Dr. Sheila Schindler-Ivens, associate professor of physical therapy in the College of Health Sciences, took second place in the Life Science category at the annual Wisconsin Governor’s Business Plan Contest with her startup Venus Rehabilitation Technologies.
Out of over 150 entries, Schindler-Ivens and Venus Rehabilitation Technologies qualified for the Diligent Dozen, 13 finalist start-up companies that pitched in the competition finals at the 21st annual Wisconsin Entrepreneurs’ Conference, June 5-6 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Two Marquette-affiliated start-up CEOs served as panelists at the Conference where the theme was “Mapping the Entrepreneurial Mind.”. New this year, Economic Engagement, the Graduate School and the Law School sponsored 20 graduate students to attend the conference. The interdisciplinary cohort of students represented colleges across campus including the Klingler College of Arts and Sciences, College of Business Administration, Opus College of Engineering, College of Health Sciences, College of Education, and the Marquette Law School’s Law and Entrepreneurship Clinic. For the third consecutive year, Dr. Kalpa Vithalani, Marquette’s executive director of technology transfer, was invited by the Tech Council to co-chair the conference and serve on the conference steering committee which she hosted on campus. She also represents Marquette on the Tech Council Board of Directors.
Schindler-Ivens invented CUped, an assistive lower limb rehabilitation device for stroke patients for which Marquette has granted patents in the United States, China and Europe. Launched in 2021, many Milwaukeeans were introduced to the company during the 2022 Healthcare Innovation Pitch competition when Venus Rehabilitation Technologies won the Emerging Company award.
The Entrepreneurs’ Conference and the Business Plan Contest are produced by the Tech Council, the non-profit and non-partisan science and technology adviser to the governor and the Wisconsin State Legislature. Each plan described the core product or service, defined the customer base, estimated the size of the market, identified competition, described the management team and provided key financial data.
Networking, new connections and lessons from other entrepreneurs are valuable take aways. Sponsors for the contest are contributing cash, office space, legal assistance, accounting, information technology consulting, marketing, event space and more. About $2.5 million in cash and in-kind prizes have been awarded since the inception of the contest in 2004. The Wisconsin Economic Development Corp. is a major sponsor.
Marquette start-up CEO panelists
Two Marquette entrepreneurs were among the panelists at the conference:
- Dylan Waldhuetter, CEO of Rapid Radicals Technology. Rapid Radicals Technology was founded by three-time Marquette alumna Dr. Paige Peters and was the grand prize winner of the 2022 Governor’s Business Plan Contest.
- Tom Quinn, CEO of Marquette Energy Analytics. Started in 1993 by Dr. Ronald Brown at Marquette University as the GasDay Lab to develop and provide maximum accuracy natural gas demand forecasting models to utilities, MEA was spun out of the University in 2018. Today MEA predicts 25% of the nation’s natural gas demand.
