Biz Plan Challenge Winner Declines VC Funding

As winner of the Carrot Capital Education Foundation Business Plan Challenge, Tom Szaky was in position to get venture capital funding for Terracycle, a start-up business focused on the organic plant fertilizer market. However, as discussions with the firm's potential VC backers progressed, the two sides clashed over spending priorities, the need for specific cash flow projections and milestones, and composition of the management team. As described in Canada's "National Post", despite having only $500 cash on hand at the time, Terracycle ultimately did not go the VC funding route, but instead was able to use the resulting PR to attract a smaller level of angel funding.

Wharton Prof Measures Cost of Employee Absences

Wharton Professor of health care systems Mark Pauly has led a team that measured the financial consequences of employee absences for individuals in thirty-five different job classifications across twelve different industries. Distilling the learning from 800 differrent interviews, the team was able to establish "multipliers" of workers wages, that described the financial impact of a day's absence as a proportion of the worker's daily wage or salary. The multipliers ranged from below 1.1 for waiters and non-residential construction workers, to greater than 1.5 for motor vehicle salespeople and mechanical engineers. Pauly believes this work gives companies the ability to more accurately measure the payoff that comes from improving the health of their employees.

The Company that Grew too Fast

Brian Le Gette and his Wharton classmate and business partner Ron Wilson could not finance the spectacular revenue growth of 180s, a Baltimore-based sports apparel company which had once place 32nd on the INC 500 listing of fast-growing small businesses. Le Gette ultimately had to give up control of the company, and get help from Patriarch Partners, a private equity firm specializing in companies with distressed debt. John Anderson's story in the November 2005 issue of INC. Magazine gives all of the details.