Entrepreneurs Are Vying For Top Spot In StartUp Cup Competition

Andy Kogelnik dreams of building a health care institute that combines genomics, bioinformatics and social networking. He is well on his way to doing that at the inaugural Santa Clara County StartUp Cup, a West Valley College-sponsored competition open to entrepreneurs who want to take an idea to market or grow an existing new business. Kogelnik's company, Open Medicine Institute, is only a year and a half old, but he has hopes of someday reaching tens of thousands of people.

"StartUp Cup seemed like a great opportunity to solidify what we were doing from a business sense," he said. "It was a way of getting our model road-tested and validated from experts from the business side and see how viable of a model it was."

The competition began in April with a pool of 25 business ideas with the potential for the greatest success. Out of that number, 12 were chosen to advance to the second round in September. Now, of the remaining seven, three will be chosen as winners in the third and final round on Nov. 1...