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Two teams follow similar path to Wharton BPC success.
IntuiTouch, second-place finisher in the 2005 Venture Finals, and InfraScan, last year's winner, share more than just good fortune.
The same Penn medical physicist invented their underlying technologies. And their leaders—Michael Herr at IntuiTouch and Baruch Ben Dor at InfraScan—have become friends, thanks to a common mentor at Drexel University.
IntuiTouch's breast-cancer and InfraScan's brain-bleeding detector are based on inventions by Prof. Britton Chance. A collaborator of Chance's, Banu Onaral, head of Drexel's bioengineering school, brought Herr and Ben Dor together.
Early on, Ben Dor suggested that Herr try to enter the Wharton BPC. "The thought was that I'd follow in Baruch's footsteps and learn everything I could," Herr says.
Ben Dor helped him do that via a strategic introduction. Through his Penn ties, he had learned that, as part of a class project, five Wharton undergrads were seeking someone who needed help writing a business plan.
The students wrote the first draft of IntuiTouch's plan, and four of them decided to join Herr and enter the Wharton BPC. Two MBA students joined later.
Now that IntuiTouch has its prize, Herr is finding that he is sharing another experience with Ben Dor, namely the frustration of raising money. In early May, he was engaged in discussions with a group of angel investors.
InfraScan, with a year's head start, already has money in the bank, having received $500,000 from BioAdvance, a Pennsylvania technology investor and incubator. It has also won research grants, totaling $1 million, from the U.S. Army and Navy.
Even so, Ben Dor is out raising funds. "Startups always need more money," he says.
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