One hundred and forty-three schools from across the country placed six hundred entries involving over 2,000 students, but when the dust settled only five Internet-related ventures remained to take the top, big bucks, prizes.

The San Francisco Airport Marriott was the scene Tuesday night for the first PLANedu competition sponsored by Palo Alto-based Garage.com where a team from the University of California, San Francisco scored the $150,000 grand prize for an ASP venture known as Quicksilver Genomics. Sharing the two $50,000 1st place prizes was a team from Stanford with its Kwaish wireless applications venture and KnowNow, a two-way Web notification endeavor from a team at the University of California, Irvine.

Each of the five finalists had 15 minutes to present their business plan, after which they grilled by an all star panel of Internet executives and investors who determined the winners. Although these were college teams made up of undergraduate and graduate students, the presentations were professional quality, graphically appealing affairs promoting ambitious business enterprises. Several of the teams included students with years of work experience at large computer companies and some who've applied for patents on their technology.

GRAND PRIZE WINNER

Quicksilver Genomics is an Application Service Provider for the structural genomics market. The team's licensable technology enables pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and academic researchers to rapidly discover patentable lead compounds from unclassified gene sequences.

"Quicksilver Genomics exemplifies the remarkable business ideas that are being developed by student entrepreneurs at universities across the country," says Garage.com CEO Guy Kawasaki.

BRINGING DESKTOP APPS TO MOBILE DEVICES

"What is the killer application for the Palm (handheld computer)? The (desktop applications) you're already using," says Anand Chandrasekaran, a presenter for Kwaish, and an MS candidate in Electrical Engineering at Stanford. Kwaish is a Hindu word for Dream.

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The Kwaish application distribution network is designed to deliver any business application to any wireless handheld device "quickly, cheaply, and easily." Kwaish says it plans to generate revenue using its patent-pending "Applications on Demand" architecture by selling subscriptions to mid-tier businesses and other organizations. Kwaish projects it can reach $40 million in revenue by 2003.

Chandrasekaran claims Kwaish has "home run potential" and a 9 month lead over competitors. "By next year we'll bring the functionality to let you walk around this room with a Palm and run a PowerPoint presentation," says Chandrasekaran.

Rounding out the awards were the two winners of the 2nd place $25,000 prize:

Fluid Bandwidth, from the University of Texas, Austin described itself as an Enterprise application integrator providing turnkey solutions for Voice-over-IP.

RedFolio.com, from Purdue University, presented a Web-centric artificial intelligence engineering solution for manufacturing and service businesses.

Garage.com, is an online venture capital company that helps entrepreneurs and investors create, build, and fund promising early-stage technology companies.