From Greg's Head

Happy Halloween!

My colleague and resident millennial advisor to the blog, Jen Lemanski, asked me to read this article from Advertising Age about an interesting contest from MTV. 

It’s nice to see companies such as MTV supporting and encouraging this entrepreneurial generation. With everyone searching for the next Web 2.0 phenomenon, MTV and Cisco’s Digital Incubator contest puts their money where their mouths are, by awarding start-up capital to the niche websites targeting college students. 

The best thing they did was to examine the business models and unique impressions of each website to determine a winner. Hopefully the winners, Matthew Fargo and Ben Luduc-Mills will be able to translate the money they won into further success.

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PKF Texas needs your vote! 

We have been named a 2007 Houston’s Greatest Company by the Greater Houston Partnership and we are vying for the People’s Choice Award. The honorees are companies who have made a positive impact on the community and have advanced the greater Houston region as a business magnet.

You can vote by visiting www.houstonsgreatest.net or AT&T, Verizon Wireless & Dobson users can text the word “Vote” to 63513. The voting is open until November 26^th.  

So spread the word and tell your family and friends! To find out why we were honored as a Houston’s Greatest Company click here. PKF Texas and I thank you in advance for voting. 

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I’m here at Texas A&M's Zone Club, within the confines of Kyle Field, where the 2007 Aggie 100 were just announced. 

Guest speakers included Richard Scruggs, Executive Director of the CNVE; Bill Jones, the Chairman of the Texas A&M University Board of Regents; Dr. Eddie J. Davis, President of Texas A&M; Dr. Ricky Griffin, the Interim Dean of the Mays School; and yours truly to give the details on the honorees for the Class of 2007.

My speaking role was limited, but the role of PKF Texas in the background and verification process was an enjoyable and tedious process.  I want to thank John Stephenson, my assistant for all his help.

Over 650 people attended the Awards Luncheon today.  The event was sold out several weeks ago without and marketing effort and is now the hottest ticket on campus!

Major sponsors of the event include:  Texas Business Journals (there will be a special section in each of the 4 major cities in Texas); The Association of Former Students, Bill Miller B-B-Q, Hollinden Professional Services Marketing, Research Valley Partnership, Infinity Pro Sports, and PKF Texas.

In addition, the CEO of the #1 ranked Aggie business (REDE), spoke and Christine Hollinden announced the creation of the Aggie 100 Scholars program a new student scholarship funded by the honorees of the Aggie 100 program.

The singing cadets kicked off the event and followed by lunch.

The highlight of the day was the countdown to the actual honorees. 

Below is the list of Honorees and their growth from 2004-2006:

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Last night at the Association of Former Students, the Aggie 100 Class of 2007 came together for the first time. Over 250 attended the welcome reception.

Richard Scruggs, Executive Director of the CNVE addressed the crowd and welcomed everyone to the campus. Additional comments came from representatives of the Association of Former Students and the Research Valley Partnership.  

John Beddow, publisher of the Houston Business Journal spoke on behalf of the Texas Business Journals and the publishers from Austin, Dallas, and San Antonio Business Journals were also in attendance.

Today is the big day! I’ll have more later today after the winners are announced! Come back at 1 PM today and see who won.

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Note: Running most Fridays in FromGregsHead.com, is a continuing series of tips brought to you by Greg Price. These run Saturday mornings during the BusinessMaker’s Radio Show on KPRC 950AM. Audio files can be found on the Entrepreneur's Playbook page of the PKF Texas website.

This is the fifth in our series on Information Management from Microsoft and PKF Texas. When people can easily and quickly communicate insights and knowledge with peers, customers, and partners, they drive business success. Give your people the tools they need for:

• Quick publication. With Microsoft SharePoint Server you can easily create and publish Web content directly from familiar applications or e-mail. Personalized, dedicated SharePoint sites make data storage and sharing easy.
• Dynamic and frequent collaboration. Reduce travel costs through the use of online meetings and team workspaces that help groups to better collaborate on or off the corporate network.  
• Effective communication. With the integrated platform, your people can easily find and communicate with peers, partners, and customers in multiple ways (such as e-mail, phone, and instant messages). With team profiling tools, personnel can take advantage of people networks, both inside and outside your organization, to connect and share knowledge.
• Partner and supplier connections. Windows SharePoint Services helps you achieve tighter integration and high-value connections with your partners and suppliers through the easy creation of more secure extranet sites. This integrated approach can streamline shared business connections and reduce the time spent on administrative matters.

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Howdy from the Aggie 100!

It’s an honor and a pleasure for PKF Texas to again serve as the Aggie 100 accountants. PKF Texas strongly supports the Mays School and its Center for New Ventures and Entrepreneurship here at Texas A&M. 

A big Aggie thank you to Richard Scruggs, Lenae Huebner, Dean Griffin and Dr. Davis for your unwavering support of a unique one-of-a-kind program at a “Unique American Institution.”

Every Aggie is already a winner. But the Aggie 100 stands for the school’s legacy as well as its future. So how did we get this year’s list of the Aggie 100?

Over 200 companies completed the application process this year. Additional information was sent to our offices in Houston, where we verified the financial information, and reviewed the data submitted by the applicants.

In some cases we spoke with some of applicants to gain additional insight about the business. It took about 6 weeks to review all the applications.

Once we had the data, we calculated the two year compound annual growth rate from 2004 to 2006. Then the individual companies were ranked by their growth rate to get the Aggie 100.

For those or you who won't be able to attend the Aggie 100 Awards Ceremony on Friday October 26, we have another way for you to participate. KBTX television in College Station will be filming the event and streaming it live on their website www.KBTX.com . The coverage will begin around 11:15 a.m. (Central Time) and will last until all the honorees have been announced (around 1:00 p.m.).

Check back at 1:00 PM CST for an update on the winners!

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Last week the Rice Alliance was recognized as the leading university entrepreneurship center in the United States for the creation of successful new enterprises by the National Consortium of Entrepreneurship Centers (NCEC).

You can read the rest of the press release here. 

Rice University was also named as one of the top 25 U.S. graduate schools by Entrepreneur Magazine. 

This is exciting news for the Rice Alliance and Rice University! 

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Note: Running most Fridays in FromGregsHead.com, is a continuing series of tips brought to you by Greg Price. These run Saturday mornings during the BusinessMaker’s Radio Show on KPRC 950AM. Audio files can be found on the