Solar Win for Berkeley MBA

Will Regan and Will Greene in an earlier Xite Presentation

Hailed by judges as a “big idea” with significant implications for the thin film solar industry, Xite Solar took third place in the Department of Energy’s First Look West Clean Energy Business Challenge.

Full-time student Will Greene, MBA 13, and Will Regan, a Berkeley Physics PhD candidate, took home the honor and a $40K prize from the western regional finals of the competition, held at Caltech April 30-May1. Xite Solar’s technology enables production of high-efficiency, low-cost photovoltaics from a variety of earth-abundant, non-toxic materials.

Green and Regan, who connected last fall as organizers for the Berkeley Energy and Resources Collaborative (BERC) Innovation Expo, emerged from an original field of more than 80 teams and 30 finalist teams. “BERC has been a wonderful way to bring together students with an interest in energy from across the UC Berkeley campus..” says Greene. “It plays an instrumental role in facilitating interaction and collaboration among energy students from a diversity of academic backgrounds.”

Regan and Greene are going to be assembling a team of five students to participate in the Cleantech to Market class this fall to continue to work on the project.

Haas Achieves: A Video Year-in-Review

Congratulations to the full-time MBA classes of 2012 and 2013. In just one year you have accomplished an extraordinary amount, from organizing conferences and international treks to winning case competitions. We are so proud of all you achieve at Haas–and have captured what we could (i.e. some, certainly not all!) in this Haas Achieves video. We know you have many achievements yet to come and wish you the best.

Winning Approaches: University of Michigan Renewable Energy

The Winning Team: Dave Hirsch, Rohan Ma, Dan Stotts, Josh Lich, all MBA 13

The Competition: Renewable Energy Case Competition, University of Michigan, Feb. 2nd.

The Team: Dave Hirsch, Josh Lich, Rohan Ma, and Dan Stotts, all MBA 13.

The Outcome: First place.

The Field: Fifteen other teams, including those from Columbia, Tuck, Fuqua, and Kellogg.

The Challenge: To move a Michigan utility closer to achieving 20% of electricity generation from renewable energy technology. The team analyzed the cost-effectiveness of both renewable  and conventional energy generation; conducted risk and extraneous cost assements, and developed a risk-minimizing strategy that included analysis of tax implications.

The Winning Approach: Diversification. “We suggested a solution similar to diversifying a stock portfolio that would minimize the risks associated with renewable energy,” says Stotts. Also, a dose of reality.” We emphasized that there is no ‘magic bullet,’ but rather a combination of best-practices to employ around locational diversification, smart grid, energy storage, and market integration. Behind these recommendations, we provided robust financial modeling the corroborated our story.”

Won Because: Judges praised the team’s thorough and consistent approach. Stotts says the team’s two “quants,” Ma and Hirsch, exhaustively researched the inputs to the financial models that eventually led to the final costs presented. “The judges, industry experts, could see our costs were logical and realistic,” Stotts says” Additionally, the team’s strategy was specific to the market in which it operated and highly applicable.

The H Factor: “There’s no question that Berkeley-Haas has a vibrant energy community,” says Stotts. “The access that we, as first-years, have received through BERC, the Energy Institute, and experiential learning really provided an intuition from which we could think through the problems.” The team also credits the Leadership Communications course with helping deliver a confident presentation.

Defining Principles at Work: “Everyone left their egos at the door in order to facilitate collaboration,” says Stotts. The team took a Students Always approach by believing they could learn from each other and incorporating peer feedback to arrive at a more refined message. “Our maturity and authority on the subject matter also showed the Confidence without Attitude” that was behind our teamwork.”

Why it Mattered: “These are important problems and this is the preeminent energy case competition in the U.S. We wanted to represent Haas and leverage our respective backgrounds to develop solutions.”

ZZZ Factor: Every spare moment from receiving the case on Jan. 27 to presenting solutions on Feb. 2. was spent on the case. The night before departure, the team worked until 2 a.m., then left to pack for 6 a.m. flights. Copious amounts of caffeine and 80′s pop via Spotify kept them going in those final hours.

Clubbing

One official week in and full-time MBA students have already been clubbed: They’ve worked through a Zynga case with the Digital Media and Entertainment Club (DMEC),  attended an “Energy Boot Camp” held by the Berkeley Energy and Resources Collaborative (BERC), and heard Bain & Company perspective on the smartphone ecosystem, thanks to the Haas Consulting Club. Here is just a sampling of what’s happened in just a couple of weeks on the club scene–and what’s coming up:

A number of DMEC club officers, fresh off of summer internships at Zynga, came to Haas during O-Week to work through a Zynga Career Workshop with new students. Along with alumnus and Zynga Product Manager Matt Salazar, MBA 11, they gave an overview of the product management role and how games are designed. First-years then pitched game ideas for prizes. 

Zynga COO Marcus Segal addresses Digital Media club event

Those game industry contacts were leveraged once again the first week of school, when Zynga COO Marcus Segal addressed DMEC’s first speaker series class. Brain Guenther, MBA 12, serves as VP of Marketing for both DMEC and the Haas Technology Club (HTC) and says to watch for career treks to prominent digital media and technology companies, the annual DMEC >play conference, and a new case competition from HTC sponsored by VMWare.

BERC greeted students with an energy boot camp, where a crowd of people turned out to hear VC and legal perspectives on technology, policy, and business aspects of clean energy. BERC’s annual lecture on Sept. 1 features Samir Kaul of Khosla Ventures and UCB alternative energy Professor Chris Somerville, who will discuss a regulation, the role of large corporations in cleantech startups, and financing and deployment of clean technology.

The Haas Consulting Club welcomed some 80 people at each of their first two events: A management consulting primer and a discussion by Bain & Company consultants on the smartphone ecosystem wars. Watch for Consulting 101 on September 1, when a panel of 2nd-year students will discuss their internship job search and work experiences. “Interviews for management consulting start early and resume drop deadlines are coming up soon,” says Co-president Jarom Feriante. “The Haas Consulting Club has a lot of members who are serious about executing interviews successfully, and the time to start preparing is now.”

From Marketing to Latin American Business to Design and Innovation Strategy, if you’d like to go clubbing, visit the Berkeley MBA Campus Groups web page to learn more.

MBA Internships: Chevron Technology Ventures

Students Gain Experience, Expand Networks

Berkeley MBA students have found time this summer to climb mountains, consult globally through IBD, and perhaps even to unwind and dangle their toes in the water. For most, though, summer means plunging headfirst into the metaphorical waters of future careers with an internship. MBA Inernships is a series of posts on what the class of 2012 is learning as they work worldwide this summer in fields from banking to brand management and for companies from McKinsey to Microsoft.

Student: Adam Boscoe, MBA 12

Interning with: Chevron Technology Ventures (CTV)
San Ramon, CA

Thrilled to be with CTV because: I’m very interested in working to scale-up emerging energy technologies by taking them from the lab to widespread commercialization

Can’t believe he’s getting the chance to: Structure transactions with start-ups and equipment providers for new projects and work with some of the most promising energy entrepreneurs in the world. “In the first week I participated in numerous deal negotiations and even drafted my first term sheet.”

Already he’s learned: the value of combining a traditional business school education with a flexible, innovative approach to every solution. “Trying to solve the world’s energy needs is not something you read in a book, but it’s also important to figure out how to convey the excitement of new technologies in a way that makes sense to management and shareholders.”

Advancing career goals by: Connecting with many well known experts in his field and gained new tangible skills. “I was also looking for more blue-chip employment experience to round out my resume and Chevron has a great brand.”

Who makes you proud to be Berkeley-Haas? Tell us in the comments below or share your stories with vgilbert@haas.berkeley.edu.

Clean Energy for All

Impact Carbon, a Haas MBA Success Story

The shared ambition of Cindy Chen, MBA 10, Matt Evans, MBA 08, and Evan Haigler, MS 08 (Environmental Health Sciences), is quite simply, “clean energy for all.” They are the force behind Impact Carbon. This nonprofit facilitates the use of cleaner cook stoves in developing countries, sells the resulting carbon offsets, and puts the money back into those same communities to expand clean energy efforts.

Evans and Haigler spun off Impact Carbon from a research center within UC Berkeley’s School of Public Health. Evans now serves as managing director, Haigler is the nonprofit’s executive director, and Chen is a consultant. The team’s efforts received a boost when they were one of three UC Berkeley teams to win $10,000 in the 2010 Dow Sustainability Innovation Student Challenge, held in October.