December 8, 2000, Austin, TX—On December 7, the 18^th annual Texas Moot Corp^® Business Plan Competition awarded first prize to a revolutionary fat loss solution conceived by a team of four McCombs School of Business MBA students. The winner, Halsa Pharmaceuticals, has discovered a material that, when injected into an obese patient by a physician, will generate a rapid, safe and substantial loss of body fat. Last week, Halsa filed a patent application to protect its intellectual property.

“Moot Corp^® gave us a good sounding board for our plan and presentation, a great immersion into the venture capital culture. That’s a tremendous start for Halsa as we move this firm into its first round of funding” said Philip Speros, president of Halsa Pharmaceuticals.

“The opportunity facing Halsa Pharmaceuticals is the most exciting in the 18-year history of the Moot Corp Competition,” said Dr. Gary M. Cadenhead, Moot Corp Director.

Halsa Pharmaceuticals receives a year in the Austin Technology Incubator, a spot in the international Moot Corp^® Competition and $5,000 in prize money. In addition, Halsa receives Advisory Board Strategy and Assembly Services from TheBoard.com, which assists companies in building world-class boards of advisors and directors.

First runner-up went to WasteWise. The WasteWise team pitched an innovative web-based method of simplifying waste management that enables on-line competitive bidding, creates new opportunities for waste recycling and dramatically reduces paperwork and regulatory compliance burdens. As the winning Internet team, WasteWise receives a Joint Application Development and White Paper from EnFORM Technology. Three out of the four teams in the Competition pitched web-based ventures.

Winning the Competition puts Halsa Pharmaceuticals much closer to turning their entrepreneurial dream into reality. And the team credits part of their success to The University of Texas at Austin’s McCombs School of Business curriculum and the input of the Moot Corp Competition judges.

“These entrepreneurship courses and programs have strengthened our firm, each of our managers, and all the MBA team ventures who participated. These firms will have better success and the firms that the management teams serve later will benefit also. If you look at the participants, there are companies that wouldn’t have started if not for Moot Corp and there are firms that still would have started, but are much stronger for having undergone the Moot Corp process,” said Speros.

Fourteen local venture capitalists and business leaders, many who have gone through the Moot Corp process themselves as students, judged the Opening Round of the Competition on November 30. Opening Round judges included Meredith Seagraves, Virtual CFO; Kim Allen, Murphree Venture Partners; Joyce Carter, Newgistics; Vernon Bryant, The Texas Growth Fund; Antonio DiGesualdo, The Texas Growth Fund; Rob Kornblum, Austin Ventures, Riss Estes, ClearCommerce; David Boocks, EnFORM Technology; Rob Carruthers, STARTech; Bryan Rollins, Reactivity; Todd Barr, Dell Ventures; Craig Milius, Austin Ventures; Kevin Williams, ARCH Venture Partners, and Richard Burgess, AirLiquide America.

The four teams in the Competition finals were judged by Rob Adams, AV Labs; Cynthia Bast, Locke Liddell & Sapp; Mary K. Marsden, The Mar.Com Group, and Dick Moeller, Verity Ventures. The judges assume the role of interested investors and question the entrepreneurs as if their own investment capital were at risk. They function as an investment group seeking to reach consensus on the business venture they would most likely fund.

“The value we got from working with judges who were engaged and offered valuable insights, who motivated us to explore aspects of our plan more deeply was crucial,” said Speros.

The Texas Moot Corp^® Competition is hosted by the McCombs School of Business at The University of Texas at Austin.  The McCombs School has one of the most highly ranked entrepreneurship programs in the country. Winner of the Texas Moot Corp® Competition will compete in the International Moot Corp® held in May 2001, here at the McCombs School of Business.