking away on their very own startups and entrepreneurial projects in the new Popshop, Cornell’s student-run co-working space. The motto is "pop in, start up."

Popshop is a new space for Cornell students and Ithaca residents to engage in scheduled programs and chance encounters, to discuss their entrepreneurial ideas, organize meetings for their startups, and receive guidance and support from experienced entrepreneurs on campus.

Located at 206B Dryden Road, Popshop is home to whiteboard walls, a whiteboard table, shelves of books, a wall screen and free popcorn. Its mission: To help students turn ideas into realities. Open since April, the space -- funded by Entrepreneurship@Cornell, eLab and Student Agencies Inc. -- stays open 24/7.

BRV sought to engage the community in a productive and beneficial manner, and after some brainstorming during the weekly morning meetings, determined that hosting office hours would be most the valuable way. Every week one of the BRV Fund Managers sets up shop in Popshop, and invites budding entrepreneurs to seek advice, practice their pitches or simply run their ideas by the fund manager.

The student startups are all in different stages of growth, from idea stage to summer accelerator acceptance, which makes the office hours sessions different each week. BRV expects that over time the engagement with Popshop will lead to proprietary deal flow. For now, helping the entrepreneurial community flourish at Cornell is the primary focus.

The  top  prize  of  $10K  for  the  2012  Cornell  Venture  Challenge  is  awarded  to  (left  to  right)  Tadpoles  co-­‐‑founder  Andrew  Monroe  ’99,  with  BR  Venture  Fund  managers  Christopher  James  “CJ”  Halabi,  MEng  ’12,  MBA  ’13,  and  Zach  Casavant,  MBA  ’12.  

The Nation’s Only Student-Run Venture Fund

Popshop  thrives  as  a  creative  space  for  student  startups.    

The 2013 Cornell Venture Challenge Excitement is building for the 2013 Cornell Venture Challenge (CVC). New and improved, the challenge gives contestants the opportunity to win up to $50,000 in non-dilutive funding, as well as connect with some of the top global entrepreneurs and investors. Judges are already confirmed from Canaan Partners, ABS Capital, Hillcrest Labs, and Intel Capital.

Run by BR Venture Fund, the CVC is Cornell University’s prestigious Business Plan Competition. On April 18th 2013 and during the Entrepreneurship@Cornell Celebration event, successful applicants will get the chance to pitch new and exciting business ideas to a panel of professional investors and entrepreneurs.

The burgeoning Cornell Entrepreneurship community will provide the contest with dynamic pitches, business plans, and high-intensity competition. Last year BR Venture Fund saw a 38 percent increase in applications, receiving 66 entries from Cornell-related technologies and companies. BR Venture Fund expects even more high-quality business plans this year.

Anyone with a Cornell connection can apply and the competition is industry agnostic. The deadline to enter this year’s competition is March 2, 2013.

For more details visit www.brventurefund.com/cvc

3 3 BRV Investor | Q1 2013

The first ever on-campus Shark Tank took place on February 5, 2013. Twelve student- entrepreneur teams pitched to a panel of venture capital judges for a $500 prize. VC panelists included Andreessen Horowitz, Canaan Partners, Flybridge Capital, Cayuga Venture Fund, Great Oaks Venture Capital and our very own Jennifer Delaney representing BR Venture Fund. Below are a few of the teams that presented.

Solar Flare: 1st Prize Winner Johnson School MBA students Carlos Wang and Pallavi Nambiar took the floor to present Solar Flare with Mikayla Diesch, a freshman engineer. Initially designed for a competition, Solar Flare is a food production company that has produced a nutrition bar for astronauts during space flight. NASA even took their bar into space. The bar is “as good as taking vitamins” and bolsters mental energy. Solar Flare seeks to continue making organic, sustainable products that embrace the latest knowledge in food technology, and promote optimal brain function.

Sunn: Runner Up Undergraduates Jeremy Blum ’13, and Kelton Minor ’13, presented SUNN with MBA student John Ciecholewski ’13. SUNN creates lamps that provide daylight-spectrum lighting. Their lamps mimic the differing light conditions experienced across the course of a day. Blum has produced two prototypes, one of which was on display during the presentation. Mimicking the light cycle of an outdoor day, these lamps could improve the health of those working indoors. Such light has been shown to reduce seasonal affective disorder and revitalizes circadian rhythms. (Continued on next page)

BRV Judges Cornell’s First “Shark Tank”

The Nation’s Only Student-Run Venture Fund

BRV Portfolio Company Update: GNS Healthcare

GNS Healthcare, a data analytics company focused on enabling personalized medicine to improve human health, has formed several new partnerships that will allow it to further expand the scope of its REFS (Reverse Engineering and Forward Simulation) platform.

REFS is a supercomputer-enabled framework for discovering new knowledge directly from data, by automating and extracting causal network models from observational data that are used to create relevant simulations. This platform has now expanded to work across healthcare industries, including pharmaceutical and biotech companies, health plans and hospitals, integrated delivery systems, and pharmacy benefits managers.

Most recently, GNS has partnered with Dana-Farber and Mount Sinai to create a data-driven model of multiple myeloma, the second most common blood cancer in the U.S. GNS REFS models will be used to help researchers discover therapies for the disease, and determine the best existing treatments for patients. Collaborations like these will continue to help GNS create treatment algorithms to match patients to drugs and to discover novel biomarkers from a broad set of molecular and clinical trial data.

For more information on GNS, please visit www.gnshealthcare.com

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(Continued from page 3) Pick2Pay Srikanth Deshpande and Zhongyang Fu are the minds behind Pick2Pay. Credit cards today have a complicated array of rewards programs that match with varying products. It seems that customers care little about what card they use, as 66% would switch cards for rewards. Pick2Pay matches customers with multiple cards with the best card to use for what they wish to buy according to their respective rewards programs.

Quixand Inc. Johnson School MBA student Andrew Paget ’13 pitched Quixand Inc., a venture that allows local merchants and small businesses to advertise their products and services to hotels through a single platform. Paget’s Quixand Inc. promotes their material on a mobile app. Companies pay according to the amount of material posted. Ultimately this brings hotel deals to a wider audience.

For more information on the Shark Tank event, contact Jenny at ja566@cornell.edu.

The Nation’s Only Student-Run Venture Fund

The Magnetic Hybrid Biocatalyst technology combines nanoparticles, enzymes and industrial processes to enable an integrated industrial system with super catalytic capabilities. The technology has broad potential applications in remediation, pathogen decontamination, biochemical feedstock and biomaterials. The most readily applicable use of the technology is in the treatment of industrial waste water, such as those used in hydrofracking. Waste water treatment is one of the key environmental issues that is in immediate need of solution for the exploitation of non-conventional energy. The same process can also be used in the treatment of waste water from other industrial processes, labs, and agricultural systems. One longer-term use of the technology is for the depolymerization of plant materials to recover high-value mono- and polyphenol molecules to synthesize polymers for industrial and consumer use. This technology was developed from an interdisciplinary team between a lab in the College of Agriculture and Life Science and another from College of Engineering. One of the key inventors and a MBA student from the Big Red Tech Transfer program at Johnson School are working on the business plan and exploring funding opportunities for a potential start-up company with the technology. Contact CCTEC for more information: cctec.cornell.edu

Featured Cornell Technology: Magnetic Hybrid Biocatalyst for Waste Water Treatment

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Marlon Nichols (Johnson 2011) was recently selected as a Kauffman Fellow Finalist, an honor awarded to only thirty venture capital professionals each year. The fellowship was established in 1994 to develop venture capital leaders and foster growth and innovation in high-technology, high-impact companies. Through a two-year program, fellows learn from leading academics, venture capital investors, entrepreneurs, institutional limited partners, engineering and science thought leaders, corporate leaders, and public policy experts from around the globe. This network of contacts helps them learn the best practices and access resources that are critical to a successful venture capital community. Marlon joins Aaron Holiday and Adele Oliva (Johnson classes of 2012 and 1993, respectively) as previous Kauffman finalists from Johnson.

At Johnson, Marlon was a Roy H. Park Leadership Fellow, President and COO of the BR Venture Fund, and led a Johnson student team to a first place finish for a SaaS startup at the New Orleans Entrepreneur Challenge.

As BR Venture Fund’s President and COO, Marlon aimed to radically change the fund’s culture and processes. He pointed to four specific accomplishments during his tenure:

1) Raising the fund’s profile by building a website, changing the logo to the now ubiquitous bridge, and reaching out to media partners to cover the fund’s activities, 2) Growing the associate class and institutionalizing the hiring, training and investment documentation of BRV Associates,

3) Establishing the BRV venture network by launching the fund’s fist external relationships with Voyager Capital and Canaan Partners in addition to the fund’s relationships with the IdeaVillage, TechStars, and various other startup accelerators, and 4) Closing investments in Restaurant Revolution Technologies, an outsourced order taking call center for restaurants, and ScriptPad, a mobile prescription-taking app used by doctors and pharmacists.

Upon graduation from Johnson, Marlon joined Intel Capital, where he currently works as an Associate Investment Director actively investing in high growth software companies that produce big data, cloud infrastructure, cloud services, education, and internet solutions.

The Nation’s Only Student-Run Venture Fund

BRV Alumni Profile: Marlon Nichols Associate  Director  with  Intel  Capital  And  Kauffman  Finalist