Moot Corp > Sponsors
Moot Corp Competition Sponsors
Funding of the Moot Corp Program offers a variety of benefits and
opportunities. Join us in launching the world’s next generation of
entrepreneurs. See Become a Moot Corp Sponsor for more information.
Partners (alphabetical order):
The Herb Kelleher Center for Entrepreneurship supports academic
research, teaching and programs related to new venture development. It
brings together financial resources, leading entrepreneurs, students and
faculty from multiple disciplines and multiple colleges and universities
to develop and communicate new knowledge about entrepreneurship and the
entrepreneurial processes. As new technologies are created, the Center
seeks to support research and teaching that concentrates on
commercialization of new products. Visit us at
www.mccombs.utexas.edu/research/hkcenter.
The ICē Institute is an international, transdisciplinary "Think and Do"
tank devoted to solving unstructured problems to accelerate wealth and
job creation and shared prosperity at home and abroad. As a research
unit at The University of Texas at Austin, ICē is focused on knowledge
exploration, dissemination, and application, across a broad range of
academic and applied areas. ICē's vision is a quest for constructive
forms of capitalism that allow communities to prosper. Visit
www.icc.utexas.edu.
NASDAQ Educational Foundation
NASDAQ is the largest U.S. electronic stock market. With over 3,200
companies, it lists more companies and, on average, trades more shares
per day than any other U.S. market. It is home to category-defining
companies that are leaders across all areas of business including
technology, retail, communications, financial services, transportation,
media and biotechnology. In 1994, NASDAQ established The NASDAQ Stock
Market Educational Foundation, Inc. to support educational projects,
curriculum and research that advance financial markets literacy. For
more information on The NASDAQ Stock Market and the NASDAQ Educational
Foundation, visit www.nasdaq.com.
Sponsors
Austin Technology Incubator
The Austin Technology Incubator (ATI) is a nonprofit technology business
accelerator that harnesses local business, government and academic resources to
provide strategic counsel, operational guidance and infrastructure support to
early stage ventures in order to accelerate their transition into successful
technology based businesses. ATI companies have raised more than $700 million in
capital, generated more than $1.5 billion in revenue and created more than
10,000 jobs. ATI is a key program of the IC2 Institute at The University of
Texas at Austin. Visit www.ati.utexas.edu.
With $3 billion under management across nine funds, Austin Ventures has
provided startup and growth capital to emerging companies for over 20
years. We invest nationally but maintain a particular focus on Texas and
the Southwest, where we are the region's most active investor. Our team
of investment professionals works with companies at every stage of the
funding lifecycle, from initial seed investments, through startup and
growth capital, to management-led buyouts and recapitalizations. Visit
www.austinventures.com.
Benchmark Capital, a leading international venture capital firm, was
founded in 1995 to help talented entrepreneurs with original ideas build
successful technology companies. Benchmark’s general partners take a
team-oriented, labor-intensive approach to venture investing to deliver
a superior level of service to the firm’s portfolio companies.
Benchmark’s portfolio includes high-profile start-ups like Infinera,
MySQL, OpenTable, Second Life, Tellme, Yelp, and Zillow, and franchise
companies such as eBay, Juniper Networks and Red Hat. The firm manages
nearly $2.8 billion in committed venture capital. For more information
on Benchmark Capital, visit its website at
www.benchmark.com.
Comerica Bank's Technology and Life Sciences Division is one of the
nation's leading technology banking practices, offering a wide range of
financial services tailored to corporate customers, entrepreneurs and
professionals. Veteran bankers provide credit and financial services to
young, professionally backed technology companies as well as their more
mature counterparts in the computer products, Internet services,
telecommunications, life sciences and e-commerce industries. From 18
offices across the U.S., Comerica’s Technology and Life Sciences
Division serves all major technology centers. For more information, go
to www.comerica.com.
G-51 is a premier, early-stage Entrepreneurs’ Venture Capital firm that
specializes in creating high value for our portfolio companies and
delivering top returns to our investors. G-51 focuses on the software,
hardware, Web 2.0, web-enabled business services and Cleantech sectors.
For more information, go to www.g51.com.
Hunt Ventures, a Texas-based venture capital firm, focuses on early stage
technology companies employing capital efficient business models which
are engaged in the following industries: software, wireless
communications, networking and technology-enabled services. Hunt
Ventures is funded by affiliates of the Ray L. Hunt family which has
worldwide interests in oil and gas, real estate, power, ranching,
refining and private investing. See
www.huntventures.com for more
information.
International Bank of Commerce (IBC Bank) is a member of International
Bancshares Corporation (NASDAQ:IBOC), an $11.2 billion multi-bank
financial holding company headquartered in Laredo, Texas. IBC's "We Do
More" philosophy guides the bank's commitment to doing more for its
customers and the communities where it operates locations. IBC has more
than 255 facilities and 400 ATMs in more than 100 communities throughout
Texas and Oklahoma. See www.ibc.com.
Murphree Venture Partners is a venture capital/private equity firm that
makes investments in entrepreneurial enterprises with high-growth
potential. While MVP will do start-up ventures with proven entrepreneurs
on occasion, we prefer companies with revenue traction in the $3 million
to $30 million range. We also prefer companies whose revenues can be
grown both organically and through add-on acquisitions. The firm seeks
to align itself with entrepreneurs and management groups with whom we
can develop strong working relationships, and with whom we can act in
concert as owners/investors. We invest in the Sun Belt region of the
U.S. from our four offices in Houston, Austin, Baton Rouge and
Birmingham. The practical experience of Murphree Venture Partners
principals brings to the firm a "real world" point of view and is
especially effective in guiding a venture through the entrepreneurial
process to commercial success. The entrepreneur not only receives
capital for his or her venture, but also gets almost 75 years of direct
entrepreneurial experience as part of the process to help their company
reach its full potential. See
www.murphreeventures.com.
Palo Alto Software, Inc. develops and markets products, services and
tools to help people succeed in business. Business Plan Pro, its flagship
product, is the best-selling business planning software in the U.S. retail
market. Palo Alto Software also offers Marketing Plan Pro, the most popular
software for preparing and managing marketing plans. Business Plan Pro and
Marketing Plan Pro are the #1 planning software programs in the academic market
and are used in thousands of undergraduate and graduate level business and
entrepreneurship classes across the world. The company's award-winning
www.bplans.com website offers free resources
on business plans and startups and is one of the highest trafficked sites in the
small business market.
OnRamp Access
We’re another one of those Austin, Texas success stories that began in a
student’s living quarters at the University of Texas. The idea was to reliably
connect people to the Internet at a time when the term information superhighway
was actually cool (1994). Ten years, thousands of Internet access customers,
hundreds of professionally designed websites and 9,000 square feet of
co-location space later, OnRamp Access is still the only technology company in
Austin and Central Texas to provide a single source for all of these services.
See www.onr.com for more information.
Prime Investments, L.P.
Prime Investments has a broad portfolio of investments. One area of focus is
education and specifically education that furthers teaching entrepreneurship.
Prime Investment has interest in Grand Canyon University (www.gcu.edu)
which has the School of Entrepreneurship and LA College International (www.lac.edu)
that has an emphasis on Entrepreneurship.
Ron founded the RonKesslerGroup (RKG) to address executive leadership
opportunities and threatening enterprise needs while constructing long-term
solutions that create and enhance the sustainable value of people, teams and
organizations. RKG offers high impact executive and leadership coaching,
entrepreneurial mentoring, alliance building and strategic partnering. RKG
offers consulting in the areas of regional economic development collaborations
and university-centered economic development. RKG has a coaching alliance with
WorldClassCoaches and an alliance with Pike Powers as co-founders of the Big 12
Center for Economic Development, Innovation and Commercialization (CEDIC). See
www.ronkesslergroup.com.
Ropes & Gray has established national prominence in every area of
intellectual property law, which includes patent prosecution, copyrights and
trademarks, protection of trade secrets, licensing, litigation and financial
transactions involving intellectual property assets. Ropes & Gray's IP Group is
complemented by many of the firm's other practice areas, such as our venture
capital practice that works with both early stage companies and investors. With
more than 275 professionals exclusively focused on intellectual property work,
Ropes & Gray's Intellectual Property practice is one of the nation’s largest and
most acclaimed. For more information, visit
www.ropesgray.com.
For more than 120 years, Thompson & Knight LLP has consistently made a
positive impact on its clients’ successes. The Firm offers extensive resources
to companies, government entities, and individuals in connection with corporate
and securities, litigation, employment, tax and insolvency issues, both
domestically and internationally. The Firm's Austin office is staffed to handle
a large range of corporate and securities, litigation, employment, and
administrative projects. The Firm has approximately 420 attorneys, with offices
and alliances in North America (including two offices in Mexico), South America,
Europe and Africa. For more information, please visit
www.tklaw.com.
TyRex Group
The TyRex Technology Family is a diversified technology products and
services provider to the high-tech electronics communities and network
management professionals, principally those located in Austin (TX), Nashville
(TN), Bentonville (AR), Winston-Salem (NC), and Erlanger (KY). The TyRex
Technology Family consists of Deaton Engineering, iRex Group, Ltd., Megladon
Manufacturing Group, Ltd., SabeRex Group, Ltd., TyRex Services Group, Ltd.,
TyRex Technology Incubator, Ltd. (dba TyRex Engineering Services), RF
Scientific, Ltd., SaberData, Ltd., and the TyRex Group’s non-profit affiliate,
the TyRex Learning Foundation (TLF). For more information, go to
www.tyrexmfg.com.
Team Hosts
Access Venture Partners
Austin Technology Council
DLA Piper
Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce
Origin Partners
Silicon Valley Bank
Texchange