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NOTES ONLINE
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Share a Start-Up Story
Have you founded a company or worked at a company started by a
UCSD alum? We want to know - for the stories behind these companies,
for networking, for mentoring, and just for war stories about successes
and failures. Drop us a note at startups@ucsd.edu so
we can build a database of activity.
Support Group
Every great business or product started with an even greater idea. Develop
your ideas at UCSD Triton Enterprise
Network (UCSD TEN) meetings in the Bay Area. Founded by
entrepreneurial-minded UCSD alumni, this group is dedicated to promoting the
growth and success of alumni professionals and entrepreneurs by connecting
the UCSD community, ideas, technology and people. Recent grads to seasoned
and highly successful entrepreneurs and business professionals attend quarterly
events.
UCSD TEN is sponsored by the UCSD Alumni Association, Rady
School of Management and VentureForth.
To learn more about UCSD TEN in the Bay Area, visit www.ucsdten.org.
Interested in starting a group for entrepreneurs in your region?
Contact our Alumni Chapter
and Groups Manager at mwkaplan@ucsd.edu for
more information.
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FEATURED
NOTE'S
 Chris
Parrish, M.A.’72, Ph.D. ’74.
Chris Parrish has an iPod.
But you might be surprised at his choice of songs. Bird songs. He
has stored more than 20,000 of them. Parrish’s passion for
birds started when he was 11, and started working on his Boy Scout
merit badges in a Los Angeles suburb. It took him six months of climbing
trees and peering through his grandmother’s old double-magnification
opera glasses to identify the 40 bird species required for the badge.
It was the beginning of a passion that has shaped much of his life. MORE
Ricardo
Chavira, M.F.A. ’00
As a desperate husband of a Desperate Housewife,
Ricardo Chavira finds himself enduring the slings and arrows of
outrageous plotlines on Sunday nights at 10/9 p.m. central. Chavira
plays Carlos Solis, the jerky husband of Gabrielle Solis (Eva Longoria)
on ABC television’s saucy runaway hit Desperate
Housewives. And he’s enjoying the ride. MORE
Joan
L. Byer, '78
Juvenile delinquency is one of the major problems that
Family Court Judge Joan L. Byer, ’78, confronts daily in
her Louisville, Kentucky courtroom. And 95 percent of juvenile
delinquents have had a truancy problem. MORE
ENTREPRENEUR's CORNER
TeachTown
Autism is reaching epidemic proportions.
Currently, the only treatment can cost families between $40,000
and $100,000 a year, and there can be a two-year waiting
list. Christina Whalen, B.A. ’95, M.A. ’96, Ph.D. ’01,
saw something wrong with this picture. MORE
Hello,
Goodbye
San Diego software company NetSift celebrated
its first birthday with quite a present—$30 million in cash and options—when
technology giant Cisco Systems bought the company in June. NetSift, was founded
by Computer Science and Engineering professor George Varghese and Sumeet Singh, ’02,
in June 2004. With the assistance of the Jacobs School’s William J. von
Liebig Center for Entrepreneurism and Technology Advancement, they were able
to get financing from Enterprise Partners Venture Capital.
The
von Liebig Center works with UCSD faculty and research
staff to foster innovation and accelerate commercialization
of new ideas. “The Center helped us get the initial
pitch together,” says Varghese. “Venture capital
firms tell you that the technology is good, but what you
really need is a business plan.”
“The
success of NetSift helps validate the seed-stage investing
model that we have adopted to help faculty turn their innovative
ideas into innovative products and companies,” says
Paul Kedrosky of the von Liebig Center. “The traditional
criticism of seed-stage investing is that it usually takes
eight years and $70 million to take a company from startup
to exit. In NetSift’s case, that process took barely
a year.”
The
ink was scarcely dry on the stationary before they were
approached by Cisco. NetSift’s unique systems, developed
from their research at UCSD, will be incorporated into
Cisco’s products.
NetSift’s
software will protect customers from large-scale worm and
virus attacks and will help accelerate the integration
of high-speed packet processing capabilities into future
core Cisco platforms. Most of the company’s 15 employees
will be absorbed into Cisco’s Internet Systems Business
Unit, while several remain in San Diego. Varghese will
extend his leave of absence from the University to work
at the San Jose facility. Part of the deal with Cisco included
his remaining with the company for another year.
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Wow!
Photos
Describing his new book Phantograms
From Nature, Western USA, Barry Rothstein, ’75,
says, “It’s a hobby gone mad.” The innovative
book employs a technique of 3D photography called phantograms,
which are viewed from a 45 degree angle rather than straight
on.
The book features scenes
from nature—autumn leaves, driftwood, cactus—mostly
taken in parks near Rothstein’s home. But viewed through
the 3D glasses included in the book, these everyday scenes lift
from the page in amazing detail. As Rothstein says, there is a
definite “wow factor.”
His one-man company, 3dDigitalphoto.com,
was born out of his hobby. The website includes several galleries
of photographs, as well as information on creating 3D images. Rothstein
predicts this style of photography could even find application
in school textbooks. “Just think, you could really examine
a dandelion,” he says. “Who takes the time to do that?” Rothstein’s
next foray is into the world of children’s books. He is already
developing some ideas that incorporate his unique photographic
style.
This isn’t Rothstein’s
first entrepreneurial venture. In 1975 he set up a bagel cart that
traveled from Muir to Revelle selling a bagel and cream cheese
for just 25 cents.
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