Tag Archives: visisonics

MBA Students Work for MD Startup VisiSonics in Venture Practicum Course

In the second installment of our Venture Practicum series, Dingman Center marketing graduate assistant Grant Lee interviews Salomon Camhi, a second year MBA student focused on marketing strategy. Camhi joined Venture Practicum to experience what startup life is all about.

Grant Lee (GL): What startup will you be working with this semester?
Salomon Camhi (SC): The startup I am working for is VisiSonics. Specifically, I am working for the product, RealSpace 3D Sound. RealSpace creates 3D immersive sound effects that allows users to use headphones enjoying sounds from 360 degree. The traditional sound effect is more flat and comes from 2D, whereas the RealSpace is more complete and exciting.

Grant Lee (GL): Describe your project? What are the deliverables?
Salomon Camhi (SC): My focus in the MBA program is marketing strategy, and this project is all about marketing and new product development. For the project, my MBA team partner, Semret Lemma, and I will be working on the competitor and SWOT analysis. We need to analyze VisiSonics’s own SWOT, create a go to market strategy and find a channel to enter. Other things that we might be tackling include webpage design and product positioning.

Salomon

Grant Lee (GL): What do you want to take away from this project?
Salomon Camhi (SC): Prior to Smith MBA, I had ten years experience in the sales, but I have never been involved with the strategic planning process. This project serves a good opportunity for me to develop the strategy and actually implement it. Also, this is a real company not just a school project. I will see the impact of my work in real life.

Grant Lee (GL): Have you worked in a startup before? Describe the experience.
Salomon Camhi (SC): Yes, last summer I worked as a marketing and development intern for UberOffices in Virginia. My project was similar but the scale is much bigger this time. Working at a startup is different from a traditional corporate environment. It is less structured and the organization is more flat so communication is faster.

Grant Lee (GL): Describe the working environment. Is your startup located in a co-working space–like an incubator? Or, do they have their own office space?
Salomon Camhi (SC): Visionics belongs to Technology Advancement Program on the UMD campus. It is a cool place. I know two people who currently work there are UMD graduates. It used to be a chemistry lab, but now it is more of a demo-testing center. There is little office space there.

Grant Lee (GL): What skills do you think you can contribute to Visisonics?
Salomon Camhi (SC): Coming from the sales background, I understand the sales process. This specialty allows me to think from a sales’ perspective when creating marketing strategy. I will be able to develop more realistic and actionable strategy for the company to implement. Also, personally I like technology, especially gaming. This will help me to be familiarized with the industry.

Grant Lee (GL): How do you think the project will help you in your career?
Salomon Camhi (SC): This project will give me hands on experience in developing marketing strategy. It also gives me a picture of how a new technology product will be launched into the market.

About Salomon Camhi
Salomon Camhi is a second year full time MBA student at Smith School of Business. He was born and raised in Guatemala City, Guatemala. He graduated from Purdue University with dual degrees; one in Management with a Minor in Marketing and a the second in Computer Programming Technology. Professionally, he work as a sales representative for two different construction material companies in DC area. Solomon worked for a lumber yard in the DC before beginning his MBA journey.

Grant Lee1512432_10100192309098222_25303874_n1
Grant Lee is a second year full-time MBA student focused on Marketing Strategy at Smith School of Business. Prior to MBA, he had four years of experience in retail marketing and advertising in Taiwan. During first year, he differentiated himself by participating in three business plan competitions and won top five in Wake Forest Retail Innovation Challenge. Now in his second year, he is dedicated to learning more about entrepreneurship by working as a Marketing Graduate Assistant for the Dingman Center, where he enjoys every moment of it. Grant shares his perspectives in his personal website mrgrantlee.com 

About VisiSonics
VisiSonics’ was spun out of the department of computer science at UMD, and is led by the original scientific team working with experienced entrepreneurs. The technology, based on a deep understanding of how the human brain perceives 3D sound, allows creation of immersive sound over any headphones with pinpoint precision. This allows stunning virtual realism in gaming, movies and music. VisiSonics hardware also can capture and stream sound at live events with precision, creating a “best seat in the house”  experience.Visisonics Logo

Follow the Dingman Center blog for updates on the other students and startups participating in Venture Practicum.

Tagged , , , , , ,

Dingman Center Angels: A Year in Review

The Dingman Center Angels connects regional startup companies seeking seed and early-stage funding with angel investors. In this special edition of Worth Reading, we are featuring an info-graphic showing the metrics from this year’s investment season.

DCA Year Review (1)

Background on the companies Dingman Center Angel members invested in from September 2012 to August 2013.  

  • 6th Street Commerce: focuses on simplifying and streamlining the critical business processes associated with managing a successful E-commerce business.
  • Astrapi Corporation: Astrapi’s patented Compound Channel Coding™ (cCc™) allows for dramatic improvements in communication performance by smoothly integrating periodic and exponential signal parameters.
  • Brazen Careerist: a growing community of connectors, coaches, job-seekers, recruiters and entrepreneurs to help you find your next great opportunity.
  • Cirrus Works: a scalable integrated infrastructure solution that forms the basis of efficient technology management in commercial networking environments.
  • Distil Networks:  protects websites against web scraping, content theft and competitive data mining.
  • E-ISG Asset Intelligence LLC: delivers cost efficient solutions to help customers manage and track their assets so they can reduce costs and improve operation efficiency.
  • ExecOnline: provides every executive at the world’s great companies with access to superb training opportunities.
  • Foodem: an online trading, business intelligence, and process automation solution for the $670 Billion U.S. wholesale food distribution industry.
  • InGo: the revolutionary solution which brings data-driven value to face-to-face sales and marketing. InGo provides Social Event Marketing with Meeting Matching for show growth and guaranteed value for every user.
  • Mobile Systems 7: allows enterprises to securely deploy smartphones and tablets by monitoring deployed systems, securing sensitive data and enforce corporate policies without relying on software agents.
  • Naaya: a game-based social learning platform for Elementary Schools (K-5) focused on global and social studies and 21st Century Skills – Communication, Collaboration, Creativity, Critical Thinking, and Character.
  • Nexercise: a free mobile application that rewards users with virtual medals, discounts and free merchandise for good health.
  • Plant Together: a platform to mobilize youth and families, in partnership with other agencies, to plant trees and promote reforestation in critical zones on the African Continent.
  • Riskive: provides enterprise grade security technology dedicated to identifying, monitoring and preventing risk across the socially connected enterprise.
  • Spinnakr: increases click-throughs and conversions by automatically displaying the right message to the right visitor.
  • Visisonics: brings to market state of the art products and solutions in 3D sound capture, analysis and reproduction.
  • YaSabe: connects businesses, Latino culture and community by allowing users to be “in the know” and confidently make choices about how and where to spend their time and money.
Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

2012 UMD Entrepreneurship Invitational Recap

The 7th Annual UMD Entrepreneurship Invitational, Powered by the Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship was overwhelmingly successful with the launch of Startup MD, the BB&T Business Invitational, keynote speakers Governor O’Malley and Under Armour CEO Kevin Plank at Cupid’s Cup, and over 600 attendees at the day’s events. Cupid’s Cup Grand Prize and People’s Choice winner was Reed Street Productions, taking home $17,500 in prizes.
BB&T Business Invitational winners were Veenome (regional company) and My Fridge Rental (UMD community company), each receiving $2,000. With praise from President Wallace Loh and Dean Anand on the quality of the companies and execution of the day, this has been the most successful UMD Entrepreneurship Invitational to date. Keep reading for highlights and photos of the day.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Startup Maryland is a regional initiative launched out of the Startup America Partnership. Driven from within the community and led by entrepreneurs Startup Maryland is locally-operated and inclusive. Startup Maryland strives to connect innovation communities and recognize the importance of startups, ramp-ups and speedups to the state and regional economies. The official launch of Startup MD was the first event of the day at the UMD Entrepreneurship Invitational. The video below, features highlights from the event.

BB&T Business Invitational is a showcase of University of Maryland companies, regional startups, and campus and regional resources for entrepreneurs. Attendees had the opportunity to network with UMD students and alumni, local entrepreneurs and investors, and business leaders from the Baltimore-Washington metropolitan area. Sponsored by BB&T, prize money was awarded to top exhibitors as voted on by event attendees.

Dan Waetjen, BB&T group president for the Greater Washington region, presented prizes from BB&T for exhibitors at the BB&T Business Invitational:

  • $2,000 best UMD Community company – My Fridge Rental (winners of the 2011 Cupid’s Cup)
  • $2,000 best Regional company – Veenome

Cupid’s Cup, a business competition for student and alumni entrepreneurs, began in 2006, due to the vision and generous support of Kevin Plank ’96, founder and CEO of Under Armour. The competition is designed to identify and support students and young alumni who have already started their own businesses. Five finalists pitched their businesses to Kevin Plank and a panel of veteran entrepreneurs for $25,000 in prizes.

  • $15,000, 1st place – Reed Street Productions, operators of Run for Your Lives, a zombie themed adventure race attracting thousands of participants
  • $7,500, 2nd place – Food Safety Administration, provider of online courses for food service professionals required to earn food and alcohol safety certifications
  • $2,500, People’s Choice Award, decided by audience vote – Reed Street Productions (sponsored by Sam Medile ’80, a successful entrepreneur and former Terp student athlete)

Other finalists:

  • 10G Systems, supplier of web-based transportation software to small to mid-size shippers
  • Route One Apparel, an e-commerce platform for creative apparel designed by students
  • Visisonics, a UMD spinout that enables realistic 3D audio for music, movies and gaming in standard headphones

To see a full photo album from the day, go to  http:/ter.ps/mar30photos 

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , ,