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Rachel Finley
574 TNRB
Brigham Young University
Provo, UT 84602
(801) 422-3598
prspecialist@byu.edu

Center Advisory Board Members Recognized as Top 100 Entrepreneurs in Utah

Four advisory board members and three honorary advisory board members of the Rollins Center for eBusiness recently made the list of the 2007 vSpring Capital Top 100 Venture Entrepreneurs, also known as the v|100.

Among the advisory board members named to the list were Paul Allen, CEO of Provo Labs and World Vital Records; Cydni Tetro, vice president of marketing and products at Nextpage; Curt Allen, president and CEO of Agilix Labs; and Ralph Yarro, CEO of ThinkAtomic, Inc.

Honorary advisory board members who made the v|100 list were Brandt Andersen, owner of the Utah Flash, an NBA D-League team, and CEO of uSight; Josh James, CEO of Omniture; and Dallan Quass, president of the Foundation for On-Line Genealogy. Kevin Rollins, the center’s founder and former CEO of Dell Inc., and John Richards, the center’s managing director, were also among the one-hundred entrepreneurs honored.

“The v|100 process is unique in that members are selected not by a committee or panel of judges, but by their peers,” says Scott Shaefer, a member of the audit committee that monitors the selection process, in a vSpring Capital press release. “This gives the results a compelling and unique validity.”

Each year vSpring Captial sends out an email to more than seven thousand people in the Utah business community working in government, academics, and businesses, asking them to identify the top entrepreneurs in the area.

This process generates a list of about eight hundred names. Another email is then sent out to the nominees, asking them to cast ten votes amongst themselves. The top one-hundred vote getters become members of the v|100 for that year.

“The v|100 for us has been an entrepreneurship talent and deal flow identification mechanism,” says Dennis Wood, director of Human Capital for vSpring. “It helps us to identify deal flow, deals to invest in, and management. If you fail in any one of these three areas, then you fail at venture capital.”

The v|100 is a mix of young entrepreneurs and seasoned veterans. Wood says all members of the v|100 share one thing in common: great talent in entrepreneurship.

Tetro says she values her contribution to the community as an entrepreneur.

“I believe that because I participate in the startup community, it is my responsibility to form relationships with others that help me learn and grow, and I also have the responsibility to help others in their ventures,” Tetro says. “I think it is a great process, honor, and responsibility to be part of this community and to help drive the economic engine.”