Talented students to attend entrepreneur course
MEDIA RELEASE
10 April 2008
Talented students to attend entrepreneur course
Up-and-coming Wellington businessmen Daniel Crabtree and Benjamin Matthewson are off to Silicon Valley for an entrepreneurs’ course.
Offered funding for the course by the Foundation of
Research, Science and Technology (FRST), they will be the
only two New Zealanders attending the 2008 Stanford Graduate
School of Business Summer Institute for Entrepreneurship.
“This is a pilot project which if continued, will
help to build the pool of science entrepreneurs in New
Zealand. The two students participating in this years course
are very talented, will benefit greatly through professional
development and are likely to make a large contribution in
the future,” says Jonathan Miller, Commercialisation
Manager for FRST.
Daniel Crabtree is currently
working on a PhD at Victoria University in computer science,
focusing on improving the quality of web search results. He
also runs several web-related businesses, is applying for a
patent for his PhD research and has communicated his
research internationally.
He was awarded a
prestigious Top Achiever Doctoral Scholarship in 2005 for
his PhD studies. Upon completing the research later this
year, he intends to pursue the expansion of his businesses.
Benjamin Matthewson is six months away from finishing
his PhD at Victoria in chemistry, looking at the
proteins—or building machines—inside seashells. He’s
also studying a graduate diploma in commerce, and says
leadership, innovation and amalgamating science and business
are among his interests.
He was awarded a Curtis-Gordon
Research Scholarship in Chemistry last year for excellence
in Victoria’s School of Chemical and Physical Sciences.
“The course is basically all the things you need to
know to run a business. It will help me with my transition
from student, academic researcher and small business
operator to entrepreneur,” says Mr Crabtree.
“The
intense nature and short duration of the course is ideal, as
it provides the perfect opportunity to capture the academic
theory, while not delaying the expansion of my
businesses,” he says.
Mr Matthewson says: “Given the
small population of New Zealand, companies have to be very
good to succeed. Furthermore, to grow they must operate in
the worldwide arena. The international perspective available
through this course would be invaluable for providing
insight into this arena.”
The pair will attend the four-week course, beginning this June, each with funding from FRST worth US$9,000.
They were first alerted to the opportunity by Sophie Dalziel, Business Development Manager at VicLink—Victoria University’s commercial arm. Victoria University’s Faculty of Science and VicLink will share the cost of the pair’s flights to the United States.
ENDS