Rice Business Plan Competition to ring Nasdaq closing bell Oct. 14

MEDIA ADVISORY

David Ruth
713-348-6327
jfalk@rice.edu

Mary Lynn Fernau
713-348-5374
mlfernau@rice.edu

Rice Business Plan Competition to ring Nasdaq closing bell Oct. 14

HOUSTON – (Oct. 9, 2015) – The 2015 winner of the Rice University Business Plan Competition (RBPC) – KiLife Tech from Brigham Young University — will ring the Nasdaq stock market closing bell at 3 p.m. CDT Oct. 14.

KiLife Tech from Brigham Young University. Photo courtesy of ShauLin Photography.

KiLife Tech CEO Spencer Behrend will be joined by Brad Burke, managing director of the Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship, which hosts the annual business competition, as well as Bob Pertierra of Greater Houston Partnership, William McKeon of TMCx and Bill Glick, dean of Rice’s Jones Graduate School of Business.

A live webcast of the NASDAQ closing bell, will be available at https://new.livestream.com/nasdaq/live or www.nasdaq.com/about/marketsitetowervideo.asx.

What:             Ringing of Nasdaq closing bell.

When:            Wednesday, Oct. 14, 3 p.m. CDT. The closing bell ceremony begins at 2:45.

Where:           NASDAQ MarketSite, 4 Times Square, 43rd and Broadway, Broadcast Studio, New York City.

KiLife Tech has created the Kiband for parents concerned about keeping track of young children in crowded public spaces. The group won nearly $620,000 of the more than $1.5 million in cash and prizes awarded at the world’s richest and largest student startup competition April 16-18.

“We were incredibly honored to win the Rice Business Plan Competition,” Behrend said. “The opportunity to gain additional resources, confidence and experience as well as to develop new relationships has been critical in propelling our growth. Ringing the Nasdaq closing bell is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for an entrepreneur but more importantly it will certainly increase our exposure and continued growth opportunities.”

Described by Fortune magazine as “the Super Bowl and World Series of business plan competitions,” the 2015 RBPC brought 42 university teams from across the globe to pitch their new technology businesses to more than 275 venture-capital and investor judges. Judges evaluated the businesses based on the investment potential.

Since the RBPC’s inception in 2001, more than 154 former competitors have gone on to successfully launch their ventures and are still in business today, having raised in excess of $1.2 billion in funding and created more than 2,000 new jobs. Another 15 have successfully exited with a market value of more than $375 million.

For more information, contact David Ruth, director of national and broadcast media at Rice, at 713-348-6327 or david@rice.edu.

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Photos:

To obtain a high-resolution photo of the market close, go to www.nasdaq.com/reference/marketsite_events.stm and click on the market close of your choice.

The Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship is Rice University’s nationally recognized initiative devoted to the support of technology commercialization, entrepreneurship education and the launch of technology companies. It was formed as a strategic alliance of three Rice schools: the George R. Brown School of Engineering, the Wiess School of Natural Sciences and the Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Business. Since inception in 1999, more than 1,700 early-stage companies have presented at the 170+ programs hosted by the Rice Alliance and raised more than $3.1 billion in funding.

Located on a 300-acre forested campus in Houston, Rice University is consistently ranked among the nation’s top 20 universities by U.S. News & World Report. Rice has highly respected schools of Architecture, Business, Continuing Studies, Engineering, Humanities, Music, Natural Sciences and Social Sciences and is home to the Baker Institute for Public Policy. With 3,888 undergraduates and 2,610 graduate students, Rice’s undergraduate student-to-faculty ratio is 6-to-1. Its residential college system builds close-knit communities and lifelong friendships, just one reason why Rice is ranked No. 1 for best quality of life and for lots of race/class interaction by the Princeton Review. Rice is also rated as a best value among private universities by Kiplinger’s Personal Finance. To read “What they’re saying about Rice,” go here.