The Independent Street blog at the Wall Street Journal gives some love to the BPC and five of its entrants.

Download the presentation from Eric Siegel’s How to Write a Business Plan workshop last Monday. Video to be posted soon.

Congrats to the 25 semifinalists!

2007-2008 WBPC Semifinalists:

Changin Your Life Forever LLC
FlyBy
Gelomatrix
Illumination Diagnostics
Innova Materials
Crave Mobile
iTherapetuics
Mahila
Mtandao
Organ Transplant Technologies
PerfectExpression
Proteza
SCM Inc.
Sextant IP
Snowball Exchange
Solixia
Sustenance Health Food
syatsui@wharton.upenn.edu
Tollbit
TracNatal
Ultrasonic
Visigy Systems Inc.
Waterways
Wharton Business School – student
Wharton School

The Wharton Business Plan Competition will host a Business PlanWriting Workshop next Monday, February 18th from 4:30pm – 6pm in JMHH 240. Join WEP’s Eric Seigel author of The Ernst & Young Business Plan Guide for a sesion on how to structure and write your plan. The workshop is open to everyone; you do not need to have entered or be continuing in the BPC to attend.

Next week DIY Week kicks off with a series of panels on topics relevant to entrepreneurs. Learn form your fellow students!

“Finding Early Funding”

Monday, Feb. 18 | 12 – 1:20pm | JMHH F45

“Prototyping Your Product”
Tuesday, Feb. 19 | 4:30 – 6pm | JMHH F92

“Acquiring Your First Customer”
Wednesday, Feb. 20 | 12 – 1:20pm | JMHH F45

“Bootstrapping Basics”
Wednesday, Feb. 20 | 4:30 – 6m | JMHH F92

“Launching Your Website Quickly”
Thursday, Feb. 21 | 12 – 1:20pm | JMHH F50

For those of you who submitted a business concept for Phase I, judge feedback will be returned to you by December 1st! Remember Phase I is non-competitive. There is still time to submit plans for the Phase II deadline January 25th.

Don’t miss the upcoming Past Winner’s Panel! Come hear how they did it and what they’re doing now. Wednesday, November 28th, 4:30pm JMHH 345.

Sugar-rush, caffeine-rush…how about entrepreneur-rush? Well, that is exactly what I felt when I walked into the TechCrunch Meetup 11 party in Boston this past Friday (Nov 16). The place was packed right from the beginning – when the doors opened at 6pm! Startup companies had designated stalls to demo their product and they put on quite a show. Ofcourse – great music, free drinks and appetizers helped add to the festive spirit in the party.

The meetup was a blast – I met tons of interesting people (including Michael Arrington himself!), and heard a lot of great ideas (see here for a full list of startup companies who presented). However, I cannot over-emphasize the passion and the energy in the party – this was undoubtedly the most enjoyable aspect of the meetup for me. Huddle together a few entrepreneurs and venture capitalists in a room and the experience is really something to be cherished ! I highly recommend a visit to the next TechCrunch party – whereever it is!

Karthik Raghupathy,

Director of Judge Relations,

Wharton Business Plan Competition 2007-2008 

The Wharton Entrepreneurship Conference is Friday, November 16 at the Union League of Philadelphia.

Entrepreneurs are a special breed of individuals, unified by a mindset that they want to lead rather than follow, change rather than accept, and innovate rather than pause. Confessions of an Entrepreneurial Mind will explore the stories of how these individuals turned desire into action, and learn what they were thinking when they took the leap to make a difference.

Register now!

Did you miss our October team mixer? Entrepreneurs still interested in new team members have submitted executive summaries of their ideas. Check them out (pdf) and feel free to contact the entrepreneur if you are interested in being on their team.

Here’s an interesting New York Times article published this weekend on Max Levchin, the founder of Paypal and now Slide.com, and his super successful serial entrepreneur peers who don’t know how to stop starting up wildly successful new businesses.

Interested in the latest news on Web 2.0 startup companies and Internet ideas. Check out these sites:

Techcrunch.com

Techmeme.com

Startupsquad.com

Mashable.com

Let us know about interesting websites geared toward entrepreneurialism.