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By Jennifer Latson

If it looks like a burger, smells like a burger, and tastes like a burger, is it safe to call it a burger? Or must a patty be made of meat — and not meatless meat — to merit the label? 

The linguistics of mealtime have gotten complicated lately, thanks in part to the rise of plant-based alternatives to the foods we normally associate with animals. Dunkin’ now sells a Beyond Meat sausage breakfast sandwich; Burger King is bringing the plant-based Impossible Whopper to the masses. 

Stocks are soaring for the two leading non-meat makers, Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods — and analysts predict the market for so-called alternative proteins could climb as high as $140 billion by 2029. On menus and packaging, they’re being described in meaty terms: as burgers, sausage, bacon and the like. (In a fishy twist, Tyson Foods, the meat-industry behemoth, recently announced its plans to debut plant-based shrimp early next year.)

But ranchers have a beef. Last year, the U.S. Cattlemen’s Association petitioned the federal government to prohibit “products not derived directly from animals raised and slaughtered” from being marketed as meat. The trade association invoked the federal truth-in-advertising law, arguing that “current labeling practices may cause consumer confusion.” 

Is unwitting vegetarianism really a problem? Probably not, analysts say. Few, if any, consumers who buy plant-based meat do so accidentally, even if the label says “burger,” observes Jaeyeon Chung, a marketing professor at Rice University’s Jones Graduate School of Business. 

“They’re doing so out of a conscious decision not to consume real meat, and they are putting effort into searching for an alternative,” Chung says. “This isn’t a traditional marketing scam where counterfeiters try to deceive consumers by selling products similar to what people really want to purchase.” An Impossible Burger isn’t the culinary equivalent of a fake Rolex, she explains: its purpose isn’t to confuse people into buying a poor-quality imitation of the original, but to deliberately choose a new product that meets different needs. 

Plant-Based Pushback

The U.S. Department of Agriculture hasn’t yet ruled on the ranchers’ petition. In the meantime, however, several states — including Arkansas, Missouri and Mississippi — have passed their own laws restricting the terms used to describe plant-based products. 

The companies that make those products are pushing back. In July, Tofurky joined forces with the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups to file a lawsuit challenging the Arkansas law, which makes it illegal to call veggie burgers “burgers” or tofu dogs “dogs.” 

Tofurky and the ACLU argue that the law — which also takes issue with cauliflower “rice” and almond “milk” — violates the First Amendment’s protection of free speech. “It's absurdly patronizing that the government of Arkansas is asserting that the people of Arkansas can't tell a ‘veggie burger’ from a ‘hamburger,’ or a ‘tofu dog’ from a ‘hot dog,’” said ACLU attorney Brian Hauss. “The government should focus on genuine consumer protection problems instead of playing word games to benefit special interests at the First Amendment’s expense.” 

The beef industry association is not the first food group to wage a war of words against its competitors. In Texas, for example, pickle purveyors made the case that the word “pickle” should apply only to cucumbers (and not, say, okra or peppers). Persuaded by their lobbying efforts, Texas lawmakers codified that definition in 2014, making it illegal for small-time farmers to sell a jar of brined beets. The law was rewritten this year, freeing home picklers from the tyranny of the cucumber. 

In fact, the “truth in advertising” argument has been trotted out throughout the history of food marketing whenever an upstart veers too close to an established product’s market share. In 1881, Wisconsin lawmakers passed a law requiring margarine to be clearly labeled as a non-butter product, with the stated goal of dispelling consumer confusion. In 1895, it passed another law prohibiting margarine from being dyed a buttery yellow color, again to avoid “misleading customers” in a state dominated by dairy interests. 

Mainstream Appeal

But veggie burgers have been going by the “burger” label for a while now. So why the sudden drive to beef up burger labeling laws? Because while meatless meat was once an acquired taste, largely relegated to the vegan fringe, it’s now going mainstream — and potentially poses a real threat to the real thing. 

When it comes to the damage plant-based alternatives can inflict, some see the dairy industry as a cautionary tale. Dairy lobbyists first petitioned the FDA in 2010 to ban words like “milk” and “cheese” from products that don’t trace their origins to the inside of a barn. Since then, the industry’s outlook has soured, with decreasing demand and lower milk prices — largely unrelated to competition from plant-based milks. Lately, however, lobbyists have renewed their push to legislate labeling. But it’ll be tough to make a convincing case that consumers might be misled into thinking almond milk or soy milk comes from a cow, as Bruce Friedrich, of the nonprofit Good Food Institute, told The New Republic. 

“There is no consumer confusion, but requiring any sort of change would certainly confuse consumers, who have been buying almond milk and soy milk for decades,” Friedrich said. 

Chung agrees. But she thinks that may be where dairyless dairy and meatless meat diverge. 

“I don’t think almond milk was such a big deal because it clearly tastes very different from real milk, and people who love milk would not easily switch,” Chung says. “The latest plant-based meat, however, is the outcome of many years of many companies’ efforts to mimic the taste of meat, and they’ve finally succeeded. Now, since it really tastes like meat, the ranchers seem to feel that they are under threat.” 

Even if meatless meat does pose a genuine financial threat to ranchers, of course, it doesn’t necessarily follow that lawmakers should regulate the language used to describe it. That would be unfair to the makers of plant-based products, who have the right to market their products effectively, Chung says.

“Its current labeling, as a plant-based meat, will likely draw both vegans and current meat eaters who are more health-conscious,” she says. The alternative — labeling it as a plant product with, say, “meaty qualities” — would be less appealing all around. 

After all, without the familiar shorthand of terms like “meat” and “butter,” marketers are forced to cobble together ungainly descriptors like “texturized vegetable protein” and “cultured nut product.” Word salads like these will entice only the most diehard of health-food fanatics. 

This story originally appeared in the Houston Chronicle’s Gray Matters. 

William “Bill” Arnold, a popular professor in the practice of energy management at Rice’s Jones Graduate School of Business, died Aug. 5 after a battle with gallbladder cancer. He was 75.

Born Oct. 15, 1944, in Woonsocket, Rhode Island — “a textile mill town with a diverse ethnic background that triggered his curiosity about the world,” according to his obituary in the Houston Chronicle — Arnold joined Rice in 2009 following careers in banking, government and energy.

“Anyone who knew Bill immediately felt his warmth, good humor and genuine interest in others,” Rice Business Dean Peter Rodriguez wrote in a message to the school community. “Bill loved his students, loved teaching and Rice, and it always showed. He was a bright presence at Rice Business. I believe he received true joy from teaching the (courses) Geopolitics of Energy, Energy Transitions, Entrepreneurship in International Energy and especially his international energy simulation, which was a wonderful and innovative learning experience.”

One often found Arnold at a table full of students in the Faculty Club lingering over a long lunch, strategizing job prospects or the broader context of current events, Rodriguez recounted. He was also an avid photographer and enjoyed capturing the Rice rugby team, Beer Bike, Rice Business’ Investiture graduation ceremony and Partio parties on McNair Hall’s patio. He had an unfinished novel in his desk drawer and an active Facebook page with pictures of his wife, daughter and grandchildren and natural wonders — birds, bugs, flowers and weather.

“Bill’s professional resume is broad and impressive,” Rodriguez wrote. “While his impact has been deep across the Rice campus, it is the 1,600 students he taught at the business school and his colleagues throughout his career who will remember him most fondly. We are grateful to have had his vibrant spirit for part of that time, and we miss him greatly.”

Arnold, who was Royal Dutch Shell’s Washington, D.C.-based director of international government relations and senior counsel for the Middle East, Latin America and North Africa for 16 years, was a sought-after expert by media on energy industry issues.

“Houston has been the world energy capital for decades because of its concentration of technical, financial and managerial talent,” he wrote in a 2018 op-ed for the Houston Chronicle. “That will be challenged on many fronts, and policymakers and business leaders need to keep a long view of what it will take to strengthen the Houston economy for the next generation of those wanting to earn a high wage, too.”

Arnold is survived by his wife of 49 years, Catherine Anthony Arnold; and daughter Elizabeth Kendall Arnold Dennis and her husband, Richard Hollis Dennis III, and their children Cate, William and Ellen, of Rye, New York.

A conversation with Peter Rodriguez, Abbey Hartgrove and Barrett Moorhouse

One year after one of the worst storms in U.S. history, The New York Times reports, “progress in Texas is unevenly distributed.” Mimi Swartz, an executive editor at Texas Monthly, also wrote in a piece for the Times, “Maybe a year isn’t enough time to make sure that everyone in need gets a FEMA check and that their homes are mold free. It’s probably not enough time for Houston to reimagine itself, either.” But we’re trying. The following is an excerpted conversation with Peter Rodriguez, Abbey Hartgrove and Barrett Moorhouse.

Peter Rodriguez, Dean
Where are we as a school one year after Hurricane Harvey?
Remarkably I would say we are exactly where I would’ve expected us to be. We’ve learned about ourselves as a community. We care about each other beyond the work we do together. To look around the school you would not be able to tell we had that calamity a year ago. We’ve launched a new MBA program. We completed a year of classes. We went on global trips. Business as usual.

What did Hurricane Harvey tell you about the fabric of this place?
It reminded that we had leaders everywhere. People didn’t need or wait for direction. They knew how to act and what to do. All at once, everyone was working to lift up everyone. That’s the biggest surprise about the disaster. We were able to reach everyone so quickly through the networks we formed, even among people who had just arrived.

What have you learned personally and professionally in the year since the storm?
Personally, I think it’s a lesson in humility. We learned how vulnerable we are. You can be made nearly helpless. Acknowledging that and preparing is something we need to do upfront. Professionally you learn — there’s a great quote by Eisenhower — “plans are useless but planning is essential.” Mostly what he meant is that you never know what’s going to happen, but you have to contemplate before something occurs and get everyone aligned behind common objectives. And he meant it’s your best defense. With all of this, still the message is that despite our general recovery as an institution we know that Harvey had permanent effects. So many are still recovering.

Abbey Hartgrove, Associate Director, Global Programs
Your house flooded three times in three years. What was different about the flood with Hurricane Harvey?
With each flood came its own unique challenges and difficulties that make them hard to compare. The extreme impact that Harvey had on the majority of the Houston community brought a level of awareness that did not exist before. The support I had during Harvey went beyond my closest friends and family. I think it also illuminated what families who have flooded before have gone through, and how devastating it was that it was happening again, especially for those who thought things were getting back to normal. The awareness brought a powerful call to action that this city has needed for many years now.

What have you learned about the people that make up Rice Business?
Rice Business is home to my professional life. It hasn’t always been obvious to me that it plays a huge role in my life outside of McNair Hall. This community is part of my family and houses many of my closest friends. It was made very clear during this tragedy that this group of people is special. We have people who truly care about others and want to make a positive difference in lives other than their own. Harvey truly brought deeper meaning to “best and brightest,” a phrase we attribute to those associated with Rice Business.

What did you learn about yourself that you didn’t know before?
The sad truth of the matter is that you don’t always know how important something is to you until it’s gone. With the loss of so many items that meant the world to me, it became very clear that I had a number of sentimental objects that I never thought I wouldn’t have for a lifetime. You are reminded that ultimately things are only things, but also that items that are connected to a memory are precious and irreplaceable. In the end, I was reminded how important it is to surround yourself with people who will support you not only in the best of times but especially in the darkest of times. You learn that it’s okay to be sad, it’s okay to feel that loss, it’s okay to even sometimes feel defeated — but ultimately you learn that even when you feel at your lowest, you are capable of exceeding the highest expectations of yourself.

Barrett Moorhouse, Full-Time MBA 2019, Marine Corps veteran, IREP award recipient, VIBA president
You were less than a month into the school year when Hurricane Harvey hit. What happened?
After helping my mom’s friend rip sheetrock out of her flooded house, I pulled up to a stoplight and saw a guy with a truck and a boat. I said, Can I come along? He said, Sure. For about a day and a half we went house to house all over Houston and Friendswood rescuing people in this guy’s 18’ boat. We tore up that boat pretty good. I see another group doing the same thing in an apartment building off I-10. The DEA, National Guard and Sheriff are helping. I walked up to see what was going on and these two junior National Guard told me they were gathering intelligence. I told them I’d been a captain in the Marine Corps. I had some mapping software on my phone and showed them how to use it, and they talked to the sheriff. The sheriff said, hey man will you run this? The National Guard guys came up and handed me a cell phone with their supervisor on the line. He said he had a couple of trucks and humvees and asked if I could put them to use. I said yes. I do really well in these kinds of emergency situations. I really enjoyed being able to contribute in Harvey. [Barrett went on for two and a half days, leading a crew of soldiers from the Texas National Guard. Using the Texas Navy Facebook page — set up by civilians with boats — they staged the North Star Mall with a convoy of trucks and boats then coordinated with the Texas Navy to rescue stranded families and bus them to the nearest shelters. He slept on the truck, ate MREs and remarked that it felt like being back in the military.]

How did people at school find out?
I didn’t tell anyone. I was on CNN and my mom saw it and told a lot of people. As for school, there was this Rice professor and his wife who were stranded in their car. I helped get them to safety and he found out I was military and told Drew Sims ’18. I think he was the one who told people.

What did you learn about yourself that you didn’t know before?
I realized, looking back a year later, that I missed service in some form or fashion and wasn’t sure how to make that happen in my civilian life. That’s when I decided to take a leap of faith and commission with the Coast Guard Reserve. After graduation, I’ll train for a month in New London, Connecticut. In the event of another Harvey, I can request to be activated. It’s something that’s really important to me.

In the Shell Auditorium, Randy Paris steps up to the podium to present his pitch. A hush falls over the crowd as hundreds of angel investors and venture capitalists train their eyes on the University of Chicago Booth MBA, who has 15 minutes to make his business case.

Paris, CEO of coffee startup BrewBike, and his team have made it to the final round of the 19th annual Rice Business Plan Competition (RBPC), the world’s richest and largest student startup competition. Alongside 41 other teams from across the globe, for three days Paris and his team have vied for what was ultimately a record $2.9 million in prize money to invest in their growing businesses. The stakes are huge.



“You can only keep driving if you have gas in the tank,” says Paris before the competition kicks off. His team of four includes BrewBike founder Lucas Philips from Northwestern University. The company delivers cold brew coffee in a more convenient way to students at Northwestern and UT Austin through a business model that’s 100% student run. Their goal is to expand to dozens more universities across the U.S.

After closing an $850,000 seed round in September, BrewBike applied to RBPC to further fuel its expansion. “Getting ready for a competition like Rice is such a valuable exercise in and of itself,” Paris says. “You’re making the case for why your company makes sense. And once you’ve convinced yourself, you can convince investors.”

Paris and Philips were among an impressive group of teams at RBPC this year, from the U.S. to the U.K. to Singapore. The event is hosted by the Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship and the Jones Graduate School of Business.

With enthusiasm, props and catchy slogans, teams presented their business solutions to some of the world’s most pressing issues — heart disease, cancer, student loans, clean drinking water and immigration. For months leading up to the event, they worked on refining their financials, their sales and marketing plans, and their exit strategy.

This year’s team from Rice, LilySpec, has set out to overhaul the vaginal speculum, making the OB/GYN experience a more comfortable one for women. During pitches at RBPC, Rice MBA student Joanna Nathan waved a metal speculum through the air.

“This device has been torturing women for the past 150 years,” Nathan tells judges, all volunteers, as she opens the device. “It’s in serious need of an innovative, patient-centered overhaul.” LilySpec took home $29,000 in prizes, and won best elevator pitch.

Personal experience influenced other teams’ products as well. NABACO from Texas State University applied to RBPC to help raise $500,000 for its Natuwrap coating, a spray that extends the shelf-life of fruits and vegetables. NABACO COO Damilola Runsewe grew up in Nigeria, where food traveling long distances often spoils. “The level of the competition here is absolutely world-class,” Runsewe says. “Just being here is stimulating. The hardest part was seeing it come to an end.”

Caleb Carr, CEO of Vita Inclinata Technologies from the Mitchell Hamline School of Law, developed the Load Stability System (LSS) after his search and rescue teammate Don died from a heart attack following an unsuccessful airlift. The LSS prevents the wild swing of precious passengers and cargo as they’re being airlifted during helicopter operations.

“We know what our mission is,” says Carr, who was finally accepted into RBPC this year after four unsuccessful applications. “It’s to ensure people won’t die because of the swinging. Every time I go on stage, I’m focused on that life-saving aspect.”

The best 42 minutes in capitalism

A launching pad for innovative companies across industries — technology, energy and life sciences — RBPC provides participants with invaluable feedback to hone their pitches and ultimately attempt to launch their businesses.

In a given year, more than 300 teams apply for the 42 spots. In classrooms, over box lunches and in the hallways, teams get ample opportunity to network with investors. Business cards are exchanged, meetings are scheduled.

The competition kicks off Thursday afternoon with a practice round before the rapid-fire Elevator Competition in the Shell Auditorium. “They say the Kentucky Derby is the best two minutes in sports,” Rice Business Dean Peter Rodriguez tells students as they gear up to deliver their 60-second elevator pitch. “Well, this is the best 42 minutes in capitalism.”

On Friday, teams split into seven tracks, present to judges, then address questions during a Q&A. One crowd favorite, Resonado, played the song “Englishman in New York” by Sting for the judges after the team’s slide presentation. “Join us in replacing all the speakers in the world,” CEO Brian Cho told the judges, holding up the flat core speaker he and his father developed.

“It’s almost like a final exam,” says Paris, who handed out cups of cold brew coffee before BrewBike’s pitch. “You can get a question about anything in the textbook. You have to be prepared.”

Friday afternoon, each team receives 15 minutes of feedback. At an evening reception, the 15 semi-finalists are announced — the top two from each track, plus the highest-scoring third place team. Saturday morning, semi-finalists compete across three tracks, delivering their pitches yet again. The remaining 27 teams compete in a Wildcard Round for a spot in the finals.

At noon on Saturday, in a standing-room only Shell Auditorium, the finalists are announced. Then teams have one last chance to convince the critics before the winners are revealed Saturday night at a company showcase and banquet.

Supporting entrepreneurs

The GOOSE Society of Texas provides RBPC’s top, $350,000 prize, and often upsizes it. The winner is invited to pitch to the entire GOOSE group, a meeting that many times results in millions more in funding. GOOSE has invested more than $20,000,000 in a dozen RBPC companies, more than 40 percent of its total capital invested. Four companies have exited, returning more capital than GOOSE initially invested.

GOOSE co-founder Jack Gill, founder of the Palo Alto-based Vanguard Ventures, has judged at RBPC since 2005. “I love to support entrepreneurs at the core level,” says Gill. “RBPC is like the Super Bowl. Prizes are big, the competition is tough, and the process is very intense. My favorite part is meeting all these dynamic entrepreneurs, the fun, the excitement when you see all that energy and aspiration in the room.”

"The Rice competition changed our lives. We refer to our company as pre-Rice and post-Rice. The competition sent a message that we can build something really big; it gave us even more confidence. It’s something we’ll never forget.”

In addition to GOOSE, more than 200 other corporate and private sponsors support RBPC. Even teams that don’t make it to the finals have the potential to walk away with hundreds of thousands of dollars in prize money.

For judges, RBPC is not only an investment opportunity, but also a chance to reconnect in person with colleagues from across the world. Of the 300 judges this year, more than 26 percent were women, up from six percent in 2001. “We’re on our way to 50 percent,” says Rice Alliance Managing Director Brad Burke, who served as the competition’s host and emcee.

CISCO, which sponsors the $100,000 CISCO Global Problem Solver Prize, first partnered with RBPC in 2016. This year it sent seven judges to the competition. “Venture capital is an area that’s underinvested,” says Mary de Wysocki, senior director with corporate affairs at CISCO. “We were evaluating incubators globally, and one that rose to the top was Rice. I always feel the pool of talent is really high.”



This year, CISCO awarded its prize to Rhaeos, a Northwestern University team that’s developed a wearable sensor to help better monitor patients with hydrocephalus, a condition where excess fluids builds up in the brain. In 2016, CISCO chose Neopenda from Columbia University, which makes sensors to monitor newborns. Last year, de Wysocki visited Neopenda’s trial in Uganda. “It was life changing,” she says. “Young people care, and you see it in action in some of these startups.”

Diana Murakhovskaya, principal and co-founder of the recently-launched The Artemis Fund, Houston’s first, female-focused fund, says Houston is the place to be for founders. “It was great to see so many companies with female leadership,” Murakhovskaya says.

This year’s $100,000 Artemis Investment Prize went to Zilper Trenchless from the MIT Sloan School of Management, which is working to reduce the cost of infrastructure by developing new technologies related to water pipeline construction.

Changing lives

Since 2001, when nine teams competed for just $10,000, RBPC has seen more than 229 competitors successfully launch their ventures. Past competitors have raised nearly $2.3 billion in funding and created more than 3,000 new jobs. Thirty-two companies have seen successful exits valued at more than $1 billion.

“The competition helped us get that initial leadership and funding together,” says Emma Fauss, CEO of Medical Informatics Corp, Rice’s 2013 team. “Going out into the world, we felt we could answer any question.”

Fauss’ company develops technology to help clinicians focus more on patients and less on documentation. Her team didn’t place at RBPC, but they still walked away with $28,500 in prize money. Days before this year’s competition, Medical Informatics announced it had raised $11.9 million in Series A funding.

Samir Mayekar, CEO of Nanograf, a battery technology company, won RBPC in 2013 when he was an MBA student at Northwestern. His team took home $911,000, which grew to over $1 million in the months following the competition.

The company has expanded from three students when Mayekar competed at RBPC to now more than 20 employees across three continents. Nanograf is working with Ford, GM and Chrysler, and it’s on the cusp of commercialization. “The Rice competition changed our lives,” says Mayekar, who still has the giant foam check they received tacked up on the wall in his office. “We refer to our company as pre-Rice and post- Rice. The competition sent a message that we can build something really big, it gave us even more confidence. It’s something we’ll never forget.”

A transformative experience

Saturday night at the Westin Galleria, investors chat with teams as they browse their tables at the Company Showcase. Later, in the ballroom, Houston-based street artist Dual puts the finishing touches on an original piece of art he’s created for, and during, the competition.

The 2019 finalists — running on fumes — huddle on stage. An excited chatter spreads across the room as the winners are announced. In fourth place, Rhaeos ends up with more than $450,000 in prizes. Fifth place winner Zilper Trenchless takes home $435,000, and BrewBike takes sixth, bringing home $100,000.

“This experience was one of the most exhilarating I’ve ever undertaken,” Paris says.

GOOSE upsized its prize once again this year, handing out an additional $925,000 spread across five teams. The OWL Investment Group also upped its prize money and handed out $400,000.

Resonado and Vita Inclinata stand side by side as the second-to-last envelope is ripped opened. Cheers erupt across the ballroom. Resonado takes second place, earning $425,000 in prizes. Vita Inclinata is the first prize RBPC 2019 winner, walking away with over $550,000 in cash and prizes, including the chance to ring the closing bell at the NASDAQ in New York.

“Winning Rice was not only a great catalyst, but also a great validation for our technology,” says Carr. “You can literally transform your business over three days. Rice is very much catapulting our opportunities.”

Deborah Lynn Blumberg is a Houston-based freelance writer specializing in business, finance and health and wellness whose work has appeared in publications including The Wall Street Journal, MarketWatch, The Christian Science Monitor and Newsday. Previously, she was a reporter at Dow Jones/The Wall Street Journal. (deborahlynnblumberg. com; @dlblumberg)

"Two years ago, our speaker was sitting in your chair. Please welcome Dr. Brittany Barreto."

With those words, Jack Gill — scientist, professor, venture capitalist and philanthropist — introduced the first speaker for the IGNITE 2019 conference for entrepreneurs. In the audience sat seasoned entrepreneurs, generous conference sponsors and students interested in learning about how to create and build high-tech entrepreneurial companies.

Ph.D. students and medical doctors from Rice, UC-Davis, Baylor College of Medicine and the Texas Medical Center Innovation Institute had technical knowhow in computer science, biology, chemistry, physics and medicine to develop technologies. MBA students from Rice, UC-Davis and Lamar had the know-how to monetize and commercialize them.

After spending the previous day visiting startups in the Silicon Valley, everyone had gathered at UC- Davis to listen to a long line-up of entrepreneurs talk about their experiences when taking ideas to market. Barreto kicked it off, describing being a genetics Ph.D. student at Baylor College of Medicine, feeling she hadn’t yet arrived at what she wanted to do, but knowing it was an important stop along the way. She worked countless hours in the lab to advance her professional career and was dating to grow roots in her personal life. Then one day, under the hood in the lab mixing chemicals, she thought, why not use the science I know to create a dating app?

She found a friend who could build the app, gathered a team and started to hustle — sharing her idea with different audiences, beta testing it with consumers and finding investors. Pheramor came into creation. Today, it’s a dating app that matches people using physical chemistry and social alignment. And Barreto has moved from conference participant to lead-off speaker.

She also set the perfect tone. While not sparing the challenges with which she grappled both from entrepreneurial and personal viewpoints, she encouraged the audience to pursue ambitions, making everyone there believe that he or she, too, could be standing at the front of the room, telling everyone about his or her success story.

Over the next two days, entrepreneur after entrepreneur stood at the front of the room, recounting his or her story. Nicholas Seet had created and commercialized audio technology acquired by Adobe. Sally Edwards, an Olympic athlete and founder of the running store Fleet Feet, talked about her new app, Heart Zones. Ben Lyon, a lawyer, talked about his improbable entrepreneurial journey that at one point landed him in Russia in the 1990s. Today, he is working with IMMiX BioPharma to develop and bring novel cancer therapies into practice.

Two speakers, Brad Chisum and Mark Randall, touched on their next phases of entrepreneurship, which actively support the next generation of entrepreneurs. Chisum, CEO of Launch Factory, has created this company to incubate new start-ups. Randall, retired VP of Creativity at Adobe, is now taking his well-known Adobe Kickbox innovation process to a broader audience through foundation work.

Like Barreto, each narrated his or her entrepreneurial journey through a chronological lens that brought technical, business and personal successes and challenges into view. Everyone described different leadership styles, as well as strategies and techniques for developing companies. Their organizational techniques, skills and capabilities also differed. Yet they all shared common attributes — one being key connections to Rice, UC-Davis or Lamar that helped propel them to success. Some had, in fact, participated in the Rice Business Plan Competition.

While entrepreneurship isn’t for the meek, the personal and professional rewards can be phenomenally worthwhile. As they left the conference hall, amused smiles spread across audience members’ faces, as collegial small talk broached the question: Who from this audience might find himself or herself at the front of this room, speaking, in a few years?

Rosalee Maffitt is a 2020 MBA candidate at Rice Business.

"What was the commodity price you used for your valuation?"

"I think our valuation is wrong,” I announced breathlessly.

How else to explain the different metrics from my model compared to a press release on the acquisition of an upstream oil asset in the Rocky Mountains?

A recent hire, I had rushed into my manager’s office to explain my concern. Before sharing my panic, he asked some questions.

“What was the commodity price you used for your valuation?” Then, “What was the acreage position?” And, “Is the oil production curve you used the same as the one used by the companies that bought and sold the asset?”

And many more. Slowly, but surely, it dawned on me. My valuation model wasn’t wrong.

It was just different!

Time and again, I’ve had to face similar situations. A comment I hear often — mostly from those who don’t work directly on asset valuations — is, “This analysis is completely incorrect.” I’ve also found that most of the time there’s a logical explanation for differences. Most analyses can be validated. So why are these comments so prevalent?

It all boils down to this conundrum: Is valuation a science, with well-defined steps and consistent processes? Or is it an art, reflecting the insights and choices a skilled analyst brings to bear?

To analyze an upstream, onshore, oil-producing asset, I need a set of facts, including acreage position and capital to be invested. These facts become part of the set structure within the valuation models. Then I have to build out the asset development plans and estimate costs. These inputs are assumptions, and may be challenged.

Imagine the number of factors involved in a single metric: such as commodity prices. A commodity price analyst, frustrated by market volatility, might say, “Over the past several quarters, we have not been able to come up with a forecast that has reflected actual price movements, even though we have spent countless hours analyzing it.” This ambiguity can be driven by multiple factors, all the way from the economic health of the country down to the individual user at the pump. And this is just one of the assumptions used in an asset valuation model.

Recently, the valuation for one of our assets was on the lower side of that provided in the asset deal announcement. We double-checked the analysis. The facts were accurate. Assumptions on metrics, such as cost estimates, were in place as well. By simply making our forecast more aggressive, we found that we could match the valuations provided in the deal announcement.

“I think our valuation model is wrong, and I don’t know why,” my newest team member told me. He had followed the steps exactly as he’d learned them. His inputs were complete. He had gone over the process in his mind multiple times and was distressed that it was not giving him the results he wanted.

Smiling to myself, I asked him, “What was the commodity price you used for your valuation?”

Siddhartha Sen is a 2009 Jones Graduate School of Business alumnus currently working at IHS Markit. He has more than 10 years of asset valuation experience.