Four prizewinning Irish students had an eye-opening experience at an elite technology boot camp in Silicon Valley, writes KARLIN LILLINGTON

TWO-AND-a-half weeks at an elite technology company boot camp in California, with business experts, top Silicon Valley venture capitalists and even Bill Gates, have proven to be an eye-opening experience for four NUI Maynooth students.

"I don't think we're as naive about business any more," says Cathal Coffey, recounting the group's gruelling but productive face-to-face presentations to Valley leading lights including Guy Kawasaki of Garage Technology Ventures, John Danner, founder of online advertising firm NetGravity, and Chris Gill of the Silicon Valley Association of Startup Entrepreneurs. "We know to cut the crap."

The group of students - which also includes Eric McClean, Mark Clerkin and Daniel Kelly - were winners at last summer's Imagine Cup in South Korea, the world's largest international technology competition for third-level students, run annually by Microsoft.

The team's software project, a sign language teaching programme, took the group into the final in Seoul and won them and two other teams a position on a special Innovation Accelerator business programme run by Microsoft and BT.

Not that they expected to get that far, especially as this was the first year Ireland had even fielded any teams for the competition, and nobody knew quite what to expect.

By contrast, many of the teams in the international final are repeat finalists who know the type of projects that do well.

When the Maynooth four formed an impromptu team last year to enter the cup, they thought it would be a fun and challenging project that - if they were really lucky - might win them a games console, Microsoft's prize for the runners-up in the Irish finals.

"We laugh about it all the time. We were sitting there thinking we'd like to come second and get the Xboxes," says Coffey. Instead, they kept right on winning until the final day in Seoul, when they ran to the stage draped in large Tricolours to accept the Innovation Accelerator prize.

That brought them to Silicon Valley last month, where they were reunited with the three finalist teams, plus two other teams selected for the programme.

According to Liam Cronin, academic engagement manager with Microsoft Ireland, this is the third year Microsoft and BT have run the programme for Imagine Cup winners. But it is now much larger and broader, running for 2½ weeks in California rather than a week in the UK.

The Maynooth students, who hope to turn their sign language programme into a commercial project, arrived with a basic business plan. Microsoft helped them to develop it by pairing them up with several MBA students from UCD's Smurfit Business School.

They had daily lectures and workshops on seeking finance, making pitches, plotting the growth of a company and, as Coffey discovered, learning to "cut the crap". Every other day - to their initial horror - they had to make a presentation and be voted on by a panel of venture capitalists and Valley business veterans.

The teams started with $100,000 (€64,000) in virtual cash and raised additional money by topping the panel vote at these events. The Irish team eventually had more than $1 million in virtual cash and, until the final day, led all the teams in terms of cash raised.

"Initially, it was hard to adjust," says McClean. "It made you realise how much needed to be done," adds Clerkin.

"Chris Gill just grilled us," recalls Coffey, wincing at the memory of having their careful business plan picked apart by the seasoned entrepreneur, who has eight startups behind him.

"But we were only offended the first day," he adds with a grin.

In between the hard work, the four saw some of the highlights of Silicon Valley and San Francisco, heard Bill Gates give a speech at Stanford University and had their picture taken with him.

The team - two of whom are working on one-year placement with Microsoft in Dublin - say they learned an unbelievable amount and are reinvigorated in their plans to move ahead with their company. They are pitching for a grant from Enterprise Ireland and, if they win that real-world cash, will be fully engaged with the entrepreneurial world they tasted briefly in the Valley.

What did they learn that surprised them? "It's going to cost money to make money," says Clerkin. "You need to spend a lot of money on marketing - we always thought marketing was the afterthought," adds McClean.

"Anyone can start a company," says Coffey. "Anyone can get out of their garden and take on Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo. If you want to set up a company, just get out there and do it."