Issue link: http://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/56805
technology questions, and even stay anonymous if they want. In fact, the ability to ask and answer questions anony- mously on Piazza is very heavily used. What are your plans? It's clear that students and faculty want us to support more interaction types—such as polling and holding office hours. Students want to be able to look at each other's notes and coordinate projects. Professors want to be able to jump quickly to what's been updated since they've last logged on and write script on top of our platform so they can customize the experience. We're also looking at streaming videos and allowing professors to ask questions that tie in to different parts of the video. We want to continue building a platform that will streamline and foster collaboration, whether it's among a team of five people or a class of 40. How do you think it benefited you to start Piazza while you were still in business school? Because I started a company on the side, I could apply so many things that I was learning in the classroom. That was invaluable. I would have liked to see more of my classmates start their own companies—there were a handful with startups, but many just planned hypo- thetical businesses. I think they would have had more powerful experiences if their businesses were real. IU Has Stake in Startups TEN INVESTORS have created a US$1.1 million fund to support $250,000 in annual prize money for Indiana University Bloomington students, as part of the Build- ing Entrepreneurs in Software and Technology (BEST) competition. IU's Research and Technology Corporation also has contributed $100,000. Each year, the school will award startup funds to IU Bloomington seniors and graduate students who submit the best business plans for a student-run Internet or software company. The school also stands to make a return on its invest- ment. The competition is managed by the IU Bloom- ington School of Informatics and Computing and the Kelley School of Business. As part of the competition, IU receives an initial 10 percent equity stake in each winning company. If BEST winners are successful, the School of Informatics and Kelley will share the returns. The competition will be held in three phases over two semesters. This year, concepts were submitted in Novem- ber, selected teams presented their business plans on February 3, and finalists will deliver their final plans and public presentations by mid-April. The first-place win- ner will receive at least $100,000 in startup funding. The remaining prize money will be distributed among selected runners-up. Winners will be selected by the original team of investors, who include CEOs and IU alumni. Matt Ferguson, CEO of CareerBuilder and one of the investors, notes that university-based contests for startups such as BEST could be one antidote to a down economy. "As the United States faces the highest unem- ployment rates in decades, we need to encourage entre- preneurs to create jobs and opportunities," he says. 56 March/April 2012 BizEd CORBIS/GLOW IMAGES