On the following pages, you’ll meet some of our most promising “risk takers,” all of whom are graduates or students of Ole Miss. We also spoke with Randy Goldsmith about the Mississippi Technology Alliance and how it’s helping the Magnolia State promote the technology business through the coordination of industry, academia and government.

Whether it’s students on the cusp of launching a high-tech venture or recent graduates who have created commercially successful software, entrepreneurs can be found around every corner. So take a moment to discover how the Ole Miss School of Business Administration is bringing Mississippi to a new level in business through education.

Business competition winners plan Internet-based company

Joy riding could take on whole new meaning with alums’ software for in-car computing

Professor helps business visionaries turn innovation into enterprise

Business competition winners plan Internet-based company

She comes from a family of entrepreneurs and has always dreamed of owning her own business—just like her dad.

He always knew he wanted to be his own boss. In fact, the thought of working for someone else makes him shudder.

So when University of Mississippi juniors Elizabeth Yerger and Adams Briscoe met, it was not only a match made in heaven but in the business world, too. Recently, the students launched a high-tech venture with the help of the Ole Miss School of Business Administration.

Yerger, a business and marketing major from Jackson, and Briscoe, an accounting major from Tupelo, are winners of the 2007 Ole Miss Gillespie Business Plan Competition for Best New Concept. With the award, which was given in spring 2007, came a prize of $5,000 to help jump-start their business.

And jump-start the business they did. Yerger and Briscoe introduced Popular Fidelity or PopFi, a social bookmarking Web site targeted for the tech-oriented consumer in search of intelligent news.

“It’s not the mainstream news like CNN or Fox, and it’s not Facebook [a social networking site like MySpace],” Briscoe said. “It’s kind of in the middle.”

Like his target audience, Briscoe is a techie at heart. But he also is a news junkie. In fact, he has been a professional scribe for several years, writing enough copy for AOL each month to pay the rent, he said with a laugh. So PopFi is the perfect project for him.

Yerger’s entrance into the world of Internet news came a bit later. She became interested in it after meeting Briscoe her freshman year. When the pair began dating, she sometimes helped him research stories. The two also spent a lot of time throwing around business ideas. When Yerger read about the Gillespie contest, she jokingly suggested that the pair enter the concept, which they titled Soborati. Briscoe took her up on the challenge.

Lots of hard work later, the two were ready to present their plan to the Gillespie judges. Both said their classes at Ole Miss helped prepare them. For Yerger, business communications was the key.

“We learned how to do an effective business presentation, which definitely helped us,” she said.
For Briscoe, his accounting classes kept him in good stead, he said.

On the day of the award an-nouncements, both admit to being beyond anxious.

“I put more effort into this project than anything else I’ve done—my whole heart and intel-
lect were on the line,” Briscoe said. Yerger agrees. “I’ve never been more nervous in my life,” she said.

Like all business plans, theirs includes a way to make a profit from the site. Revenue will come in the form of ads. But unlike print or television spots, Briscoe said, the beauty of the Internet is that ads are specifically targeted to the reader, which gives them an edge over their print and broadcast competition.

The next step after launching the Web site is securing investors. The plan is to recruit freelancers and fellow techies across the nation to help them gather information.

Both said they received encouragement from former business school Dean Brian Reithel. “He really helped out,” Briscoe said. “He gave us lots of pointers to refine the business plan and lots of advice. I’m really thankful.”

Now that their Web site has launched, Briscoe believes it is something that he was born to do. “I like to think I am an entrepreneur at heart,” he said. “I’ve always had this nagging thing that makes me go out and pursue a common goal.”

“I’ve always been a business person,” Yerger adds. “But to think I would be a full-time student and working to launch our own company is amazing.”

The Gillespie competition was created to help promote entrepreneurship and is coordinated by the School of Business Administration. It was named in honor of Edwin C. Gillespie, a 1943 Ole Miss business administration graduate, and made possible through an endowment from his widow, Jean, and his brother Joe, another UM alumnus. Besides Yerger and Briscoe, additional winners include a five-member team of business graduate students who were honored for the Best Overall Business Plan. Parul Bajaj of Jackson, Mary Grace Bratschi of Clarksdale, Erin Dickey of Berryville, Va., Anjali Pahwa of Madison and Karah Shelly of Lebanon, Tenn., created a plan for a weekly community newspaper in middle Tennessee.

Joy riding could take on whole new meaning
with alums’ software for in-car computing

Take a little of the Geek Squad, throw in the dreams of an entrepreneur like Henry Ford and mix with the savvy of a Donald Trump—and what do you get? A duo of UM grads who have created a software program that promises to make computing in your car as easy and as common as on your desktop.

Reagan Cooper (BBA 02) and David McGowan (BBA 03) are the creators of Centrafuse, a touch-friendly interface software system that enables consumers and businesses to easily use a PC in their automobiles. Although they didn’t invent the idea of touch-screen software, they have made one of the first commercially successful products using the technology.

It is designed to run on Windows XP, XP-Embedded and Windows Vista platforms.
Although it might sound a bit complicated and something only a confirmed nerd would use, Centrafuse is actually the opposite, Cooper said. It easily combines all the bells and whistles consumers demand in electronics. It accesses and plays your digital music, videos and photos (think iPod with an edge); browses the Internet; and is an easy-to-use GPS system that displays thousands of points of interest, plus the best routes to get to your destination. It will even read your e-mail aloud.

Others have tried to create such devices but were hamstrung by the fact that conventional PCs are too hard to use in a car. While Windows is designed for the traditional mouse-and-keyboard user scenario, the pair’s company, Flux Media, designed Centrafuse specifically for a more appropriate finger-driven, touch-screen experience. Significantly larger buttons and text that can be easily read while driving, along with voice-activated controls, are hallmarks of the interface. These design attributes are tailored for an optimal touch-driven user experience.

Cooper and McGowan, both admitted techies and management and information systems majors, met in class and moved to San Diego after graduation. While there, they began working on Centrafuse on the side in 2005. But the pair dreamed of owning their own business. Trying to combine both was tough.

“We worked at night for two years developing the interface,” Cooper said. “We had good days and bad days.”

The hardest part, though, was actually taking that final step and leaving those secure jobs. Each took a deep breath, moved to Atlanta and dove into the project.

“We set up a small office and just jumped off the boat,” Cooper said. “Then we went in search of funding. We wanted someone with vision, someone who realized that they are seeing the future.”

The pair found the investors, and Flux Media was born.

Both Cooper and McGowan say their time at Ole Miss as business majors definitely fueled their careers. “It helped me out quite a bit,” Cooper said. “The technical stuff I knew; the rest I had to learn. It gave me the start-up business mentality I needed.”

The future looks exciting for the two friends and third business partner Eric Breier. Centrafuse has received good reviews across the country and was even mentioned in an article on small computing in Entrepreneur Magazine.

“That was pretty neat,” Cooper said about the story in the national magazine. “To be mentioned with other cool gadgets, like the iPhone and Blackberry, was incredible.”

Now that Centrafuse has been launched, the partners dream of working with car companies around the world to make their invention as common as a CD player in every auto. In the meantime, they’ll continue to refine their product.

“The possibilities are endless,” Cooper said. “We are adding new stuff all the time.”

For more information about Centrafuse and how it works, visit www.fluxmedia.net.

Professor helps business visionaries turn innovation
into enterprise

It has been said that good things are always grouped in threes, such as mind, body and spirit. There are the Holy Trinity and the phases of the moon. There is truth, courage and compassion.
For the state of Mississippi’s most innovative thinkers, the number three has been proven to be quite lucky, as well. And it’s the triumvirate of programs at the Mississippi Technology Alliance (MTA) spurring them to develop new cutting-edge companies or improve their existing businesses. As president and CEO of the Mississippi Tech Alliance, a nonprofit agency based in Ridgeland, Randy Goldsmith has met a number of the state’s finest business visionaries. Most, he said, share the same traits: imagination, ingenuity and tenacity.

People come to Goldsmith and his team for advice, often after having been called such names as dreamers, risk takers and even crazy. But such monikers for his “clients” don’t bother Goldsmith. In fact, he looks for those who always choose the road less traveled. Why? Goldsmith isn’t treating psychiatric patients but helping Mississippi’s entrepreneurs turn their visions into gold.

The mission of the MTA, which is funded through private, state and federal grants, is to drive innovation and technology-based economic development for the state, assisting companies, manufacturers and communities. Its three programs are designed for every stage of business, beginning with the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship.

The center provides office space to technology companies with more than 100 employees. But that is just the start of the program. The staff, which is made up of businesspersons with various experience in the private sector, helps support new companies by offering advice, marketing research, data center access, mentoring and business coaching.

“We’ll meet with the individual and determine what to do next,” Goldsmith said.
What to do next depends on the business’s stage of development. Some owners come to the center to be taught how to put together their business plans, while others are ready to learn how to present their ideas to a group of private investors.

The second prong of the MTA is the Center for Capital Formation, which helps entrepreneurs and potential investors meet. Many companies have successfully started with the center’s assistance, receiving anywhere from $500,000 to $5 million in funds. Success stories include SemiSouth, a semiconductor company in Starkville and ANI Pharmaceuticals in Gulfport.
The Center for Innovation-Led Economic Development is the third MTA program. It helps communities plan for economic development. It also focuses on existing industries, offering assessments of companies and expertise on which areas of improvement will have the largest impact.

Goldsmith said he is quite pleased with the growth of the MTA and its part in helping bring more tech business to Mississippi. “People with innovation have a place to go where technology,
entrepreneurship and the capital community are all working together,” he said. “That means progress.”

Goldsmith is a visiting pro-fessor of entrepreneurship at TheUniversity of Mississippi.