Accenture Awards University of Texas at Austin $600,000
October 27, 2011
Accenture (NYSE: ACN) and the University of Texas at Austin announced today that Accenture has awarded the University’s Texas Venture Labs (TVL) a $600,000 grant to help provide graduate students the skills they need to launch a business. TVL is an interdisciplinary education and research initiative designed to give students real-world experience in starting and sustaining new ventures. The award, Accenture Venture Partners program, reflects the company’s global corporate citizenship initiative, Skills to Succeed, which will equip 250,000 people around the world by 2015 with the skills to obtain a job or build a business. The three-year grant will provide support for 10 “Accenture Venture Partners,” who are recent TVL graduate school alumni. They will spend one year
mentoring TVL student entrepreneurs, while working with the startup community to identify new business opportunities. Since its inception in September 2010, 63 students have participated in the TVL program. The Accenture funding is expected to help the program expand its enrollment to 100 students. “Innovation is a critical component to creating and running a high performance business,” said Steve Rohleder, group chief executive of Accenture’s Health & Public Service. Read more...
Wells Fargo Provides Grant for Clean Energy Business Ventures
Dec. 5, 2011
Austin, Texas — As part of its national environmental grant program, Wells Fargo today announced that it has provided a $125,000 grant to the McCombs School of Business at The University of Texas at Austin that will fund a new Clean Energy track within the 2012 Global Venture Labs Investment Competition (GVLIC). Read more...
Texas Moot Corp Winners Give Back to Texas Venture Labs
May 27, 2010
Earlier this week, Rob Adams, director of Texas Venture Labs, announced that 2006 Texas Moot Corp winners Daniel Nelson (MBA ’06) and Robert Reeves (BA ’02) – with his wife Maia Reeves (BS ’09) - made a substantial six-figure contribution to Texas Venture Labs. “This generous pledge will allow us to fund additional entrepreneurial consulting,” said Adams. “It’s especially rewarding when graduates remember the opportunities they had here in school, and to give back after they’ve been successful in the marketplace as a direct result of those opportunities.” “Venture Labs will take entrepreneurship at UT Austin to the next level,” said Nelson. “A lot of venture creation is ferreting out the problems…the things to improve, next steps to demonstrate the value of your idea. Venture Labs will provide additional structure and access to making those things happen.”
Texas Venture Labs: Innovation for the Good of Students
June 21, 2010
Austin-based investment manager and entrepreneur Beau Ross, MBA ’88, has the real-world perspective to appreciate what TVL will mean for future graduates. Ross leveraged the skills he gained at McCombs to found, grow and eventually sell Premier HR, an SAP implementation company. Ross is now an active angel investor and partner in Eldorado Energy Partners.
Ross sees TVL as the next step in the search for innovative learning opportunities for students at McCombs. This spring, Ross and his wife, Kathryn, donated $100,000 in seed funding because he believes the impact of TVL is far reaching. By supporting Texas Venture Labs, he says, one can “help create real life opportunities for students to participate in investment deals with the objective of helping them get better jobs, with the positive byproduct of attracting the best students and new recruiters, thereby bolstering the entrepreneurship program.”
“Beau’s continued involvement in mentoring students, providing financial scholarship and helping endow programs that differentiate McCombs from other schools will benefit future MBAs for generations,” says Jim Nolen, distinguished senior lecturer in finance at McCombs.
Top Financial Advisor Invests in Entrepreneurship at UT Austin
Sept. 30, 2010
AUSTIN—Shane Brisbin believes in the mission of Texas Venture Labs (TVL) so much he made a donation to help launch the entrepreneurial laboratory at The University of Texas at Austin.
“Brisbin’s investment was an important signal to entrepreneurs and investors who were watching the formation of TVL from the sidelines,” said Rob Adams, director of the initiative. “His was the stamp of legitimacy that allowed others to step forward with confidence. He was the first to step across the line.”
Brisbin, managing director of Morgan Stanley San Francisco, has spent the last 17 years working with corporate executives, high net worth individuals, family offices and foundations on asset allocation, alternative investing, risk management, financial planning and philanthropic issues.
He has been recognized as one of America’s Top Advisors by Barrons (2009), Registered Rep magazine (2005, 2006 & 2007) and one of America's "Top 40 Advisors Under 40" by On Wall Street magazine (2008, 2009). Brisbin was named by California CEO magazine as one of Northern California’s Top 25 Most Influential Wealth Managers (2006) and by the San Francisco Business Times as one of the Bay Area's top wealth advisors (2007, 2008). His team offers clients comprehensive, strategic advice combined with full, high-touch service, three times earning notoriety by Research magazine as one of the Top Advisors Teams in America (2006, 2007 and 2008).
Brisbin received his MBA from the University of Texas at Austin and his BS from the University of Southern California.
Seasoned Entrepreneur Gives Startups a Boost at The University of Texas at Austin
Oct. 29, 2010
AUSTIN—The University of Texas at Austin announced a major gift to the Texas Venture Labs entrepreneurship initiative by Bryan D. Stolle, an alumnus of the McCombs School of Business.
“Stolle has been at the epicenter of the high-tech startup world for years,” said Rob Adams, director of Texas Venture Labs. “This is a guy who understands early-stage venture investment from every angle, and to have him buy into our approach is very encouraging to our students, faculty members, investors and entrepreneurs.”
Stolle is a general partner with MDV, a leading Silicon Valley early-stage venture capital firm with over $2B under management. He founded Agile Software (NASDAQ: AGIL), a leading provider of product lifecycle management solutions, in March 1995, and served as Agile’s CEO through April 2006. Stolle continued to serve as Chairman through the recent acquisition of Agile by Oracle Corporation. He also serves on the boards of several private pre-IPO companies. Prior to founding Agile, Stolle served in executive marketing and product management roles at several high-tech start-up firms in Silicon Valley and Texas. He started his career at EDS.
Stolle also serves on the Santa Clara University Leavy Business School Advisory Board, and frequently speaks to undergraduate and graduate classes at both Santa Clara and Stanford universities. He received a BBA and an MBA from The University of Texas at Austin.
Investor’s Contribution Signals Positive Forecast for Texas Venture Labs
Nov. 12, 2010
AUSTIN—Prominent technology and IT investor Bill Gurley has given Texas Venture Labs a vote of confidence with a financial gift to the entrepreneurship program at The University of Texas at Austin.
“Gurley’s reputation for recognizing venture opportunity speaks volumes about the potential of Texas Venture Labs,” said Rob Adams, director of the initiative. “We’re delighted he recognizes the value, not only as an educational opportunity for our students, but as a contributing resource to the venture capital community.”
Gurley joined Benchmark Capital in 1999 after spending two years as a partner with Hummer Winblad Venture Partners. His current investments include Clicker, FanBase, Linden Lab/SecondLife, LiveOps, Move Networks, Nanosolar, OpenTable (IPO: OPEN), Scale Computing, Tropos Networks, and Zillow.com.
He has been involved in numerous successful ventures, including Avamar Technologies (acquired by EMC), Business.com (acquired by R.H. Donnelley), Crossgain (acquired by BEA Systems), Employease (acquired by ADP), JAMDAT (IPO: JMDT; acquired by Electronic Arts), Nordstrom.com (acquired by Nordstrom), Ruba (merged with Google), Shopping.com (IPO: SHOP; acquired by eBay), The Knot (IPO: KNOT), and Vudu (acquired by WalMart).
Gurley spent four years as a research analyst for Wall Street, including three years at CS First Boston, where he was the lead analyst on the Amazon IPO. In 1995 and 1996, he was a member of the Institutional Investor All-American Research Team.
Prior to his investment career, Gurley was a design engineer for Compaq Computer and also served in the technical marketing group of Advanced Micro Devices' embedded processor division.
He holds a BS in computer science from the University of Florida and earned an MBA from The University of Texas at Austin.