UA entrepreneurial team snags top Reynolds business plan prize

Under the direction of Dr. Carol Reeves, University of Arkansas graduate students Kenny Bierman and Phillip Turner received top honors in the Donald W. Reynolds Tri-State Collegiate Business Plan competition held recently in Las Vegas.

The team’s venture, Kordate Solutions, focuses on developing a therapeutic Alzheimer’s drug using the peptoid JPT1 to treat Alzheimer’s disease from early on-set to severe dementia.

Kordate Solution’s effort to find effective treatments for Alzheimer’s disease is timely as another person in the U.S. develops the disease every 67 seconds, according to the Alzheimer’s Association. This disease of the brain is the sixth leading cause of death in the U.S. and the only disease without medicines or other therapies that prevent, cure or slow progression.

The business plan competition requires the teams to make oral presentations for the proposed ventures which are evaluated on their potential to become a viable company.

Reeves told The City Wire Friday (May 28) that the competition allows scientists like Bierman to team up with business students. She said this year's competition was heavily weighted with biomedical teams and Kordate stood out among the crowd. She said the students form their own teams in the summer before the fall class and work together on the venture throughout the year.

“This year’s teams presented sophisticated and forward-thinking business plans that have the potential to become very successful companies,” said Rush Deacon, acting CEO for Arkansas Capital, the sponsoring arm of the annual contest. “It’s exactly the type of innovation we were looking for when we started this competition. This competition is an example of broad efforts Arkansas Capital has spearheaded to support entrepreneurship in Arkansas, and we are very proud of our student competitors.”

The competition is an invitation only event for the first and second place winners of the Donald W. Reynolds Governor’s Cup in Arkansas, Nevada and Oklahoma who compete for $118,000 in cash awards each year. As a first place winner Kordate Solutions received $30,000, while Reeves, acting as advisor earned $3,500. Awards of $20,000 went to second place winners.

Kordate Solutions is the not the first biomedical team from the UA to win this competition. In 2009, Robin Goforth and her friend Misty Stevens entered the competition as a requirement of Reeves’ entrepreneurship classes taught at the UA.

Goforth’s BiologicsMD venture sought to produce a drug that battles osteoporosis. Her team garnered more than $630,000 in business plan competitions and in 2012 was awarded $2.3 million from the Department of Defense to continue their work. Last year BiologicsMD received their first patent.

As entrepreneurial provost at the UA, Reeves has advised dozens of teams in recent years that have become viable businesses. DataRank, cycleWood and Skosay which are examples of Fayetteville startups growing today that received early guidance from Reeves. She said there are many more teams she advised that are up and running as a business.

"My teams have earned more than $40 million in price money and grants over the years to further their startup visions," she said.

In Reeves’ 25 years in Arkansas, she has never been so excited about the state of entrepreneurship in Arkansas.

“I feel like all the pieces are starting to come together, and we’ve got a critical mass of entrepreneurship going on,” Reeves said.

The UA was not the only Arkansas institution to garner a win in the Donald Reynolds competition. Joshua Baker, representing Agricultural Innovations from Arkansas State University in Jonesboro, beat five other teams to win the graduate division of the Tri-State Elevator Pitch competition and a $2,000 cash award.

In just 90 seconds Baker sold the judges on how his team’s business model offers a more efficient approach to farm irrigation with WellsVision, a sensor-driven automated irrigation system.