"Get It Started!" Gets You Started

"Get It Started!" is the Wharton Entrepreneurial Programs' newsletter of entrepreneurial highlights and insights. Every month the newsletter is updated with new articles, video clips from experts discussing pertinent issues, and interviews with successful entrepreneurs.

This month's stories include "Reaching Beyond the Case Study," a look into the experiences gained by student consultants at the Wharton Small Business Center, and a video interview with Wharton MBA alumna Anne-Marie Corner, founder of Biosyn. Check out the newsletter and subscribe here.

Follow By Example

Product Planner, a new site that aims "to help people understand and create user flows for their web products," provides over 100 visually mapped "flows" of the web's most successful sites, such as Google and Facebook, for your benefit. Read TechCrunch's review here.

StealthRowing: Company to Watch

StealthRowing, a VIP company that designs and makes specialized training equipment that allows rowers to get the effect of rowing on the water while training indoors, took the top prize last Friday at PennVention, the University of Pennsylvania annual inventors competition, winning $5,000. Read more here.

The 2009 Wharton Business Plan Competition Venture Finals

On Wednesday, April 29, eight finalists will compete for $70,000 in prizes at the annual Venture Finals, an event sponsored by MentorTech Ventures which attracts over 200 entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, investment bankers, alumni, faculty and students. A few of the competing plans include the next generation artificial eye, programmable robotic toys, and diabetes monitoring "jewelry". Find out more and register to attend here.

"Do Something Awesome"

Tekzilla, a Web video show, featured Twitter co-founder Evan Williams in a live interview at the Web 2.0 Expo. In the video, seen here on TechCrunch, Williams offers advice for tech start-ups, the first being to "just do something awesome."

A Look Back at Google Ventures

Last August, Google announced plans to open a venture-capital arm. Wharton Associate Professor of Management, Gary Dushnitsky, discusses the issues Google faces and warns "cautious optimism" as a guest blogger for Robert Salmon, Associate Professor of Management at NYU. Read more here.

America's Most Promising Social Entrepreneurs

Two Wharton alums, Alex Mittal, founder of Innova Materials, a company that makes antimicrobial products for private industry and uses those revenues to fund water purification systems for developing countries, and Felipe Vergara, co-founder of Lumni, a new investment system that uses private capital to fund higher education, were named among 25 of America's Most Promising Social Entrepreneurs in BusinessWeek.

Students = Inventors

The final round of PennVention, an annual student inventors competition at the University of Pennsylvania, will take place Friday, April 10, as the 2009 Invention Fair. 10 finalists will present their ideas before a panel of judges and a live audience and compete for over $60,000 worth of prizes. Find out more here.